Early 2011 I paid around £230 or so for the Tom Tom Go Live 1005. 5 inch screen, Live services and seemingly great set up.
Fast forward 12 months and it is around £50 to renew Live services. Another year of maps is around £60. But wait until your map is a little older and the price goes up ! You can buy a one off map update but that is proportionally ridiculous.
Then there are the niggles. The favourites system is ultra slow, way behind any device you've used in years. Turning on and booting up takes forever, as if it is running a processor you abandoned in a mobile generations ago. Sometimes the screen doesn't accept your touch, much worse when cold, as it lives in the glove box.
Fairly good bluetooth to modern mobiles but not a patch on an integrated voice controlled system.
Now to be fair, I knew about the renewal of Live services but I wasn't offered the multi year map promotion when I purchased it and you can't buy it afterwards. In the USA, they have lifetime map upgrades !
So to recap. Tom Tom was the best hardware out when I bought it but I was shocked at the cost to update it and it simply is not worth it, which means paying for the hardware is also a waste of money.
Do however get a big screen, you can't beat that and mobiles are just too small.
I'm running this one until I can find a jailbreak download to update it or it becomes utterly useless. At that point, I'll buy another but that will have to have free map updates, though I understand Live services may need to be a payable option. I'd also investigate the processor speed as well.
An alternative option might be to use a tablet based resource, either paid or free, if you could find some place to put it. I may well take this option.
PS.
The most useful feature ? Speed limits and potential speed cameras. I drive at the limit but I have roads near me which change fro 40-30-50-70-60-50 and they are utterly confusing.
