The jury is definitely in with the verdict. Guilty. And it's a hanging offense. In the gas chamber. While being shot. With grenade launchers. With a tormentor in the wings waiting to waterboard the corpse as an appetizer.
But seriously, the TomTom XXL 540S is simple horrible. But before I get into all of its many deficiencies, I'll outline the good parts as there is a small number of them. I've had more than enough time to evaluate the unit, and I've decided that I will most likely sell it and get a different GPS unit if time permits.
THE GOOD
The box is good. It contains the unit very well. (End sarcasm.)
The screen is actually very good. It is bright enough and it doesn't grime up with finger prints. It is matted, so you don't get glare off of it. Also, it's quite large, which is nice.
The battery life is very good and has more than enough.
The suction cup is very good. I've only had it fall off the windshield 2x.
THE BAD
Pretty much everything else is bad. There are very few redeeming qualities in the unit, and they are all listed above.
The maps are not accurate by any means. If you end up on a non-arterial road, there is a very high probability that the maps will be wrong. Even in major arterial roadways, there is a significant number of errors.
The CPU is massively underpowered and not up to the task of drawing maps in a reasonable time frame. The map data is drawn on the screen in layers, and each layer takes a painfully long time to draw. If you need to actually get a map displayed quickly, you're out of luck. Another shortcoming in the map drawing is that it draws all the most important information last, which is entirely useless when speed is important.
As the device steers you wrong in so many instances (I'd say 2 out of 3 trips it will steer you wrong -- in my experience anyways), it needs to redraw a new route. If you're driving, you're pretty much hosed because by the time it draws a route, you'll have passed the place where you should have turned, and it will begin to redraw a new route again. This process repeats itself several times until you've either stopped long enough, or you've hit a section of road that is long enough for the slow route determination to figure out a new route for you.
Now, even if the maps were accurate, and even if the CPU were powerful enough for the unit, I would still have to say that it's definitely not worth buying, and I'd still actively discourage purchasing the unit.
The next major shortcoming is in HOW it gives directions. For example, on a normal road, the unit will tell you "Right turn ahead", but it's still 1.2 km away. None of the directions that it gives you are done in a timely manner that help you navigate based on the speech. If you attempt to rely on the speech, you will take the wrong turn 100% of the time. Let me repeat that. The speech alone will steer you in the wrong direction 100% of the time.
This flaw extends to the on-screen directions as well. The unit will tell you to stay right or left up ahead, but the road simply continues straight. This is further exacerbated by it giving you distances, which appear to mean that you really DO need to actually do something, when the reality is that you shouldn't do anything at all.
Ok, now if that wasn't bad enough, when there are multiple turns that are close to each other, the unit will direct you to turn, but doesn't give you any indication about which turn off you should take. This is especially problematic on highways. This has caused me a great deal of aggravation and 30 km detours.
Using the map as a map is impossible. Draggability is non-existent. You cannot navigate the map except through a amount number of menu surfing. You cannot simply drag the map around with your fingertip and preview parts of the map or look at parts of the map other than what the device thinks you should be looking at. Now, if you actually do browse it, you cannot do it while driving at all. The process is so complex and difficult, and the slow map rendering is so time-consuming, that if you try to look at the map as if it were an actual map, you will get into an accident. (See below.) You must be parked to do it. You cannot be at a stop light because the map rendering is so slow that it's simply impossible to browse a map in that kind of time.
Basically, the software on the TomTom XXL 540S is just garbage.
Now, form factor. What kind of moron would draw the map horizontally and give you lots of information about what is on your left and right when you're obviously driving forwards, and need information about what is in front of you? The unit is in landscape mode when GPS units really need to be in portrait mode. This is a really basic thing that I have a hard time understanding how the presumably intelligent engineers at TomTom could possibly miss. Nobody drives sideways, so why give drivers that information? Why not give them information about where they are going?
THE UGLY
Now, this is where things get really ugly. Above I described the basic facts about the unit in usage. I didn't talk about "features" because that doesn't matter. What matters is how it performs in the field, and how it really works. This is where I put all that together, and the results are UGLY.
I would have to say that the unit is simply dangerous to use. It is so horribly flawed, and so inaccurate, and so grossly incompetent in its directions, that it poses a very real hazard for anyone driving in unfamiliar territory. The combination of all of its flaws will put you in danger if you need to navigate in an area that you don't already know, which is the primary purpose of the device.
Imagine this. You are driving along in traffic, and a map inaccuracy puts you off the correct course. You're speeding along and the map starts redrawing. You pass a turn, and the unit starts redrawing a new route because you should have turned there. After this goes on for a bit, you're finally on a real milk run that will get you to your destination, albeit quite later than you had anticipated. The unit tells you all of a sudden that you must keep left across 4 lanes of traffic, and the turn is only a couple hundred meters away and you're driving at 60 km/h. Do you wrecklessly swerve across the road to make the turn, or do you miss it and hope for a new milk run? That's on of the many dilemmas that you will be confronted with on a regular basis. It only gets worse from there.
The combination of bad directions, slow drawing speeds, constant route corrections, and inaccurate maps simply leads to bad situations where you really do need the patience of Job, otherwise, you'll end up in an accident.
SUMMARY
The TomTom XXL 540S is complete garbage, and dangerous garbage at that. It's a primitive piece of junk that would have been impressive 20 years ago. I cannot possibly express just how much I hate using it, because I know that it will cause me pain each and every time.
DISCLAIMER - I'VE BEEN SPOILED
Now, I'm probably horribly bigotted against the unit as I have been spoiled by absolutely superb GPS units in Korea. The state of GPS technology there is far above the TomTom. It's akin to the TomTom being a worn out pair of sandals, and Korean GPS units being intergalactic star cruisers. It's that extreme. The TomTom just seems completely primative in comparison.
I primarily used ALMap in Korea on my old HP PDA, and it worked beautifully. I never got lost, and I never took wrong turns. I could navigate in the map by dragging it with my finger. I could see where I was going easily without compromising the quality of my driving skills. It required zero effort to use. The directions and speech were always useful. It drew maps quickly and accurately. Its drawing speed is probably about 5% as long as the TomTom, i.e. the TomTom takes 20x longer to draw.
I really wish that GPS units outside of Korea were even a quarter as good as the ones in Korea.
OTHER REVIEWS
I read a PC World review, and it's obvious that they never actually used the unit. They looked at "specs" on paper and that was it. The review is entirely uninformative. I read some other reviews as well, and they were all the same drivel about "features", with the same lack of actual use information. I really wish that I knew some responsible reviewers out there. Tom's Hardware has always been good from my experience, but they're more about computers than consumer electronics. I don't know of any responsible review sites for consumer electronics. Wish I did...
Sadly,
Ryan