Tomtom Go Live 1000 Europe GPS sat-nav device

The Tomtom Go Live 1000 is a little old now – it was released back in autumn 2010 – but when it came out it was missing a few of Tomtom's most important online features, some of which have now been added.

The device itself looked and felt great. It's a little smaller and slimmer than its predecessors and has a ‘capacitative' touchscreen, replacing the ‘resistive' screens of earlier models.

It's often found on modern smartphones, though it's yet to make its way into many sat-navs. The main difference is that the screen now has a hard glass coating, making it less susceptible to damage. It's also a little easier to press the buttons, and allows users to zoom in and out of maps by making pinching motions with two fingers on the screen.

The 4.3in widescreen display was clear and bright and showed off Tomtom's familiar map design and colours. For updates it connects to a PC using the supplied USB cable.

In theory the new model is faster – it has a more powerful processor – but it wasn't noticeably quicker in use. Tomtom's recent models have all been quick to calculate and recalculate routes (when you take a wrong turn) and this one was no exception.

Driving directions were provided quickly and simply, and the quality of the recorded voices was good. However, the Go 1000 cannot download new voices, one of Tomtom's more entertaining features.

Tomtom only said the feature would appear 'soon'. Other features missing at release have been reinstated, such as the ‘latest map guarantee', which gives everyone the most recent map regardless of when they buy the device.

However, new maps, Map Share (which adds in corrections by other users) and backup are still not available to users of this ‘high-end' navigator.

The Tomtom Go Live 1000 worked well as a navigator – the guidance for which lane to be in and the read-aloud road names are particularly useful. It can work as a hands-free phone speaker and the HD Traffic service, for quicker traffic updates, worked well.

But it's a shame that this expensive product is missing so many of the features that owners of Tomtom's cheaper navigators can take for granted.

A cheaper version (£250) has only UK and Irish maps, and both are available at £40 or £50 discounts online, but this is still an expensive product for its omissions.