Garmin vs Magellan vs TomTom

[thewayne]

I'm probably going to buy a navigation unit/GPS this week and am looking for recommendations. We're traveling to Maryland next week for a full week, and a friend whom I greatly respect as a very traveled person, said you MUST have a navigation computer for driving in that area. I check with the company that I'm going to rent a car from, and they want about $100 to also have a navi comp, I go to Best Buy's web site, and find I can buy one for about the same price.

So I'm going to buy one.

Just wondering what people think. I own a Magellan GPS and quite like it, but really don't have any predispositions among the vendors. TomTom has one attraction: apparently John Cleese did a voice pack for it, so that would be awesome.

Comments

[krzykat.livejournal.com]

Supposedly Garmin makes the best, but I think they are all similar. What you do want is one of the bigger screens, text to speach, etc... I can't remember all the key points.. QVC or HSN hasn't had one on lately. I think both my parents and my brother have TomToms. I know my brother's was useful when we used it in Florida.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

I went to three stores tonight gathering info and prices. Turns out Garmin is actually Macintosh friendly, so that's a plus. Some neat stuff. The thing that I really like is that some of them can operate as a coordinate-based GPS, so I can Geocache with them!