Disappointing First Effort

Not very impressed with the app as a replacement for TomTom USA. Or even as a navigation app in its own right. It can finally read addresses from contacts, but that interface is very clunky, especially if you have a lot of contacts. Favorites dont transfer over even if you log in with an account.

Most inefficient is that the downloaded maps dont work together. In most high-end navigation apps, you download regions/states you need and they are all active at once. Only need the mid-Atlantic states? Just download them. Need to add New England? Do that and plan routes between the two locations. Not so in GO. To plan a route from Philadelphia to the DC Virginia suburbs, you can’t simply download northeast (where Philadelphia is) and southeast (where Virginia is) and go. You have to download the entire USA (all 5 GB worth) because you can only use one map at a time! That is poor usability. How did that pass testing?

It offers no extras at all: no widgets (1-tap widget to go home is standard fare in these things), no Apple Watch app, no notifications, no integration with other driving/travel services, no IoT capability. From an aesthetic standpoint, it has limited (read "only two") themes and very few voices (no male English voices at all). Settings may as well be non-existent: you cant even change the order of the main menu, let alone "set" any more useful options.

At the 3-year rate, the subscription costs the same as I was paying for traffic in TomTom USA, so I have no arguments there. Still, this needs major additions to be a suitable substitute for the original TomTom apps or even Apple Maps. I’ll give it a few more versions before I give up.

iByron about TomTom GO: Navigation, Maps, v1.2