TomTom Introduced a Slew of New Hardware Today

What a huge day at IFA for my employer, TomTom. This is a strictly consumer show so a lot of what I do in Maps didn’t make it to the products in a direct way, we did introduce a lot of cool new gear. I think Pocket-lint did a good job of wrapping everything up:

  1. TomTom Touch activity tracker monitors your body fat, not just your steps
  2. TomTom Adventurer is the sports watch for your snow sports, hiking and trail running
  3. TomTom Vio is a satnav for scooters, to help you get where the funk you're going
  4. TomTom Spark 3 and Runner 3 let you explore on your runs with new route tracking feature
  5. Gamification of driving: TomTom Curfer will deliver driving stats to improve your performance
  6. TomTom Go adds Wi-Fi, smartphone notifications and Siri, Google, Cortana voice controls

The Vio looks amazing, it’s powered completely off your smartphone and is basically what we used to call a “dumb terminal” but design is great and it comes in multiple colors and it’s a great price. You can be hands-free on your scooter and why make users by an expensive device when they can just piggy back off the technology already in your pocket. Genius. I’d actually like one of these for my motorcycle if it’s waterproof and can somehow be charged on the go. Details are sparse.

The Curfer is a heads-on competitor to Automatic from what I can tell (remember, I just read the press release like you guys. I haven’t see or heard of these products before today). I just ordered an Automatic Pro so if TomTom gives us employee pricing on these, heck, I’m not even sure if the Curfer will be available in USA market but if I can get one for a discount, I’ll put it head to head against Automatic because I think these are very similar products.

The new TomTom Go is for automobile drivers, not motorcycle riders so I don’t have a lot of use for it. In fact, in my car, I have Apple CarPlay and Volkswagen’s MIB II Infotainment system which has Apple Maps so the Siri, messaging, calls and WiFi features in the new unit would be wasted on me in my car. If you have an older model w/o the smart connected features brought to you by Android Auto or Apple Car Play, I think this is a very valuable proposition. You need a SatNav and now you have all of these amazing hands-free features! I love it. If these features came to the TomTom Rider, it’d be an insta-buy for me. I have a Sena headset so I can make calls and reply to SMS using my voice but the Sena doesn’t play well with the TomTom Rider & iPhone simultaneously (a fault of Sena’s I hear). Moving all of those features to one device would be a blast.

I think the more consumer products TomTom comes out with though, the harder it is for me to review the competitors. When I review an Apple Watch, Automatic Dongle or Fitness tracker, I have to keep in mind that my salary is paid for by TomTom. Remain impartial and fair or just simply not cover competing tech at all. It’s a fine-line.

As a consumer, I think these devices are amazing. It makes me proud and happy that I’m working for a company that’s working on cutting edge technology in the consumer space and in cartography (digital map-making). It really is a great time to be at TomTom.

One thing to note, this has been bothering me for some time and if any of my readers also read http://geoawesomeness.com, the EIC over there Aleks Buczkowski is a project manager at TomTom I believe in the Poland office. His blog is great and a recommended read for any of you. When I see articles like this in my stream, it bothers me that he doesn’t disclose he works for TomTom. I think it’s a default requirement for any of us bloggers to make it abundantly clear that we work for a company we write about. I love tech and I love TomTom…I also happen to be an employee of theirs. My employer knows of his blog as they know of my blog so obviously it’s not causing us any issues.