I'm looking for a Nav system that I can use in both my car and my gf's car (move it from car to car when needed). The ones I'm looking into are:

TomTom Go300 ($700)
TomTom Go700 ($900)
Garmin - i3, i5, c310, c320, c330, c340, 2610, 2620, 2650, 2660, 2720) ($300 - $1000)
Magellan RoadMate 360 ($700)
Magellan RoadMate 760 ($1000)

I've read some good reviews of the TomTom and Garmin units, but nothing of the Magellans. Some questions:

- What is the difference between the $700 units and the $1000 units? From looking at summaries of specs on the likes of bestbuy.com, there's nothing significant. I'd like to purchase the lower priced units, but would consider the pricier ones if they had features that would justify the additional cost.

- What do the lower priced (<$500) units (i3, i5) lack?

- Any feedback on any of these units? What have you noticed or read of that are the pros/cons of each?

- What's WAAS? The TomTom units don't seem to have that.

Thanks.

Edit: Looked at some pics of the Navs I listed above. The Magellan RM360 seems to have least number of colors (mostly blue screen) and contrast. That one might be out of the running.

Edit2: Just looked at Garmin's website...damn, so many options!...too many to choose from. Any comments on the <$1000 Garmin units would be appreciated, especially a summary of what the differences are in ALL those damn options.

 

Tom tom is nice in my experience it has built in Bluetooth and I think Circuit city has a 50 dollar rebate, havent used any of the others. The other one that blows the rest away is the Clarion NICE, but its about double the price of most these units.

Some of the reasons for the price differences are mainly just features. Some of the things you should look for are built in maps of the whole US or at least on a memory card. Screen quality and ease of use. Some navs seem to be designed by monkeys. Most should be self explanitory without reading the directions, if you cant figure it out with in a few minutes of fiddling with it, move on.

 

I heard TomTom was good, but also heard the new Garmin Nuvi is the hot ticket, because it has some fancy chip that is very quick to lock on to sats and it has text-to-speech so it can announce street names rather than just distances.

Peter

 

i have a dell axim pda and a garmin bluetooth gps. it great. software is fantastic and easy to use. has a million points of interests, etc. I can be driving down the street in a city ive never been, in the mood for pizza, can find the nearest pizza place, call in an order, and then drive my way to it. it like having an interactive phone book and driving directions.

i think i paid around 300 for the pda, and then 150 garmin gps software and bluetooth gps receiver.

 

i have a pda (iapq5550) and a bluetooth reciever (clip-on) with mapopolus software. its is hard to use and the software behaves odd. when its working its great.

i almost always use the voice, kinda goony to be looking at a screen all the time.