6. TomTom Plus Traffic Information: How Well Does It Work?

Traffic information is readily and - based on driving around Los Angeles a bit with the Go 700 - fairly accurately displayed. However, all is not a bed of roses.

First, traffic information is only available for major thoroughfares, read "freeways," in Los Angeles. So, while the GPS can reroute you around a delay, if in the process it routes you off the freeway, you could find yourself in the middle of an even worse traffic mess on surface streets. In smaller cities or in rural areas this may not be a problem. However it's a real problem in Los Angeles, where major boulevards are usually as or more congested than freeways and where, without the benefit of a GPS, everyone and his sister seeks to save a few seconds by constantly rerouting from freeway lane to freeway lane and on and off the freeway.

Second, it is very dangerous to try to interact with the Go 700 and its traffic information while driving at freeway speeds. Touching the screen to tell it to update its traffic information or show you the latest traffic situation could literally mean death. Perhaps if the device accepted speech input and provided speech output, it would be safer. You can set the GPS to automatically update traffic information while on route and to automatically update your route after each traffic update. You can even set it to beep when the traffic situation changes. However, given the limited amount of traffic information available, I'm not sure I'd want the thing blindly auto-routing me around Los Angeles.

Also, remember that the Go 700 supports safer hands-free wireless phone calling using the same phone as it uses to download data. I have yet to be able to use the phone for both a call and data download. In a battle between a call and data access, the call has always won in my experience.