March 2nd, 2010 
- TomTom GPS navigation with a five-inch, full-color, TFT LCD widescreen touch display
- Preloaded maps of U.S., Canada & Mexico with TomTom Map Share, Advanced Lane Guidance and 7 Million POIs
- IQ Routes Technology gives you the fastest route every time by using actual average speeds of travel on your route to calculate your trip
- With TomTom Map Share technology, you can instantly modify street names, street direction, POIs, road speeds, and turn restrictions on your own device
- Award-winning Fold and Go EasyPort mount, folds flat against the device, making it easy for users to transport
Amazon.com Product Description
The TomTom XXL 540·S is complete navigation in a XXL widescreen device. Switch on and go right out of the box. Spoken turn-by-turn instructions including street names will guide you to any address in the US, Canada and Mexico–including more than 7 million preloaded points of interest. Complete navigation in a XXL widescreen device. Click to enlarge. EasyPort mount folds neatly onto the back of your device. Click to enlarge. Advanced Lane Guidance uses photorealistic images to bring even more clarity to complex multi-lane exits. Click to enlarge. Complete XXL Widescreen Navigation and Spoken Street Names IQ Routes
IQ Routes Technology* gives you the fastest route every time by using actual average speeds of travel on your route to calculate your trip rather than only posted speed limits, so you’ll always travel the smartest route…. More >>
TomTom XXL 540S 5-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator
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I ordered this product and after receiving it found that I had received another GPS as a gift, so I returned the one I had ordered from Amazon. The product from Amazon was terrific and would have served my purposes well. I had no trouble returning it and got a full refund, without any questions.
Amazon is a nice place to purchase items, and as usual, they take care of their customers.
Rating: 5 / 5
Amazon is amazing to work with. Items ship when they say and arrive is excellent condition. Thank you for great service.
Rating: 5 / 5
Stepping away from a Magellan due to continuous crashes and stalls, I was looking for a low cost, reliable and easy-to-use GPS. The TomTom XXL 540S excels in almost all of those, except for:
- it uses a weird language interface. It is in constant battles with English, like driving into LA and hearing “take a right towards LAZ AN HELES” (at first couple of occasions, I did not know what it was referring to) or saying “within one half mile, turn left” – meaning, in fact “within A half mile, turn left”
- the menu is cumbersome to navigate in, nothing is called what it should be called. Finding a POI enroute, for example is hidden at least three steps under “modify search”
- setting up multipoint route is way overcomplicated, they should learn from ViaMichelin or Bing Maps, where it is real simple
- the graphic interface is from the era of the Commodore64. Extremely basic, the colors and graphics are just not for the eye of a millennium product
- no real time traffic data: both Magellan and Garmin give you advise well ahead of time to avoid congestion. I spent 63 minutes in stop and go traffic on 405 when I finally decided to return the unit, as simply put, there are just better units on the market today
Rating: 2 / 5
This device works very well for the US & Canada but is very limited in its coverage of Mexico. It is is advertised as covering all of the three major North American countries and it doesn’t provide any street or town information for Tabasco, Campaeche or the Yucatan peninsula (except for – possibly – Cancun. I didn’t check coverage of that region of the eastern Yucatan. Tom Tom advertises a download for Mexico (at $69.95) that still provides no information for those southeastern Mexican states listed above. While the device is very good here at home it does me no good in the area I had hoped to tour in early next year.
Rating: 3 / 5
This is a good product, that is reliable, works as expected, and comes with good customer support. After I purchased and tried out this TomTom XXL 540S, I promptly installed and used TomTom Home to update it, and used the Map Guarantee for my free full update. All this worked exactly as expected. Once I had the device and started using it, I noticed how easy it was to operate and configure. It does a better than expected job of routing, and map accuracy is also pretty good. The Text to Speech function works pretty good, this is what gives you spoken street names, places and addresses. The voice is clear and loud (I had to turn down the volume a bit from maximum). It does fumble some odd or foreign street names.
More recently I got a notice of new maps available in TomTom Home, and attempted to purchase and update while signing up to the Map Update Service, which is an excellent value, as you get 4 more map updates during the next year, and you do get those, as TomTom releases 4 full map updates per year, every year. This is where the support comes in. During this update I was offered 1 full map update for about $12 when combined with the Map Update Service for about $52. This is for the North America Maps which include the US+Canada+Mexico. It let me purchase the full map update, but not the Map Update Service, and it would not let me download and install it. I called TomTom customer support line on a weekday about 10AM, got a customer support representative in just minutes, and when I explained my issues to him, he was ready with a solution. It involved TomTom correcting a problem with my online account so my purchase registered correctly, and manually deleting some files from TomTom Home and the TomTom device, after which the update was successful. We also figured out that this same issue was preventing QuickGPS data from updating, and that was corrected as well. Over all I spent about 40 minutes on the phone. Excellent and polite service.
I also had ordered a Magellan 4700, and this device was compared to that. After 2 software updates, no map updates, and no map updates expected for 12-18 months (as per Magellan documentation), their map guarantee is worthless. Also, in the less than 30 days I had that unit, I applied 2 software updates to correct issues with crashing, performance, satellite acquisition, and position accuracy, it still did not work correctly and I returned it.
There are some things I wish they would improve. On this 5″ unit it becomes apparent that their display is low resolution. I like the Magellan display much better. However, the Magellan is much slower to power up, and seems much less responsive. The TomTom turns on and off very quickly. And as long as QuickGPS data is current (a QuickGPS update is good for about a week), it gets a fix in less than 15 seconds. In 3D view, which is normal for navigating, you can see some color banding as the shading goes off into the distance. The TomTom is a little thicker than the Magellan, but some of that is due to the larger speaker the TomTom uses. I like the compact windshield mount, but it is a little tricky to snap on and off the device. The windshield mount has a fairly stiff swivel joint, so you need to adjust it with care using two hands or with the device detached. The joint being stiff is a good thing, as there is little flex, vibration or bounce during driving. But if you attempt to adjust it with your hand on the TomTom, you will just detach it from the mount. I believe this is intentional, so that the mount does not move when you attach or detach the device for theft or break in deterrent. The device reminds you to remove it on the shutdown screen for this reason, the reminder can be disabled. I wish they would make a more feature rich version of this device. It is their largest display, but only has the most basic features. This is equivalent to the ONE series. It does not have bluetooth, live services, or any extras except for an optional traffic receiver/power cord. I tried the traffic receiver, but coverage is spotty, and updates take too long to be really usefull. A TomTom GO Live edition with an internet connection through a bluetooth connected phone is much better, but also pricier. I got this for it’s large display, as my folks are going to be using it, and they have trouble seeing, and operating a small touch display. More room for fingers and bigger text. One last issue, this unit has 2GB of memory, and it is just enough. There is little room for extras. I have removed foreign language voices, especially the text to speech, and all extras I did not need to maintain some free space, and allow the few customizations that I installed. I installed a vehicle cursor that matched my car, and custom shutdown and startup screens. This issue is fixed on the TomTom XXL 540S World Traveler model, which has 4GB of memory, to load additional maps for more countries. This model does not have a SD card expansion slot for additional storage. I wish I could get terrain/elevation mapping, and 3D landmarks. Watch the sky above the horizon in the display, it changes from day to night. There are clouds in the sky during the day, and twinkling stars at night.
Overall I am very pleased with my purchase. The price at Amazon was good during Christmas, and free trial of Amazon Prime let me get free fast shipping on it. It meet the needs of my folks, and is easy to use for them. I have pre-programmed their most common destinations into it, and it performs well. With my familiarity of the TomTom interface and its easy operation, the mostly don’t need my help, and if they do, I can usually walk them through the menu.
Sorry that this was so long winded, but I hope this provides some useful information for your decision making. And please understand, that for the purpose I purchased it for (my folks) it works really well and I am very satisfied. The issues I bring up are from my point of view, which would be a more advanced and demanding user. I have looked at a number of Personal Navigation Devices from various manufacturers, and I think the TomTom is the easiest to use, with good maps, frequent map updates, and good customer support.
Falko
Rating: 4 / 5