We have found the live traffic useful in the bigger cities. Twice it has saved us from sitting at least an hr or so in blocked traffic due to its alert and mapping a detour. We find the Smartphone link to be really useful. Sometimes I find out where we want to go on my smartphone as we are looking for reviews. Once we decide where we want to go it is painless to send the location from my phone to the GPS. We rally have not used the weather application. We have used trip routing and Base Camp. It is a little different than Mapsource, but usable once we get more familiar with it.