Review: TomTom car kit

It exists!

After months of impatient waiting with little chance of seeing the Tomtom car kit hit the New Zealand retail market anytime soon, I decided to source one via the UK. I had a friend purchase one from the Tomtom UK website and mail it to me in NZ. Hit the link to read my review of the cradle and find out if it’s worth the cash!

The car kit seemed to be an object of myth and I couldn’t believe it when it landed on my desk – this object just seemed so out of reach yet here it was, in my hands and before even Ingram Micro (Distributor for Tomtom in NZ) had them!

The unboxing

So, What’s in the box? The box contains a manual, a car charger, a sticky backed disk (for dash mounting) and the iPhone cradle, just the basics to get you going but surprisingly no audio cable. Given the cost of this item I would have thought an audio cable would be included.

Like a tiny dentist's chair from hell

On initial inspection the car kit quality is top notch, and feels very solidly put together. The EasyPort mount is attached to the cradle via a ball joint allowing for minor adjustment, then a swivel joint that contains the loud speaker. This allows for complete 360-degree rotation with fixed increments. Finally the mount sits in a sliding joint, also with fixed increments. It all feels very solid but I did notice a small amount of play in the swivel joint when locked into the fixed increments.

Setting this up in the car was very straight forward, I attached it to the windshield using the EasyPort mount, once attached it was firmly in place and gave me complete confidence that it was not going to fall off. To attach the mount to the dash you need to use the plastic sticky-backed disk. The charger must be connected, it not only charges the iPhone but also powers the cradle to enable the GPS and hands free to function.

Mounting the cradle

The next step is to pop the iPhone into the cradle mount. This has been well thought out and is the best design I’ve seen to date, it was very easy to install the iPhone with one hand. After Bluetooth pairing the iPhone to the car kit (iPhone must be installed in the car kit for this step) it was ready for a drive. The Bluetooth pairing only needs to be done once – the iPhone stores the Bluetooth pairing in preferences.

On the road around Tauranga, it was a cloudy day but the flaky performance and frequent recalculation of the route I had grown to expect from the TomTom app was all gone. The app performed perfectly with fast lock and smooth tracking, the GPS chip in the car kit certainly makes a huge difference. The best bit is that all GPS enabled apps will benefit from the added hardware, I tested both Sygic Mobile and the Maps app, again the increased performance was noticeable.

Profile

A volume control on the side of the car kit makes for easy and more tactile volume adjustment but provides no visual or audio feedback (unlike the tap the info bar method within the Tomtom app) without the visual/audio volume level you have no idea if it is working or where the volume level is at unless you can time it with the spoken directions. I hope Tomtom will address this.

The built-in speaker was loud and clear, all voice directions are delivered via the built in speaker when the audio out is not connected. With the audio out port connected to the car stereo (Belkin iPod to stereo cable) iPod performs as normal through the stereo and all voice directions are through the stereo also. Hands free calling is via the built in speaker only.

Speakerphone

The hands free calling was clear on both ends of the call, the clarity was better then my previous set-up, a Contour Surface Sound hands free.

Something lacking with this set up is the Tomtom in-app control of iPod music. Unfortunately you need to quit the Tomtom app and launch the iPod app to perform any control over music, not something I recommend when driving! To make matters worse, in the landscape position iPod switches to coverflow, which gives you no control other than play/pause, so you must rotate the iPhone in the car kit to the normal upright position to gain the full iPod control. This has been poorly thought out and makes it a mission to skip past a song with the Tomtom app running in landscape, impossible and plain lethal whilst driving. (Actually if you assign the double-tap of the home button to iPod controls, you can skip the track by double-tapping the home button and using the usual in-app iPod controls – Ed).

Portrait or landscape?

I tested the car kit in a MK4 VW Golf, with the car kit mounted to the windscreen. In a normal driving position I found the iPhone to be too far away, tasks such as tapping to answer a call, control the ipod music or any interaction with the iPhone required me to lean forward and stretch an arm out to reach it. This makes things tricky when driving and again pretty dangerous. In the normal upright position I found the car kit to be in the way of windscreen visability more than I had expected. You can swivel it to landscape and re-attach it lower but that prevents rotation to upright.

Plastic Fantastic

I did try mounting it to the dash using the plastic disk, it did bring it closer but still too high in the upright position. I also noticed the iPhone and cradle had a wobble due to the play in the swivel joint, over some roads the wobble produced an annoying rattle, whilst mounted to the windscreen and hanging from the EasyPort mount I noticed none of the wobble or rattling.

I ditched the dash mount and opted to windscreen mount the kit, the wobble and rattle dash mounted just put me off.

I feel that windscreen mounting of GPS units is the best position but not for an iPod or cell phone where easy reach is key for the frequent interaction. The best location for the iPhone is the front of the dash or a vent mount. Using the car kit mounted to the windscreen is a huge trade off — easy viewing over easy control.

Another negative point is the cables running from the cigarette lighter and stereo over the dash to the car kit. It just looks messy and bugs me, I’m looking into alternative routing under the dash.

Overall I’m happy with this product, as long I as try to forget how much the setup cost. It seriously needs for the Tomtom app to be updated with iPod control, maybe even voice controlled calling to make this a true hands free solution but until then it is almost as dangerous to interact with as texting whilst driving.

– TomTom Cradle [via Apple Store UK]

– TomTom New Zealand

– TomTom Car Kit Tool