TomTom One XL S

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• Average user rating: 4.0 stars out of 18 reviews
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• 5 stars

  returned and bought a garmin

  by ashgul on November 26, 2007

  Pros: good menu options

  Cons: inaccurate maps and navigation

  Summary: had replaced my garmin c330 with this product but did not like it due to its inaccuracies in maps and navigations. bought a gamin nuvi 250 instead and am happier. ...

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  Summary: had replaced my garmin c330 with this product but did not like it due to its inaccuracies in maps and navigations. bought a gamin nuvi 250 instead and am happier.
  
  the plus of this device is that it has a number of diff menu options to personalize the operation of the device as per ones liking. for instance you can choose the option for the device to ask the mode of route selection prior to planning each trip, which is good as one does not have to go to the setup to choose the shortest/fastest routes. the alternate route icon in the menu is another good feature. but i found that its maps are not very accurate and that it failed to identify destinations accurately though it located them in the near vicinity. for instace it located our house to be approx 500 m at a left turn from the main approach street whereas the acctual location of our house is approx 500 m on a right turn from the main approach street which could be frustating when locating an address. this was not just an isolated instace but it failed to locate my work place acuurately too. my office is located in the building which is around 500 m from a major intersection but the device located it to be approx 500 m before the intersection. (has some problem placing the coordinates 500 m to the correct side i presume or the device had a personal dislike for me). but certain other adresses where located very accurately. had called the customer sevice with this and other issues but i was told that the gps device is just a navigation tool and is not meant to be 'relied upon'. another inaccuracy - device navigated us to take an exit left on a highway when the only exit at that point was on the right thougt it navigated correctly beyond that exit. there is a very tedious process to end navigation prematurely as one needs to go through around 3-4 diff pages of setup/menu to find the icon to 'clear ' the selected route - not very comfortable while driving. in contrast to the tom tom one, tom tom one gls does not have the battery saving options and one cannot choose it to automatically start and shut down with the vehicle when operating it on the car adapter. one has to physically switch the unit on and off which i found annoying. the text to speech option is only available with the computer generated voice which at times is very unclear. the other clearer human voice options do not have the text to speech capability. also i felt that the device does not announce the name of the street to turn on to well enough in advance of the approaching turn so that one has to still make a judgement by guessing that turn from the distance announced which comes prior to announcing the name.
  
  so i was not really comfortable with the unit and choose to go back to garmin which in my experience is more precise and accurate though not flawless, even though is has lesser frills in the form of selectable options. i also prefer the overall appearance and clarity of garmin's maps and display.

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  14 out of 14 users found this user opinion helpful.

• 10 stars

  Works Great.

  by MacGyverDXS on December 12, 2007

  Pros: Easy to use, voice nav is great, nice wide screen.

  Cons: Menus take a little while to get used to.

  Summary: Bought one of these for $299.00 last weekend, and I love it. It seems spot on with directions, locating most places I've taken it to within 50ft or ...

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  Summary: Bought one of these for $299.00 last weekend, and I love it. It seems spot on with directions, locating most places I've taken it to within 50ft or less of the actual building. The menu structure takes some getting used to, but soon becomes second nature. I love the voice warnings about upcoming school zones as it reminds me to slow down and watch out for kids.

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  6 out of 6 users found this user opinion helpful.

• 9 stars

  Spectacular, very intuitive, excellent function, so easy to use no need to download an owner's man.

  by biodiesel76 on December 14, 2007

  Pros: Ease of use, user interface, excellent graphics, maps, and POIs

  Cons: No QWERTY key layout (not on Garmin, Magellan, or Navigon either, only Mio has it of those I looked at)

  Summary: I have had it a few days and love it. I have an outstabnding Honda Nav in the Odyssey for comparison and the TomTom is very close to it, in ...

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  Summary: I have had it a few days and love it. I have an outstabnding Honda Nav in the Odyssey for comparison and the TomTom is very close to it, in some ways better. It acquires the GPS signal within seconds, is very accurate, when I test it by making a wrong turn on purpose.
  My street (18 years old) IS IN the TomTom system. This same street is in an "unverified area" in the Honda system.
  I tested Garmin, Magellan, and Mio at Best Buy and only Tom Tom had my local Caribou Coffee in the POI in small town Ohio. None could find Target in the POI. I initially bought the Mio based on the $179 price and it could not find Wal Mart (may have been my fault as Tom Tom finds Wal Mart but not Walmart and I did not try Wal Mart in the Mio). The Mio found the nearest Kroger 100 miles away in Wheeling, WV and skipped the two krogers less than 5 miles away. Based on that alone, I immediately returned it to BB. Needless to say, the Tom tom One XL.S has nearly all the POIs I have searched, has accurate maps and fast recalculations. Best buy has it on sale for $299 through 12/15/07 and I found a $100 rebate online from TomTom through 12/31. IMO there is no better GPS on the planet for $199, and even at full price it is an outstanding value. It is important to test these things in the store before buying to find important POIs and functions to compare them. Additionally, local navigating in well known areas is the best test for re routing and accuracy. I will have no idea about best or smartest routes when I go to unknown cities, but in my part of the world, testing this One XL.S shows has all the right moves and accurate information. It is as good as the Honda GPS which is a very high compliment. Had it listed my local Target in the POI I would have given it a 10.

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  3 out of 3 users found this user opinion helpful.

• 10 stars

  Great unit for the price.

  by Les_And on August 24, 2008

  Pros: Fully loaded out of the box. Can be updated daily off Tomtom's website and can map share to rectify simple errors. Found the unit to be accurate in 99% of the time. Fully operational right out of the box.

  Cons: Mounting suction cup needs a perfectly flat and dimple free surface. As a portable unit, the 2 hr. life span of the battery can be a drawback.

  Summary: All in all, the Tomtom One XL.S is the best unit in this price range we have tried and owned to this date. I would however, recommend that the ...

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  Summary: All in all, the Tomtom One XL.S is the best unit in this price range we have tried and owned to this date. I would however, recommend that the user get the free updates almost weekly off Tomtom?s website if you do any extended traveling. The map share feature is a valuable update bonus when traveling through locations where major road construction is a problem and an alternate route is easily available and can eliminate hours of sitting and waiting.
  
  The new anti glare screen is a God send when the unit is in full sun light. We did though, make a black - construction paper hood for cases where we felt the unit could possibly over-heat from being in the full sun for extended periods of time. Most failures of all GPS units are caused by being in the direct sun while on a dashboard and overheating; even with the air conditioning running.
  
  Over all, after owning an expensive Garmin for two years, I would highly recommend the Tomtom One XL-S for an easy to use unit that fills the needs of probably 70% of all road and street travelers. Beware however, shop around for these units as they can vary in price by almost $200.00 because they are gaining in popularity very quickly. I got mine for $220.00 on July 10/08.

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  2 out of 2 users found this user opinion helpful.

• 8 stars

  Great System - Easy to use

  by rickfletcher-cak on December 21, 2007

  Pros: Text to speech, great interface, map sharing, wide screen, integrates nice with Google Maps

  Cons: blue tooth - but no calling and I'm not sure it works with SPRINT (but that is no surprise), Spint barely works with Spint.

  Summary: I put myself through the paces with researching and it came down to the Garmin NUVI or the Tom Tom. I couldn't be happier with the purchase. Nice, clear, ...

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  Summary: I put myself through the paces with researching and it came down to the Garmin NUVI or the Tom Tom. I couldn't be happier with the purchase. Nice, clear, accurate directions. The Text to Speech feature is essential, because no matter how big the screen they are all difficult to see, but the large screen is nice for navigating the controls. The TTS provides the direction with name of street, highway, or exit to take and is a big help especially when they can be so inter-twined these days. Multiple repeats on instructions, you can change the keyboard layout to abc...qwerty, or another format. It does a great job. I like the map sharing features, I was able to add in a Taco Bell that was just opened two weeks ago, now everyone gets it with a tom tom without waiting for a yearly update on points of interest. I saw some other comments about retailers not being in the system Tom Tom has free downloads of Top US Retailers (Best Buy US,Best Buy Canada,
  BJ's Wholesale,Brookstone,Circuit City,
  Costco,Fry's,Future Shops,Office Depot,Office Max,Pep Boys,Radio Shack,Sam's Club,Sharper Image,Staples,Target,Tweeter,Wal-Mart and other specifics like Duncan
  Donuts, Baskin Robins, so I am not sure why people would say anything negative about the point of interest information. Maybe it is quicker to criticize than to check the website.
  
  Nice solid unit, I am really impressed. As with most things, the more you spend... the more you get and tomorrow they will come out with something better.

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  2 out of 2 users found this user opinion helpful.

• 8 stars

  Excellent User Interface and Nice Screen

  by jdbigham on December 24, 2007

  Pros: Turn by turn directions with street names. Excellent wide screen. Easy user interface.

  Cons: Included mount is terrible. However, bought one off of Ebay for $15 that works excellent.

  Summary: Overall, excellent product. It is very easy to use and has come in handy on several of our trips for things like finding hotels and restaurants on the fly.

  Summary: Overall, excellent product. It is very easy to use and has come in handy on several of our trips for things like finding hotels and restaurants on the fly.

  1 out of 2 users found this user opinion helpful.

• 8 stars

  Very Good GPS, Solid Performance

  by jclopton on August 15, 2008

  Pros: Good size (slim), fast connection, nice grafics

  Cons: POI, Timing

  Summary: I bought this for my week trip to Los Angeles and it save me a lot of time and frustrations. It does great with the routes and connection to signal ...

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  Summary: I bought this for my week trip to Los Angeles and it save me a lot of time and frustrations. It does great with the routes and connection to signal was pretty fast, compare few Garmins I tested. My only complaints are below:
  
  1) POI - It's a pain to locate a POI, a lot of menus to go through. Plus it's doesn't have as much as Garmins and Logos would be nice.
  
  2) Timing - Missed a few turns/exits due to announcement lags and it sometimes do not give you enough notice of a turn or exit.
  
  3) Battery - It doesn't last long and it seems to never get fully charged. Whenever I unhook the power cord and use the battery, no matter how long it's been charging, the battery meter never reaches 100%, it showed around 90%. Plus when I use it unplugged, so I could charge my Garmin, the battery last between 1 hr to 1.5 hr max.
  
  I really like the functionality of the unit and the TTS - even though it was funny listening to some of the pronunctiation of words, it did well getting me from Point A to B. I wish POI was better like Garmins and Menus were a little better.

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• 9 stars

  Great bang for the buck!!

  by sgring on July 25, 2008

  Pros: big screen, clear text to speech, Mapshare -Even the wife can use it, (no offense to the wives)

  Cons: short battery life

  Summary: Originally purchased a cheaper TOMTOM (w/o speech and smaller screen)took the restocking fee hit and purchased this one. Did some major driving this summer- directions were right on ...

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  Summary: Originally purchased a cheaper TOMTOM (w/o speech and smaller screen)took the restocking fee hit and purchased this one. Did some major driving this summer- directions were right on and the unit was very easy to use. Huge fan of the text to speech. Bought it new for apprx $250 at Best Buy after they price matched Walmart (who never had it in stock). From now on- when I go on trips- "I wont leave home without it"..Well done TOMTOM

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• 8 stars

  Ex-Garmin fan impressed by TomTom

  by Chronicritic on July 22, 2008

  Pros: Mapshare keeps everything current
  
  Easy Map and POI corrections
  
  Customizable Routing
  
  Custom voices (daughter love sthe Yoda voice)
  
  TomTom HOME software
  
  POI symbols displayed during travel
  
  Unit very user cusomizable

  Cons: Poor battery life
  
  Screen is a bit slow
  
  Speed readout lags
  
  Screen isn't as "pretty" as Garmin's
  
  POIs show up in middle of the road
  
  Side of road for destination is not identified
  
  Interface is not as simple or intuitive as Garmin's

  Summary: I've had the Garmin Streetpilot 330 and 530 and just bought the Nuvi 260 because I wanted smaller (pocketable) size and Tex-to-Speech capabilities. I found a lot of POIs ...

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  Summary: I've had the Garmin Streetpilot 330 and 530 and just bought the Nuvi 260 because I wanted smaller (pocketable) size and Tex-to-Speech capabilities. I found a lot of POIs missing or in the wrong places on the Garmin unit. In fact, some of them got "relocated" into wrong locations with the latest map (2009) over the older one (2008). In my immediate area, I found four bad locations and two missing POIs. That caused some concern for me as I figured that if it was THAT bad in my rather populous area, how bad would it be in rural places? About POIs, I think many of them were quite unnecessary because they were HOME BUSINESSES. These POIs could have been better used for swimming pools or such instead. One of the things which boggled me is that an entire HUGE shopping center was NOT included in the POI database nor was many of the electronic stores which sold the Garmin units. I found a superb swimming pool on line but that wasn't in the POI database either! The PARK where the swimming pool was located was though.
  
  Ok, that's one major difference between TomTom and Garmin. The other is the ROUTING. I've found the routing to be more sensible on the TomTom than the Garmin in the vast majority of tests I've conducted. But, if the TomTom does decide to route me though the center of Houston, like the Garmin always does, I can just omit that part of the route and it'll re-route me AROUND Houston. With the Garmin, I have to insert a via point to do that and I only have one of those to use. So far, I much prefer the TomTom's routing and it's ability to customize the route so easily.
  
  I hear that the Garmin maps are more accurate but I haven't found that to be the case so far. In fact, thanks to MapShare, I've found the opposite to be true. This MapShare is very useful and it's free for a year after purchase. I spoke to a TomTom tech person and he told me that TomTom is considering making this free from now on. I encourage them to do so as this is a HUGE selling feature. All I have to do is easily correct an error when I find it or add a POI right there on the unit. If I want to share these corrections, I mark them as such. When I get home and plug the unit into the computer, TomTom HOME automatically runs and detects what's on the unit. If it sees that I need map updates, it sends them. If it sees that I've made some corrections on the unit that are marked to share, it gets them. Neat!
  
  My only gripe about this unit is that it doesn't announce which side of the road that your destination will be on. That's handy since you can be in the correct lane before you get there. Garmin does this on the 260 but only if the destination is on the LEFT side of the road. But, the Garmin doesn't show you the POIs that are along the route as you're traveling like the TomTom does and I really like seeing what gas stations restaurants are ahead while going down the road. In many cases, the POIs are represented by actual logos like the Shell gas logo or the Chevron logo instead of the generic gas pump. The same goes for the restaurants and stores. You can actually see the Golden Arches or the Target logo. That's way cool.
  
  Then, there are the custom voices. You can get some like Burt Reynolds or Mr. T or Darth Vader and, my daughter's favorite, Yoda. This is fun stuff to play with and I love gadgetry. The Nuvi 260 has text-to-speech too but there are a limited amount of voices available for it. I've found that the Nuvi isn't as clear when using the TTS as the TomTom although I like the way it announces the instructions better. I have to turn the Nuvi way up to hear it over the wind and road noise and it gets rather fuzzy with the TTS voice whereas the TomTom remains a bit clearer.
  
  Bottom line is that I feel that TomTom works as well, if not better, than Garmin BUT the Garmin is far easier to use for those who aren't electronically inclined. There's just so much you can do with the TomTom that the menus and sheer number of options can be rather intimidating.
  
  I've decided that the Garmin Nuvi 260 is going back to the store even though I'll lose about $30 and I'm keeping the TomTom XL-S.

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• 5 stars

  Score could have been higher, but more needs to be added

  by LinuxRules on June 25, 2008

  Pros: Software for Mac, easy to use

  Cons: No support for linux, does not show many lakes, rivers, streams, I mean nothing, Do not drive into them by accident. 3D is not 3D.

  Summary: I would have given a higher score but there is some stuff that ticked me off and expected more of it, than it gave.
  
  Text to speech is a defiant
  
  ...

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  Summary: I would have given a higher score but there is some stuff that ticked me off and expected more of it, than it gave.
  
  Text to speech is a defiant plus, but what is the point of all the different voices if the one computer voice is the only one that reads the text to speech? A waste of memory space.
  
  Come on TomTom, you made the unit with linux, why not the support for linux?
  
  Lakes, rivers, and streams are major landmarks and should be included. And the bridges you travel on are also not included either, because the is no rivers displayed. They do not show up at all, nothing. What is the point of providing pedestrian or bike routes if there are no view of streams on the maps? Will it direct me to ride or walk on water? Plus the fact every time I go over a body of water, I want to know what the name is. Is it not a stream a POI? And TomTom owns a major mapping company.
  
  The RDS-TMC antenna should be provided with the unit or at very least should be provided with traffic subscription. From what I understand, the traffic data should be totally free from the start. TomTom nor any other gps companies own the data and it is public data anyway. It is a rip off, a raping of the customers to cough up more money. A hundred thirty dollars for an antenna, in top of a $300-500 unit? Stop the raping.
  
  I am getting tired of the so called "3D" mapping the American gps units pretend to show us. It is not 3D it is only 2D and 2D in perspective mode. You are shown a very flat plane, traveling in x and y axis only, there is no z axis. Another lying selling point. In 3D, I want to see contours of the altitudes I traveled or will travel, or see actual bridges and buildings and mountains.
  
  There is two instances that did not make sense. The first it directed me to go past the destination for about .3 km and to a u-turn in middle of a block/highway and go back .3 km. There was no medium to 'go around'. That is exactly how it showed on the map route on the gps. Weird. Second time I had to head dead south for 40 km and it told me to take a left on a road I definitely should not be on and in the wrong direction, going East. I pulled over to look at the over all map to see the full path it wanted me to go, and it wanted me to circle the entire country block, round and a round. Wacked.
  
  PS Do not totally rely on google shopping to find lowest price. Cnet did a better job in finding with $50 less + free shipping during the same time period I bought mine. Damn

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