TomTom ONE

I've been intrigued by GPS gadgets ever since they became available to consumers. However, with price tags in the four digits, I've never been able to afford one. But when I moved to Pennsylvania, I was hopelessly lost most of the time. Luckily, my mother bought me a TomTom ONE as a "moving gift." I was stoked to get it and immediately set out using it.

In short, I have to say, the ONE is probably the best consumer GPS available. I say this without using any other GPS units, but I can't imagine any features that any other units could have that this unit doesn't. And at $300, it is incredibly affordable.

First off, the unit has almost no documentation. This scared me at first, but then I found out, it doesn't need any! It's incredibly easy to use. It's clear TomTom focused on usability when they designed this device.

Connectivity is excellent. While like all GPS units, it can't be used indoors, but its connectivity outdoors is a snap. While it takes up to a minute or two to orient itself, it stays connected. I've never had fewer than four satellites (out of a maximum of five) no matter how hilly or overgrown the terrain I'm travelling through. Overcast skies don't seem to affect it. Once it's oriented, that's it—you're hooked up. And I almost always have the maximum five satellites.

The ONE's color display isn't big, but it's just the right size for what it needs to do. Any larger, and it'd be cumbersome (and interfere with visibility while driving). Any smaller, and it would be hard to see and use.

The first feature that blew me away was its 3D display of your route and the streets. Most GPS show a top-down view of where you are and need to go. The ONE will do this, but its default 3D display is so much better! It shows you exactly what you see looking through the windshield. Just driving with it hooked up without a destination was a blast, seeing streets go by that the ONE showed go by as well. Far from being a simple novelty, the 3D display gives me a much better sense of where I'm going and where I need to turn. The route I need to take is superimposed right over the map as I drive.

The ONE also has several color schemes to choose from, though the default one is the one I prefer. It also has a nighttime version, which uses much less light, so the glare doesn't blind you while driving in the dark. It's still luminous enough to see in low-light conditions.

Entering options on the ONE is done via tapping the screen. It doesn't have a stylus or some other specialized input device. You just use your fingers. For me, this is a little tricky, since I have really fat fingers. But a pencil eraser or other such device works just as well. And the screen is rather sensitive, so you don't have to pound it with several tons per square inch.

The ONE has dozens of special options, most of which I've never tried. But they're all tucked away in a hierarchical menu that's a breeze to navigate. One feature I really like is the "Find". The ONE lets you search for restaurants, gas stations, amusement parks and several other types of attractions. You can search for them according to where you currently are or where you're going. Or close to any city you choose. Airports, restaurants, gas stations: they're all there.

But for most purposes, you'll enter an address you want to travel to. The ONE makes this easy. You can either specify a zip code, a specific address or just a city you want to travel to. The ONE handles the route. Normally it'll calculate the fastest route, but you can tell it to calculate the shortest or even tell it to avoid a certain part of the route. After you start one your route, it gives you an ETA (which updates as you travel).

What I love about the ONE, however, is that if you miss a turn, it doesn't yell at you and tell you to turn around. Instead it just calculates a new route from where you currently are and displays it. I can't tell you how many times this has saved me when congested streets prevented me from taking an exit I needed.

The ONE installs on your automobile's windshield via a high-tech device called a suction cup. Now, personally, I've had pretty poor experiences with suction cups. They look cool, and are conceptually pretty neat. But, in practice, most everyone I've encountered has pretty much sucked (no pun intended). They just don't hold. Or they hold for a few seconds before popping off. But the ONE's suction cup is actually pretty sturdy. I'm impressed with how well it holds, despite how dirty the interior or my windshield is. I just *shlup!* stick it up there and it holds. While it may lose grip from time to time, just re-pressing it in place every hour or so can prevent this. And it comes with a handy tab that makes releasing it just as easy. The suction cup also easily detaches if you'd rather not use it.

All hooked up

The ONE comes with a USB cable and PC CD that helps link it to the TomTom website. On the website, users can set preferences and download additional content. Though it comes with about a dozen standard voices (several in English, some in UK English ("take the motorway") several in foreign languages such as German and Spanish), users can purchase additional voices, such as those of John Cleese or "Sexy Woman" (some are just plain irritating, though, such as New York Cabbie or Grandma). Users can also purchase updated and more detailed maps from the website. For example, the entire United States and Canada is about €99.95. users can also subscribe to advanced features, such as traffic data.

The ONE has several weaknesses, but they are all pretty minor. And only a few are exclusive to it.

The first is battery life. Since I almost exclusively use the ONE while driving, it's fairly easy to keep it plugged into the cigarette lighter for power. And while it's plugged in, it charges the battery while using the extern source to power the ONE as well. But using the ONE while not plugged in, I can see the power drain quickly. So I'm not sure if it'd be ideal for geocaching or other activities where you'd be carrying it around a lot. But the ONE is billed as a automobile navigator, so keep that in mind.

Second is, well, I don't know what to call it. The ONE has a "Favorites" menu so you can save places you go to often (Home has its own button). But you can only enter them by address. We have a lake near our home that we went to often during the summer. But it didn't have a specific address and I always had a hard time finding it. I wish I could've said "here, where I am now, is a favorite." But it has no option to do that. If it doesn't have an address, it can't be added as a favorite.

The other problem is that, while great at finding streets, the ONE isn't so hot at finding addresses. So, while it might find Dancing Horse Drive, it may be totally off as to where 1010 is located. So keep your eyes skinned for street numbers while using it. But this is not a limitation of the ONE; other GPS's share the same weakness. They all subscribe to the same databases for addresses and locations. If it's wrong for the ONE, it's wrong for them all. So this is not a weakness in comparison to other GPSes—they all have this shortcoming.

The fourth weakness is related to the two above. I wish there was a way to update addresses in the ONE. If it says 123 Tiptoe Lane is one place, but I know it on a different part of the street, I'd like to be able to say, "Hey, here, where I am, is 123!" and have it remember. But it has no facility to do this. Next time you want to drive to 123 Tiptoe Lane, it will show you the wrong location again.

While the "Find" is a great feature, it lacks one item that I'd really find useful. While you can search for restaurants and several other types of attractions, you can't search for supermarkets unless you know their names (like Wal-Mart or Target). Obviously, if I'm in an unfamiliar area, I'm not going to have any idea of the names of nearby stores (and if I did, I would probably know where they were too).

Weaknesses aside, the ONE is a great little device. Turn by turn directions, 3D display and numerous useful options make it an ideal GPS for the vast majority of consumers. If I didn't have it now, knowing what I do now, I would immediately go out and buy it.