Electronics TomTom ONE XL-S 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator
Rating:  -
This GPS unit seemed to fit everything that I needed: (i) it had a large screen, (ii) it spoke out turn by turn commands, including street names, and (iii) its software was available for macintoshes from the tomtom webpage. The product does all the basic GPS functions well, as do most modern units. These include 2D and 3D maps, spoken warnings for turns, and millions of points of interest. The additional "S" in this unit signifies that it has text to speech capability for road names, this comes at a $50 or so premium over the standard XL. The text to speech works well for most roads, but there are definitely times that the text to speech mangles the street name. The system phonetically pronounces the names of the roads, this can be confusing. This confusion is alleviated because I tend to only want to use this function when I am traveling in unknown areas, where I too would speak street names phonetically. I give this four stars not five, because the interface I wish were more snappy;as it is now, the animations can be choppy. I would rather the machine work smoothly than have millions of points of interest.
Rating:  -
I bought the TomTom One XL-S for the larger screen and text to speech capabilities.
I first tested a Garmin 260 text to speech model, but the screen was too small to see at windshield level.
I was very surprised at the ease of use of the Garmin and the problems with the TomTom.
Both acquire satellites and plan routes with good speed.
However the TomTom One was full of undocumented software problems, omissions, inability to find correct routes and ordinary popular chain stores such as Walmart, Sunoco, and many others.
More than 50 percent of the time the text to speech is garbled, and you have to guess the street name. The TomTom unit cannot adequately pronounce simple words such as "freeway" or "north high street", etc.
"Verrazanno bridge" was totally unintelligible, as was about 30 percent of the streets and destinations.
The brightest screen setting washes out in daylight, and is difficult to see. That is a serious problem.
The night time screen does not always switch properly to the preprogrammed brightness level.
The TomTom One XLS seems to be programmed to recognize only a very limited list of popular businesses, particularly Starbucks, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut, but it misses more than it finds.
You can forget about most of the small businesses. I found myself trying to think if an unrecognized location was near a Starbucks or Pizza hut, and used the nearest one to get to my real destination.
There might be an update for this, but this is how it comes out of the box.
When approaching a turn the unit verbally warns at 2 miles then 1 mile then half a mile then a quarter mile then 200 feet. However, at the turn it does not not use the text to speech to name the street. Annoying.
If the GPS satellite signal is lost, it will not tell you in speech, and will take you to the wrong destination if you do not look at the screen and see the pale little letters "lost satellites".
The point of interest menu is involved and difficult to use.
Canceling the present route requires many steps and is a ridiculous feature, nearly hidden.
There is a procedure for enabling text to speech.
This must be done manually, the unit does not come enabled.
The documentation does not tell you that if you select a preprogrammed voice first and then the computer voice second (which supposedly enables text to speech) the text to speech will never come on at all unless you reset the unit to default factory settings.
The unit sometimes defaults to a lower volume probably because the touch area of the volume control overlaps the other screen areas, so when tapping the screen the volume is accidentally reset. Again, very annoying.
Normal setting of the volume is simple; click on the lower left of the screen and the control comes up.
However it can take a minute or more after increasing the volume for the volume level to respond, and then it suddenly jumps up. If you are riding alone, the shock value can be high.
If you select a point of interest without selecting a particular city,
the documentation does not tell you must select a city in order for the unit to search more than 2 miles outward for similar POI's.
In tapping the screen, often the taps take you past the place you want to go, and usually there is no back button. You will have to do it all over again to go back.
The altitude feature just simply does not work, varying several hundred feet driving on level ground.
There is a lawyer/legal screen in which you need to agree to not use the unit during driving. Huh?
A language problem?
The TomTom company is located in the Netherlands (the Garmin unit is made in Taiwan), but the TomTom unit is made and assembled in China. I can only imagine the language iterations this unit has gone through in it's text to speech programming.
The suction cup windshield mount holds firmly to the windshield, but will not in any way hold to the dash without the permanent mounting disk.
The tongue and groove in the windshield mount holds the unit very tightly, but cannot be undone while it is mounted low on the windshield, necessitating removal of the whole suction cup, which is very, very difficult. I partially solved this problem by putting only one end of the unit into one grove, but this solution is very shaky. I considered putting velcro on the large base of the unit to mount it to the front of the dash, but the power cord enters at the base so this is not possible.
Pros?
Well, the Help Me! feature is nice, such as Drive to help, Walk to help,
Where am I? etc.
The Browse Map feature is good, and gives usable area maps.
The Bottom Line;
Anyone who has never used a GPS before might be impressed at their newfound capability with the TomTom GPS.
Anyone who has used another GPS will likely be sorely disappointed and annoyed at the needlessly complicated and often non functional features.
Rating:  -
It's easy to use and I love the touch screen. I'd highly recommend getting a TomTom if you're interested in a navigator.
Rating: -
The Tom Tome One XL-S is the first GPS I've owned. What a useful, fun and easy to use piece of technology. Free map updates, a wide range of free sounds, voices, wallpapers and icons, an easy to use interface...what's not to like!
I've read some of the complaints here, and honestly don't be swayed away. Most of the complaints are experienced no matter which GPS you are buying. If your device isn't leaving you enuf time to change lanes, you're driving too fast! The computerized voice isn't perfect, it mispronounces "bridge" as "branch", but it is well above 90% accurate in pronouncing street names. The cool thing about it is, the voice actually changes expression. Personally, the "famous voices" and other human recorded voices like the mullet man, are hokey and using the computerized voice to pronounce the street names is the whole point of buying this unit. Otherwise, you might as well buy the Tom Tom One or Tom Tom One XL.
I did alot of research before buying. Everyone said.."Get the Garmin". Well, do the math and compare features and you'll come to same conclusion I did.
Rating:  -
The TomTom ONE XL-S is a good product with a few annoying quirks. It features a widescreen display and text-to-speech feature (announces street names), which are among its strong points. But I also use a Garmin Nuvi in my wife's car, and it has several features that the TomTom lacks. For example, the Garmin turns itself on when the car is started, and off when the engine in turned off; the TomTom must be manually turned on and off. I have drained the rechargeable battery more than once on the TomTom by forgetting to shut it when I got out of the car. Also, the Garmin automatically switches to a dark background at official sunset time; the TomTom has several "night backgrounds" to choose from, but night colors have to be manually selected when it gets dark. And the Garmin has several dialects built in to choose from (I chose British English); the TomTom has a menu for different dialects, but anything other than American English must be downloaded from TomTom's website. And the text-to-speech feature is only available with one computer-generated voice.
The TomTom takes about 2 minutes to find satellites when it's first turned on, but after that it's fairly quick, even when turned off for an hour while you're grabbing a bite to eat. The Garmin is temperamental -- sometimes it finds satellites right away, and sometimes it takes 5 minutes or more. Also, the sequence for programming in a destination with the TomTom is more logical -- select city and state, select street, select address. With the Garmin, you select a city, then an address, then the street -- sounds minor, but it makes it more difficult to "fudge" a location if you've got the address wrong by a few numbers.
Finally, the Garmin uses a little car as "home base," while the TomTom uses a giant arrow -- matter of taste. And the TomTom's map makes a smooth rotation during turns, while the Garmin's map makes 2 or 3 big jerky movements while turning. Between the two, I slightly prefer the TomTom -- but it's pretty close.
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