GPS ratings updated: Latest navigators from Garmin, Magellan, and TomTom

Sep 9, 2010 5:06 PM

Garmin Nuvi 3970T

Looking to buy a portable navigation device for yourself or as a gift? Our GPS testers can point you in the right direction. Frank Spinelli and Frank Rizzi have been busy this summer in the lab and driving around the greater New York City area evaluating units from market leaders Garmin, Magellan, and TomTom. And the results have been both mixed and interesting.

In testing more than 100 devices a year, we have found the surprises most often come from the newer competitors. The leaders tend to move in a predictable manner, with each new unit advancing over the previous and premium features routinely trickling down. This summer, we again learned why you never assume.

Sales-leader Garmin continues its march, moving helpful features across more affordable models. Free traffic is now more widely available, such as with the Nuvi 1490T. A new feature is Garmin's nuRoute technology, that can add intelligence to routing—accounting for congestion patterns based on day and time as well as predicting the desired destination. The expensive Nuvi 3790T offers three-dimensional landscapes and voice recognition, two upscale features we find are not worth a higher purchase price. The staff has been impressed with the more iPhone-like design of some new units, and the improved screen on the Nuvi 3790T, 3760T, and the 3750 is more clear and sensitive than many competitors.

Magellan RoadMate 3065

Magellan has been a significant player in the portable navigator market, though until this year, we found their products rather mediocre. That changed with the previous generation units, which were easier to use and rich in useful features. The latest Magellan PNDs continue in the right direction. These new units all have an easy-to-use interface with modern graphics and free lifetime traffic. Small touches such as shortcut keys and graying out letters help when entering an address.

However, these Magellans lack multimedia extras, and welcomed features such as Bluetooth hands-free calling, highway lane assistance, and AAA information can be found only on the pricier versions. The RoadMate 2035 and 2036 devices provide good, basic guidance without frills, though the map coverage is less than with some competing models.

TomTom XXL 550T

The real twist in this group is with TomTom. A major, international leader in portable navigators, TomTom is known for many innovations, such as historical traffic, cell-phone-derived traffic data, and customizable voices. Yet, we found their latest units lack many of the common functions found on GPS devices.

The new TomTom PNDs feature a simplified menu structure that is intended to aid usability, but the update eliminates some frequently used routing options and other controls typically found on higher-scoring TomTom devices, such as multi-destination routing and directions list. Further, most of these devices have no option to adjust brightness or make changes to other common settings. The real concern is that the display washes out in bright sunlight.

Latest GPS Ratings
Our most-recent ratings update added:

Garmin Nuvi 295W
Garmin Nuvi 1450
Garmin Nuvi 1490T
Garmin Nuvi 3750
Garmin Nuvi 3760T
Garmin Nuvi 3790T
Magellan Roadmate 2035
Magellan Roadmate 2036
Magellan Roadmate 2045
Magellan Roadmate 3045
Magellan Roadmate 3055
Magellan Roadmate 3065
Magellan Roadmate 5045
TomTom XL 340 S Live
TomTom XL 350
TomTom XL 350T
TomTom XXL 550
TomTom XXL 550T

The key lesson with our latest test batch is not to make assumptions that a company with a good, or bad, reputation will remain unchanged. While you may love a model from a certain brand bought a couple years ago, best check the ratings and read the user reviews to see how the latest models perform.

With portable GPS devices, satisfying ownership is about more than having the right features, and it includes ease of use—something that can't be determined by looking at a box in a store.

—Jeff Bartlett