Believe it or not, I’ve been working for my current employer for 20 years (yes, yes, I started when I was 12). Loyalty like that is a rarity these days (or could I just not find anything better elsewhere)? Anyway, they’ve given up on handing out watches and simply give out gift vouchers instead (although a generous amount, I should add).

I’d been thinking for a while of replacing my aging TomTom One v2 – I was attracted to the larger screens and IQ routes features on more modern versions. I thought I’d get a TomTom One XL IQ, as this covered the bases, although secretely I’d have ideally liked one of the better models. Well, these vouchers were all I needed to upgrade my aspirations! I could use my vouchers at Halfords, and as they had a sale on at the time, it sounded ideal.

After much searching of reviews and looking at specifications, I narrowed it down to the TomTom GO 540 or the 730.

The 730 is the more “up market” model, but is the not the most recent. Halfords were actually selling this cheaper than the 540.

However, the 540, or more precisely the 540 Live, had one thing that I wanted and that the 730 lacked – voice control. My new car has a very steep sloping windscreen so to secure it in its ideal position at the bottom of the screen would put it out of reach. Of course, you still have to press an on-screen button to activate the voice control but the purcahse of a bluetooth remote would eliminate the need to even do that.

Anyway, I weighed up the reviews and general pros and cons, and finally decided to go for the 540. The Live services (at £7.99 a month) are steeply priced but offer regular traffic updates, amonst other things. After now using the 540, however, I feel compelled to try and find the money each month to pay for the Live services.

The only thing left bugging me is the on/off technical support from TomTom – they’ve often responded to me quickly on most questions but when it comes to swapping over the map update services (that I’m paying for) to the new device, they haven’t responded in over a week – even when I’ve updated the support call with a prompt.