TomTom - One XL GPS Navigation System Review

The TomTom ONE XL is easy to use, easy to see, and easy to hear, but lacks a lot of features that make a GPS truly useful.  If this is your first GPS unit and you use it primarily to go from one address to another, you'll probably be happy.  But if you've ever used a Garmin unit, you'll quickly learn where the TomTom falls short.

Some of the nice features of the TomTom include an easy-to-use touch-screen interface, easy to see screen, and clear directions.  It's lightweight and much thinner than many Garmin and Magellen units.  The widescreen format looks neat but is pretty useless -- after all, when you're driving you want to see what's ahead of you, not what's on either side of you.  The ONE XL also provides good routing, and you can have it prompt you whether you want to avoid toll roads or not each time you plan a route, which is nice.  (You can also set it to always avoid or not avoid toll roads, but it's nice to be given the choice without having to go into the settings menu.)

 Now for some of the drawbacks:

• Unlike my Garmin iQue, the TomTom does not automatically switch to night mode at dusk.  This might be because the unit does not automatically detect the current time from GPS signals like my Garmin does.
• If you decide to zoom out on the map, the ONE XL will automatically zoom back in after a few seconds.  I find this very annoying.  When driving long distances on the highway without exiting, I like to see a larger view so I can get a sense of my progress along the route.
• Although the unit comes pre-loaded with US and Canada maps and points of interest, we've found the points of interest to be limited.  On a trip to Hawaii, about 3/4 of the points we tried to find (like grocery stores, restaurants, and tourist attractions) either could not be found or were inaccurate.
• Searching for points of interest is also quite difficult.  The available categories are limited and not intuitive.  For example, there is a category for "shopping center" but who knows the name of a shopping center when you are vacationing out of town?  If you want to search by name, you can search all categories within a certain distance, but as I mentioned above, the results are very limited.  I live in the Washington DC suburbs and the unit finds no Starbucks or Wal-marts within 30 miles of my location?  I think not.
• Unlike my Garmin, which ALWAYS gives the distance before the direction (e.g. "In 2 miles, exit right"), the TomTom will occasionally give the direction before the distance.  This can be confusing when the unit says "Exit right... in two miles" just as you are passing another highway exit.
• My Garmin provides turn preview images that are very convenient.  The TomTom doesn't have this feature.
• We are also very displeased with the suction cup mount, which won't stay put on the windshield or on the dashboard mounting disk.

TomTom does say that you can download additional points of interest, including 10,000 additional retail businesses, so I am hoping that's an improvement. 

 Some other features the TomTom offers but I haven't used include an SD memory card slot and Bluetooth capabilities for real-time traffic updates.