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GPS Navigation: TomTom ONE


$300

The TomTom ONE is a reasonable GPS navigation system, considering its price (under $300). It’s “ultraportable”, it has a touch screen, and it’s easily mounted in your car. You can save addresses, determine routes based on your preferences (scenic vs freeway), choose the voice you hear, and it has most other things you’d expect from a car GPS, including a suction cup. The screen is not huge, but a decent size, and has non-glare coating for high visibility. This guy laments that the US database doesn’t come with street numbers, though it will get you where you’re going most every time (nothing’s perfect).

Reviews by PC Magazine and CNet don’t have anything bad to say about the ONE, except that it doesn’t do text-to-speech (i.e. won’t read the directions to you). However, PocketGPSWorld notes that the power button and indicator are on top of the device, and that the device doesn’t charge with the car mains. This means you have to plug the device into the cigarette lighter, and remember to turn it off manually, or it’ll run out of battery within about 2 hours. For the price, these restrictions are pretty reasonable.

TomTom also has a decent customer service department, with people who answer the phones and are knowledgeable about their product. You can use the ONE either by itself or with TomTom’s PLUS service, where you can get more features like weather and traffic, with a subscription (price unknown) and a Bluetooth-enabled phone.

One Response to “GPS Navigation: TomTom ONE”

  1. on 25 Sep 2007 at 11:58 pmDavid Jeske

    I have to disagree here. Once you use a gps unit that speaks street names you realize how critical this feature is. “turn here” tends to feel like the wrong thing to do, and has timing issues if there are several turns near eachother. I recommend the Garmin Nuvi. The low priced model (the 350) costs about $350.

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