London Tube Deluxe review

It's been said enough times to make it little more than a cliché, but getting around London can be a nightmare. It's even worse if you're in the rush hour, are dragging along kids or have already had a drink or two. A combination of the three doesn't even bear thinking about.

Tube Deluxe will mean you'll never again have to swim through a sea of bustling commuters to get a glimpse at the lone tube map stuck on the wall, no doubt contending against a gang of similarly-bemused travellers. It will tell you which lines to take, no matter where you're headed to. It does a bit more besides, too.

The app's home screen shows you the status of each of the London tube lines, laid out just like the status update signs littered around London's tube stations. Obviously, Tube Deluxe has to connect to the net in order to gain this info, but if you can't get a connection, it retains previously-downloaded info so won't just throw up a blank if you've recently been connected.

A nice slice of side order functionality, there's even a weekend closures info button at the bottom to tell you of any upcoming closures. Let's be honest, they happen just about every weekend.

The second tab along the bottom of the screen takes you to the tube map in its entirety. You've got a limited ability to zoom in and out of the map, but you can scroll around it at speed with a  flick of the finger. Even better is search function. Using this, you can select any station on the whole Underground, which Tube Deluxe will then clearly point out to you on the map.

It's the perfect antidote to that staring hopelessly at the tube map looking for West Acton station syndrome that most of you are probably familiar with. So, simple as it seems to use, the tube map is definitely more than a simple Jpeg.

If you've got a more complicated journey to scope out, you'll probably want the third tab's function, the journey planner. Just input the station you're travelling from and your destination and Tube Deluxe will give you two viewing options for your route. The first displays it on the standard tube map, while the latter lays it out as a linear path, and is so a little easier to assimilate. You'll have to pay more attention as to which direction you're headed though, as Tube Deluxe won't tell you whether you're headed north, south and so on in this linear view.

The key to Tube Deluxe is that the only element discussed so far that needs Internet connectivity is the initial line status check. Everything else - the tube map, the journey planer, the station locate - can be done offline, crucial for use when, yes, you're actually Underground.

Tube Deluxe also boasts a couple more tabs with some useful features. First, you can check out the departures boards for any station on the Underground. We found that these weren't always available, but this is most likely down to London Transport rather than the app. Lastly, there's a handy bit of help for those having trouble even finding their way to the tube station. The Locate tab takes your current location and tells you the stations nearest to your location, and which lines they're connected to, with an option to check out exactly where they are on Google Maps.

For its price tag, Tube Deluxe is amazingly fully-featured. We still have pipe dreams about additional features we'd like, such as offline maps to locate stations and departure boards for overground connections, but then we're perhaps just stretching the app‘s remit a bit too far. Tube Map does more than you might expect, and does it extremely well.