Road Angel Pure Sync review: excellent alerts undermined by a costly subscription

If, like me, you were hitting your motoring prime around the early 2000s, you'll doubtless have heard of Road Angel. Its speed camera detectors have saved plenty of people from getting points on their licence, and the original models still being traded online now.

But things have moved on, and Road Angel has continued to harness the latest technology in its range of dash cams, in car entertainment devices, and GPS-based alert systems.

The latest of these is the new Road Angel Pure Sync, a compact gadget that harnesses pretty much everything Road Angel has learned over the years into a small box that sits discreetly in the corner of your dashboard.

And it might just be one of the most comprehensive speed camera and hazard detection systems on the market today.

Using a GPS-based, community-fed database, the Pure Sync can alert you to fixed cameras, red-light cameras, average-speed zones, mobile enforcement locations, bus lanes, accident blackspots and changing smart motorway limits.

It can also warn when the speed limit changes, and it can work out how your speed is doing through an average speed camera system.

Through either visual alerts on the screen, or an array of customisable audible warnings, the little 2.4" display gives you everything at a glance.

It'll even change to a red background to let you know you're over the limit. And that limit is on the screen.

Essentially, it's giving you all the information you get in a modern car, including the often rather annoying mandated over speed warning, but this time it's easy to turn off, or at the very least incredibly subtle and genuinely useful.

Only it takes things a huge leap further forward by drawing on Road Angel's vast knowledge base of the road network's many speed cameras and it intelligently watches your back, letting you know of any spots you need to be careful in.

It can even, and this is where it gets really clever, alert you to temporary cameras in police vans, and this is done through a community reporting system. If you see one, press a button on the unit and it'll warn anyone else coming that way.

Granted, Waze, TomTom and some other systems do this, but Road Angel's database is about as good as it gets.

The cost of having all this tech in your eyeline? £59.99, if you catch an introductory half-price offer that's on right now. And it makes it sound incredibly appealing.

So it's a must-have motoring gadget then? Not quite. There are a few catches. Let's get the big one out of the way first.

Yes, you can get it for £59.99, but you have to pay a subscription fee to make literally any function work, even a live speedometer.

That subscription costs £9.99 per month, or you can pay annually for £99.99 but it essentially means your little device actually costs at least £159.98.

After you get your head around that, it actually sounds like a fair price for such a nicely-made bit of kit with a lifetime warranty, automatic updates, and constant live cover - especially when you consider a speeding fine is around £100.

But there are other issues. It might just have been my device, but I couldn't get the connection to my phone to stabilise. It's fine for a journey, but as soon as you get out of your car and then back in to set off again, the connection dropped and I had to pair it again.

It's the sort of thing that could have been ironed out with a firmware update, but it's still annoying.

And then you get to the end of your 12 months, and you've got to subscribe again. That's if you haven't paid for the more expensive monthly plan.

And if you don't sign up, your device is basically an ornament. I let my monthly plan expire and it just sat there refusing to give me any information at all. You'd think your £119.99 gadget might at least give you a live speed indication.

In better news, the app is superb, it comes with a really long USB lead so it's a doddle to install, and it's very easy to set up and connect.

But it's a pretty expensive way to keep yourself abreast of speed limits and speed cameras. Especially when there are free apps offering a similar (albeit inferior) service through your Android Auto or Apple CarPlay screen.

That said, if you're a few points away from losing your licence, if you're a young driver and your insurance is already breaking you, or if you're just conscientious about making sure you always know the speed limits wherever you are, you might find it worth the money.

For me, it's going back in its box. And I'm going to spend the £100 on something else each year. I'll miss its simple elegance, and its sheer effectiveness, but I can't justify the price.

If you can, though, you'll absolutely love it.