New mounts GO x40 LIVE: the review

A few weeks ago, TomTom made a surprise announcement of a mounting shoe intended to be added to a Brodit "Pro-Clip" style permanent dashboard mount, and the secondary benefit of that was there were two extra connectors... a line out for audio and a control port for an iPod mp3 player.

Finally, TomTom have released what everyone has been waiting for... a version of the standard windscreen mount that includes these connectors too. And here it is:- the "Active Dock Mount Kit with iPod support"

The idea is that, firstly, any audio from the Go itself - Navigation instructions, Warnings, POI alerts and music from the built in Jukebox (only on the 940 model), can be fed through the audio line out jack to a car audio system with an auxiliary line input.

Secondly, an iPod can be connected to the second extra socket and can then be controlled completely from the TomTom's own screen. The audio from the iPod, is routed up this connector, through the TomTom and out of the 'audio out' socket along with the rest of the TomTom sound. The connector can also be used for the old-style RDS-TMC receiver sold as an accessory for previous TomTom ranges.

In use, the iPod control is seamless, and works in exactly the same way as the built-in mp3 Player. Once the iPod cable is plugged in, it automatically chooses the iPod's tracks to display in the browser windows, although you can still access the tracks on the internal TT jukebox by going to "Music and Media" in the main menu and selecting the Jukebox. It's a shame, but it seems you cannot access both at once. I find a major problem appears here with the audio levels and TomTom's strange decision to defeat the volume control on everything except the internal speaker. Tracks from the iPod tend to be much louder then those on the internal Jukebox, and to my ears are quite distorted. Secondly, if the iPod audio is routed to the line out, FM or Bluetooth output, you can ONLY adjust the volume on the car radio. Again this can cause distortion due to mismatched levels, and if you were to plug headphones or an earpiece into the TomTom, you now have ear-splitting volumes and NO way to make it quieter. TomTom - please do something about this!

More

Anyway, I've drifted away from the mounts themselves, and wait... there's more! Also announced at the same time, is an altogether more clever mount... The snappily-named "Active Dock Traffic RDS-TMC (with iPod support) " has the same additional connectors as the simpler mount above and works in just the same way; but it also includes a completely integrated RDS-TMC 'Traffic' receiver in the mount itself.

Previous Traffic receivers for the TomTom models were stand-alone accessories and used either a connector identical to the iPod jack, or later versions used the USB/Power connection (the power supply now had to be connected to the Traffic module first, and the output of that also carried power to the TomTom itself). When the G0 x40 range was released, it was a surprise to everybody that there was no dedicated RDS-TMC connector included in the design.. but now we know why!

But hold on, I hear you ask.... The whole selling point of the x40 LIVE models is that they have a built in SIM card and connect via Vodaphone to the new, improved "HD" Traffic system. Why on Earth would we want to go back to the old system, with aerial cables draped all over the dashboard? Well... three reasons:

• Firstly, the LIVE services cost money - currently £7.99 in the UK - so if you don't want to pay that ongoing cost, or your subscription has simply run out, you can drop back to the older service straight away.

• Secondly, the HD Traffic service is only for a single country! If you go abroad, it won't work, so you need a backup system if Trafic news is still important to you on your foreign travels.

• And thirdly, the HD Service is not foolproof. If it goes down for any reason, or you simply cannot get network coverage, the RDS-TMC receiver should automatically take over.

In practice

When you first open it, the aerial cable is stowed neatly on the back of the mount's "arm" with a small suction pad, hooked over a tiny peg to keep it in place. You could be forgiven for thinking the cable stows right inside, but in fact it just wraps around an oval raised section and slides into a grooved slot. This unwinds beautifully, but is actually a bit of a fiddle to stow away again neatly. The cable is also terribly thin and can only be persuaded back into its slot with quite a bit of force using a fingernail. so far, however, it seems to be strong enough to survive unscathed.

The second thing you notice is the cable is so short compared to previous RDS-TMC aerials from TomTom. Rather than having to go half-way round the entire windscreen, this one is only 20cm long including the tiny sucker to attach it to the windscreen. This may cause problems in cars with heat-reflecting ('athermic') windscreens - the cable might be just too short to reach the clear patch of glass that is usually provided on these windscreens.

One problem though is the sucker at the end of the wire. It is tiny and not made of the same plasticy compound as the main mount, but a normal black rubber. This sucker simply did not stick to the windscreen for more than a few seconds. Unlike previous TMC aerials though, this hardly seemed to matter, I could receive a good signal with it just lying on the dash, and being so short, this doesn't get *too* untidy.

One thing I did notice is that the range of movement of the mount on the ball joint is quite a bit less then is available on the standard and 3-connector mounts. This is presumably to protect the aerial wiring which has to pass through the middle of the ball joint to get to the main unit, but I found this quite restrictive in use. There was never quite enough sideways movement to avoid reflections or sunlight dazzle, and if you wanted to use the mount with a horizontal dashboard disk, at full adjustment the screen is still tilted back at about 20-25 degrees, so there might well be reflection problems there too.

In use, the aerial works very well. Normally, the Go's LIVE HD Traffic takes priority, but simulating a problem (or being abroad) by removing the built-in SIM card from the Go allows the RDS-TMC to automatically take over. Reception is amazingly good, considering the size of the cable, better than most of TomTom's other RDS receivers, but maybe not quite as good as the latest mini-USB version.

Unfortunately, at present,the RDS does not take over if the HD Service is unavailable, only if the Vodaphone connection is lost. Hopefully that will be addressed in a future software update.