GPS Navigation aka In 100m U-Turn and smash into the next car.

As some of you know, my folks invested in a GPS navigational unit. Its a TomTom One XL for $540 and we've been playing with it for the last few weeks on 'trial' basis. This means we pay upfront but if we're not happy with it, we can give it back and get a full refund.

The TomTom One XL is like any other GPS, in that you program where you want to go, and it'll guide you there with voice prompts and map information. Around our local area the instructions are quite accurate and easy to understand. Programming where you want to go is intuitive and the user interface is excellent. You can tell that the TomTom product management got real mums and dads in to test this as opposed to programmers. They even offer multiple voices to customize who you get to yell at when the directions are crazy. I selected the British Jane voice because come on British women sound so sexy!

We went on a more 'rural' trip to Mulgoa and Warragamba Dam and the One XL found roads which were faster than what we knew, found petrol stations at the touch of a button (ok a few buttons, but easy enough) and got us home safely.
Of course rural areas are easy due to the long stretches of road, and lack of confusing streets. For a real test we took it to the city.

There are some sequences which are difficult for it to process. For example if I'm going to north sydney, I can't easily tell it to avoid the Lane cove tunnel, BUT to allow taking the M2 motorway. To do that I'd need to give it two waypoints which can be difficult if you don't know anything about the area.

It is going to the city with its crazy road implementation that I realized I cannot rely on the voice navigation. You do really need to look at the graphical display to get an idea of which road to turn into, when to turn in and so on. The clear, large car-centered GPS map with arrows really does make up for some questionable driving instructions. For example, when coming back on Longeuville road trying to get onto the M2, it decided to give this wildly mad suggestion of doing an suicidal U-Turn in a major traffic junction that on a hill. No thanks.
Luckily if you do override what it says and just drive on, it'll throw away the old course and recalculate it for you and usually it'll get it right this time.

There are a few things that its missing that I wish it had. It doesn't show traffic lights, speed cameras and doesn't really get the speed limits on all roads. That said, I'm fairly happy with the TomTom One XL, and won't be returning it. Its not perfect, but it seems to do the job well enough to justify its expense. That said, a GPS Navigator is not a substitute for past knowledge of the route and being aware of whats going on. It is an aid, and a fallback when you have nothing else.