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Product: http://tomtom.com/products/product.php?ID=76&Language=4">TomTom Go 300

Price: $599.99
Rating: Average – 6.8/10.0
Pros: Voice directions, quickly calculates routes, stores US maps and POI on an SD card, Bluetooth phone support.
Cons: Hard to read during daylight, takes time to locate when powered on, limited signal in cities, at times hard to follow directions, smalls screen, limited battery.
Overall: This is a great device that helps you get where you are going fast and is packed full of options.

This past week I have been traveling with a few good friends on a Blues Road Trip down south and brought the TomTom GO 300 GPS system along for the ride. The unit came with a suction cup arm to connect it to the windshield in front of the driver (and the ability to rotate the screen 180 degrees if your dashboard setup requires you to mount the unit upside down). Our trip started at night, driving from Bloomington, IN to New Orleans, LA. TomTom immediately determined our location and prompted us to the menu screen where I entered our destination. I was surprised that when I typed in New Orleans it began to suggest matching cities and then matching streets. The unit then calculated the 836-mile route very quickly and we were on our way.

Driving down the 800 somewhat miles the unit offered the needed directions to the highways. I cannot testify if this was the best route since we only brought TomTom and no maps or alternative directions, but we eventually arrived in our destination. As one can imagine after a few hours of conversation, lots of good music, but no computer or gadgets in an arms reach I took TomTom down and began to shuffle through the menus. The 300 has an option to hookup your phone via Bluetooth for traffic and weather updates. The setup menu has an option to toggle between night and day colors (I found the night colors very easy to read but during the day the glare from the windshield made the screen hard to read). The most amusing feature was the various languages you can set the 300 to offers directions. We choose ‘Jane’ from the U.K. to offer our voice directions along the route.

The 300 comes with an SD card of US roads and POI (points of interests). Viewing options include a map of your location, navigate to a location, a list of point of interest (restaurants, hotels, attractions, churches..), find alternative routes, traffic, advanced planning, map browsing, advanced planning, itinerary planning, weather, downloadable extras, and more.

This unit got us through the smallest gravel roads and to some very obscure locations in the Mississippi Delta but had lots of trouble in the congested highway landscape of Memphis and contraction ridden roads of Nashville. The hardest part was determining which exact exit to take when the road splits or exits offer multiple highways. It would be nicer if more street names popped up as we drove along as well as our current location. The battery, after being fully charged, died after 3 hours so we left it plugged in for the remainder of the trip. Finally, the most annoying feature of the unit is the lack of a “pit-stop” option to pause the voice directions when purposely turning off the planned route.

Overall, while we could have navigated the trip with a plain old paper map TomTom was much easier and more fun than a paper map. My co-pilot would highly recommend using Jane while the two-backseat passengers believe he has a personal attraction to her. I highly recommend investing in a GPS system; you do not know what you are missing until you have one.