If you are like me, you have read the GPS reviews. Again if you are like me, the reviews offered little help. For every article touting Garmin, there are just as many for TomTom. I had the opportunity to compare a friend's Garmin with the TomTom I had recently purchased. Here are my observations.

The first thing I notice is the Garmin is simple and intuitive. Logic instructions and prompts guide you through the menus. The Garmin turns on automatically if it is plugged into your car's power outlet. A very convenient feature assuming you are not concern with leaving your GPS visible (GPS units are commonly attributed to vehicle break-in). When providing directions, the Garmin indicates which side of the street the destination is on. Also the Garmin categorizes restaurants into ethnic groups (i.e. Asia, French, American, etc) and provides phone numbers for many Points of Interest (POI). Speaking of POI's, many third party Internet sites offer additional POI's files you can add your GPS. Most of these files are in the Garmin format.

For some inexplicable reason, Garmin also indicates cemeteries. I never knew there were so many along a route I had been traveling for years! If you want to know where the cemeteries are, this is the unit for you.

With all this, why did I choose the TomTom? The ability to customize routes is one of TomTom's greatest strengths. While the Garmin menu is simple and intuitive, you are locked into limited route variability. With the TomTom I can modify any part of the route. This becomes important when you want to avoid a difficult turn onto a busy highway. Also, the TomTom maps appear more accurate. For instance, the Garmin did not recognize jug-handle turns (a side road for making left turns on a divided highway). The TomTom always identified jug-handle turns in the drive instructions. Providing me with which side of the street the destination is on, as the Garmin will do, is of little use if I can't get to it. In rural areas, the TomTom clearly identified minor unpaved roads. The Garmin only showed a blank spot (almost like one of the old world maps you may see in a museum, where a part of the earth is blank and labeled "Dragons be here").

The text to speech is better in the TomTom as well. The Garmin indicated that I should turn onto the "Penna" Turnpike. The TomTom correctly stated it as the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Also, the Garmin announces roads as "Route One-Two-Three" or "Route seven five" while the TomTom would state "Route One hundred and twenty-three" or "'Route seventy-five".

In the end, you will need to consider what is important to you. Hopefully, I have provided some insight and help with your selection.

As a driver I use my TomTom XLS alot. My workday was about looking for street names, looking for adress, in snow (I live Montreal Canada) and we had alot 350cm that winter. It was really stressfull when I was going to work on bad weather. People that order pizza sometime don't realize what it is. You drive in rain/snow, and you have to bring the precious food to a adress that sometime is mispell or wrong, you can't see the adress well. All kind of problems like have to recharge everytime my spotlight to see adress. It is all over, and my job that I was thinking to quit is now a charm and I want to work longer since I have my XLS. It is so fun, people pay me to have fun plaing with my GPS Tomtom XLS, unbelivable!

It is so great, where ever they make me deliver it is delivering faster now. Let me give you a exemple: I have 5 orders to deliver, without a GPS I have to find the closest street on the map. With a XLS you can make those place as Point of interest, and it will give you the distance from where you are, no more detour. Cause the knowledge of the XLS system is woulderfull, it know (no map can tell you this) exactly on the street where you have to go. Street are long, sometime chopped into 5 parts. One way, all this he manage it for me. He drive me exactly in front of the house. All this resolve. I can even drive faster cause I know where I go, don't need to slow down, stop, go outside my car to try to see if it is the right adress. There was a terrible saturday 2 weekends ago with blizzard and heavy snow, so heavy that we close the restaurant. Everyone where unhappy, except me, I was asking for more lol. Street name where covered by snow, my tom know where I am, he know what street. Adress where hard to see I get it on the spot.

I have alot of fun on many GPS forum on the web too, my GPS is a new hobby. I have Darth Vader and Yoda telling me directions. I place a nice eagle on opening and Lucky Luck on shoot off.

When there is mistakes on map I can correct them and receive other corrections over mapshare. When I drive over the limit on highway it horn at me, saving on tickets. I am planing a big trip this summer, and I create a itinarary on the XLS with the fonctions. It is full load of functions, and the price is excellent.

Bon voyage.

I have never had a GPS Navigation System before. As a matter of fact, I don't think I have ever been in a car with one (built-in or portable). But, since my birthday was coming up and I could not think of anything I needed, I told my wife she could buy me this new toy. I did the research and decided the TOMTOM ONE XL-S was the best one for the price (I paid $299 with no shipping or sales tax). As most people indicate, it worked right out of the box. The software updates were easy to install through the TOMTOM "Home" web site. It is very easy to figure out on your own, but you can also print out the 69 page manual from the web site. I have only had it a few days, but my new toy seems to work great.

I did know I would have a problem with my windshield being too far away from me to reach the TOMTOM, so I also purchased the Bracketron beanbag dash mount. It works great. It does not move and it places the TOMTOM within easy reach. Also, you can just pick up the dash mount, with the TOMTOM attached, to move it all out of view (like in a parking lot) or move it to another vehicle.

I am a Garmin and iPhone owner and have had the XL-S for a month. Here are my observations:

The bottom line: for my needs, dramatically inaccurate arrival times is a deal killer; the user interface screams completely uninspired effort; overall the TomTom XL-S is still pretty darn useful, but sadly demonstrates only incremental improvements over my 5-year-old GPS unit.

Pros:

Hardware

-the case is very sturdy and has a satisfying feel

-the screen is always readable, variable backlighting is terrific

-auto-shutoff when power is disconnected option is great

-mini-USB for power is nice to see

-time to lock into satellites is awesome (10-15 seconds)

Rendering

-rendering speed is impressively fast and responsive

-configurable color schemes are wonderful

-the combination of color scheme and backlight levels in day/night modes is great

Menus

-touch-response is instantaneous and surprisingly fast

-no missed touches ever

-entering data is very easy, virtual keyboard is decent size

-searches (i.e. for POI's) are very fast

-the shear number of options in preferences is impressive

Routing

-time to plot routes very fast

-no complaints on routes it chose (ran it side-by-side with the Garmin for a month)

Host Software

-backup feature is very nice

Cons:

Hardware

-why is it so large and odd shaped? It is very light, so you know there is a lot of air inside

-what gives with the SD slot? it cannot be used to expand internal memory, only replace it

-why must I dig around to change between night/day mode? The unit knows time, date, lat/long therefore it should know the precise time of sunrise & sunset

-the bluetooth does absolutely NOTHING with many of the phones on the market!

Routing

-why not display fastest and shortest routes and then allow me to pick?

-arrival time -- totally BROKEN. It is at best 15% pessimistic and on average 25-30% pessimistic*!!!

(*over several dozen trips, distances several miles to over 75 miles -- wrong every single time)

-it actually told me on a 55 mph section of country road with no intersections that it would take 5 minutes to arrive from 1.0 miles away! (that's 12 mph folks!)

Rendering

-in 2D mode there is no auto-scaling! Honestly, on the interstate how useful is a 2-block-long straight line wavering for 3 hours?

Menus

-fast POI searches is super-great -- wimpy, short list of POI's very NOT great

-I knew POI's where lacking, but figured I'd just load a bunch up -- wrong

-why must I tap dozens of times to navigate to a function?!

Host software

-the computer voice for spoken names completely and irrevocably failed after 1st sync

-the Macintosh version of the software breaks all of the interface rules, it is poorly designed & implemented

-the host software insisted that I install a rev that clearly pre-dated what was already installed

-have no idea whether MapShare is working or not -- no indication on software or TomTom

Summary

I've spent some time playing with the Garmin Nuvi 660 as well. The big picture: the current crop of GPS products is terribly disappointing. Considering that the TomTom is essentially 3rd generation and Garmin is 5th (or so), one would expect these devices to be sophisticated and fairly refined. This is far from the case. This is not to say the all of these offerings are useless -- I'm still a big advocate for GPS navigation, it's so very helpful and convenient.

Each manufacturer has performed some wonderful engineering (software and hardware), but if you look at what has evolved over the past decade or so the interfaces have changed very little. With the relatively recent explosion of competition one would expect aggressive advances in these products. Sure the SiRF Star chipsets are phenomenal, the screens are bigger and brighter, the CPU's are more powerful, and there is tons of RAM -- but these are all gimme's from their hardware suppliers.

For example, as a software engineer, I know that I could sit down and write an algorithm to calculate sunrise/sunset (forecasted into the next century) in a weekend. Is it really too much effort to ask for the day and night mode to switch automatically? Also, why must I pound on the screen navigating through endless menus like I'm using a cell phone from the 90"s? There is not a SINGLE function on the iPhone that is more than 3 taps from the top level (95% are 2 or less) -- impressive.

Having carefully weighed and compared the Tomtom ONE XL-S and the Garmin 650, I settled on the Tomtom. I paid about $268 for the unit. Prior to its arrival, I had a bit of buyers remorse thinking that perhaps I should have gone with the Garmin 650, because I found more reasonably priced units at Costco. Additionally, I was told by various sales people that that the Garmin was more user friendly, and it was the best selling - blah, blah. Having actually used and played with the Tomtom for about a month now, I am very happy with its ability to take me anywhere I need to go. For me, it never takes more than a moment or two, to acquire satellites (if not immediately), the user interface is straight forward and user friendly. It has lots of points of interest, and I enjoy adding my own in the Favorites list. One caveat, the full manual is online, and one has to play with the unit to figure it out, as the "to how" literature is sparse. Having said that, it's easy to figure out and use.

There are a variety of reasons I chose the XLS over other GPS devices, these include the wider screen, which I think is necessary to freely type in addresses, as well as see a larger view of the map, and I really wanted the text to speech option, which the Tomtom XL doesn't have. In comparison to the Garmin 650, the XLS was cheaper, and didn't have the unnecessary picture viewer or MP3 player. One important factor for me was that the XLS has tons of way points that can be included to plan a route for traveling, while the 650 has only one! Drawbacks to the XLS include a short battery life, but I don't need it because its plugged into the car. The attachment base is decent, instead of attaching it to the front windshield, I highly, highly, recommend using the "Nav-Mat Portable GPS Dash Mount" - it's absolutely brilliant. I paid about $20 including shipping, and it's quality, and it does precisely what it's suppose to do. Other things of note include the following: the cord plugs directly into the XLS, while the Garmin 650 cord plugs into the base; the XLS while plugged into the computer through the USB cord (included) will reenergise the battery, however, I personally opted to purchase the Tomtom wall plug in cord - its just easier; password protection requires that you go through Tomtom "Home" the company's software that requires downloading - which was a nuisance; upgrading the unit to the latest software version (Windoze) wasn't an issue as another reviewer had suggested; I can see the screen in direct sunlight - and it looks good; the unit has (if I recall correctly) 1 Gig of memory, which is mostly filled with the North Am. maps - one can purchase extra memory cards if necessary; finally the unit has the option of shutting down when the vehicle is turned off just like the 650. Overall, I am exceptionally please that I bought the Tomtom XLS. I hope this helps in your hunt. Cheers.

I really like this unit. I got one for Christmas, and I enjoy it so much I purchased another one for my wife. I had done tremendous research on this product and its competitor's prior to the purchase and was wavering between the Garmin Nuvi 350 and this one. Luckily, a friend of mine purchased the exact Nuvi was was considering prior to my purchase, and he let me borrow it for a long road trip (800 mi each way). So I got a lot of use out of it to base my decision on. What I'd really like to see is a combination between these two units. Overall though, I feel like the TomTom One XL-S was the right decision for me.

Pros: Text-to-Speech works really well. It finds its location significantly faster than the Garmin Nuvi does. The menus are easier, it has a much better display than the Nuvi in my opinion. It seems to show more detailed entrance / exits from highways, the image seems a bit crisper (although this is a minor difference), but most of all, if a route is planned it still shows information like current speed. The Nuvi does not show the map and speed if a route is programmed. If you want to see your speed on the Nuvi with a route programmed in, then you must switch to an alternate view but you lose the map. I think the menu options are a bit more user friendly in the TomTom. I also had, as have everyone I know with a Nuvi, multiple problems with the suction cup coming off. The TomTom suction cup has been rock solid since I put it up. So that is obviously a much better design.

Cons: The one huge feature the Nuvi 350 has over this unit that I would really like is detailed trip information. For example, the Nuvi will calculate your total stopped time, total trip time, avg moving time, max speed, etc. The TomTom does not seem to give this information which would be nice. The TomTom also allows you to download additional computer voices and such, but there is no room, so you'd have to get an SD card to supplement. The website is horrendously slow. I'm hoping that it is because they were extremely busy with people playing with their new toys after Christmas and that it will improve; however, I felt like I was back to dialup days. The TomTom Home update software app for Windows seems to be just a bit cheesy. I'm a software developer though, so perhaps I'm overly critical on it.

Overall, I would recommend this product in a flash to anyone I know. I'll be anxious to see how well maps get updated as time goes on, but so far they've been very accurate.

My husband bought this for me for Christmas, and I LOVE it! It was easy to program and very user friendly. I'm the typical female; don't know north, south, east and west when I get out of my comfort zone. The TomTom very clearly announces that I should turn "left" or "right" (none of the east/west stuff, yea!) I especially like that it shows on the screen the name of the upcoming road. Much easier to read than the actual road sign in our rural areas.

I have this and used side by side with a Garmin 200 W for several weeks before returning the Garmin. Overall this is a good product but a few annoying bugs keep it from being great...here are the pros and cons

Pros

It finds the satellites quickly and keeps the signal. The garmin took 2-3 minutes almost every time from a power up start (this was the deal killer)

The user interface is nicer and has a lot more options than the garmin.

The POI database (such as the POI categories it actually has - it is missing several major US retail chains - see below) is more up to date than the Garmin I bought at same time.

Allows you to set the keyboard to QWERTY mode which the Garmin did not.

cons

The graphics are a bit grainy compared to the garmin

The bluetooth is useless, works only for data transmission/reception and that too with very limited number of phones. No, you cannot use it as a handsfree.

If you take a wrong turn or pass by your destination or do anything to pass by your destination on a 2 lane road, it will not tell you to turn around - it will navigate you through the next set of intersections. In rural areas this can mean a 20 mile trip instead of going back 200 yards.

The text to speech works very unpredictably - it pronounces some name very nicely but mangles others horribly such that you can't recogonize it.

Also it announces street names about a quarter mile before and then simply says turn left or right when you are actually at an intersection and want the street name to turn into. This is annoying. Very annoying.

There is an SD card slot. However the unit works either exclusively with the SD card slot or with the internal memory. Which means that you have to reload everything in internal memory onto the SD card which takes about an hour because of the incredibly s-l-o-w data transfer rates.

Also the internal memory is pretty much full so forget about any upgrades unless you spring for at least a 2 GB or more SD card

Strangely, TomTom doesn't know about major US retail chains like Toys R Us, Payless Shoes etc. This even after I updated the unit with the US Retail POI database file

The color schemes available on the unit and online are completely weird. Seems to have been done by people with zero taste and sensiblity.

The internal battery is useless in cold weather (i.e. if you leave the unit in the car in winter). This after a few weeks. It either dies in a few minutes or doesn't fire up at all. Will have to see how it performs in the summer.

The brightness and contrast are so-so in daylight compared to the garmin 200 w

On a trip to one of the built-in Points of Interest (The NY Hall of Science), my Tomtom XL-S told me to go in the wrong direction through a one way loop in the front of the museum. Then it told me to connect to the highway by going through the paid parking lot at the museum. My wife was onboard with the TomTom until that happened. Now she's back to paper street maps.

So I tried to fix the maps by downloading the latest ones. The package comes with a code for a free download of the latest maps if done within 30 days of first using the unit. Guess what? The link on the coupon now directs me to download TomTom Home 2.0 in order to update the maps. The problem is, there is no Mac version of 2.0. So there are no updates for me. Why advertise about Mac compatibility and then lie about it?

One last thing. On the TomTom website, the pulldown help menu does not list the TomTom XL-S model at all.

UPDATE: Looks like you can block out streets that don't work (such as the ones in the crazy TomTom suggestion above to drive through a parking lot).

UPDATE 2: I have no idea why this unit works on some days and not others. On a recent trip to Jersey City I had 4+ satellites communicating with the GPS. All I wanted was for the device to take me home. It was completely confused and kept drawing my location wrong (such as in the river). Again, this did not impress my passengers.

Looking for a GPS with Text to Speech, the TomTom One XL-S is great. I have a TomTom 520 Go also, and I realy like the Unit telling me the street names instead of just turn ahead. Graphics on the 520 are a little better, as it knows when I turn into a parking lot, the ONE XL-S shows me in a grass field (sometimes it places me back on the street). All in all this is a real great unit for the price. Size is great, you can slip it into a pocket. There is a lot of different aftermarket mounts for the ONE XL.