Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The TomTom XXL 550T 5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator is a good basic GPS navigation unit which I could recommend to anyone looking for a basic GPS with a larger screen. That having been said, I had some issues with this unit and TomTom that prevent me from giving it five stars. -- No Manual. The TomTom XXL 550T 5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator shipped in the late Spring of 2010. When I received the unit toward the end of July there was still no manual available on-line for this model. There are numerous optional settings and even more options if you have the Traffic feature. The "User Guide" which comes with the unit does little more than tell you how to plug it in and plan a simple route. ''TomTom finally did put up a manual sometime in August, although it appears to just be a link to the XL 350 manual (see below - it just says XL on the cover page instead of XXL, as does the cover page for the 340 XL, which is a completely different guide describing a completely different user interface). -- Software installation. The TomTom Home software is supposed to install automatically when you plug the unit into your computer. This may or may not happen in Windows, but definitely does not happen in Mac OSX. The software installer is on the unit (which appears as an external drive confusingly named "INTERNAL" on the desktop). I ran the installer, which successfully installed a way-out-of-date version of TomTom Home. When I used the installed software to take me to the TomTom web site, it took me to the UK site instead of the USA site. This led to some confusion since the UK version of the GPS uses a different interface. The manual I downloaded was useless. Eventually the software updated itself and I found my way to the USA site. I would recommend that any user, Mac or Windows, download the most current version of TomTom Home and install it before plugging the unit into your computer for the first time. -- TomTom Support. Hit or miss. The first time I called I had an easy question that I could have quickly answered myself if I had had the manual. The support person instead had me do a factory reset on the unit, wiping out everything I had installed up to that point. After going through all that, he told me the simple answer. Here's my version: street names can be read out loud only by computerized voices. You have only two English language choices. All of the other voices, paid or free, are a waste of time, storage space, or money.' The second time I called (the same day), it was to ask about the missing manual. The support person was as perplexed as I was and took the time to do some research and come up with a useful answer: since the XXL 550 and the XL 350 share the same TomTom "Two-Button" interface (when you turn it on you get a screen with two large buttons in the middle and five smaller ones at the bottom), the manual for the XL 350 would tell me everything I needed to know about the XXL 550. She also sent me an email with a link to the document. -- Annoying precision. On a couple of occasions, I have been at my destination and parked directly in front of the store while the XXL 550 was still trying to get me to go out on the street and drive another fifty yards or so past the parking lot entrance, leaving me stuck in the middle of the block with my destination hidden behind a parking structure. I suspect it's a slave to street numbers. Shopping malls and strip malls are just not set up that way. If I'm in a strip mall parking lot, tell me I've arrived so I can start looking for my destination business instead of guiding me five or six doors past it in the name of street number precision. -- Lack of common sense. On one trip, instead of having me just use a left-turn pocket (which appears on the GPS map) to turn into a parking lot, it wanted me to drive more than a mile out of my way around an industrial park so I could come back from the other direction and make a right turn. It made a similar suggestion on another trip. On a third trip, the long-way-around route was the best choice (even in that case, it kept trying to get me back out on the street to drive a few more yards even while I was already in the parking lot next to the destination). This is one more reason to use Google Maps and Street View before leaving home for a destination in another city with which you have no prior experience. -- Phantom Left Turn Ahead. On a highway I use frequently, there is a transition from a four-lane freeway to a two-lane highway. You really don't have to do anything except adjust your speed. However, whenever I am traveling from the four-lane part to the two-lane part, it starts warning me about a "left turn ahead." It never tells me to turn left, it just warns me two or three times and then forgets all about it once I make the transition. There are a a couple of other considerations that fall more under the heading of personal preferences or situations: -- Measurement. The TomTom XXL 550T 5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator always measures shorter distances in yards instead of fractions of a mile. I'm used to miles and that is how most highway signs are marked in California. -- Mounting. In my car, there is no way I can legally mount the XXL 550 in the 5 inch by 5 inch lower left windshield space permitted under California law. I tried the Arkon windshield mount which has an articulating arm. The Arkon suction cup fits into the legal area, but the XXL 550 is too big to fit between the windshield frame and the instrument pod. There is no place on my dashboard either big enough or flat enough to attach the TomTom adhesive disc; I have the same problem with bean-bag type holders. -- Traffic. My XXL 550 came with Lifetime Traffic. Unfortunately for me, the Total Traffic coverage area starts about 20 miles from my home. If you're thinking of adding Lifetime Traffic, I'd suggest you go to the TomTom site and verify (1) the traffic FM signal is available in your area, and (2) highways you typically use are included in the area where traffic flow is measured. -- Persistent trips. Trips are not automatically cancelled once you have arrived at your destination. This is just annoying; I'm there, erase it already. There is, however, much to like about the TomTom XXL 550T 5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator: -- Large, bright screen -- Easy to program trips. My basis of comparison is a seven-year-old factory-installed system that cost (at the time) more than ten times the price of the XXL 550. I find entering destination information easier and more straight-forward than on the factory system. -- Street names read out loud. This is probably the major innovation over my factory system. Even though factory system has a much larger screen, upcoming street names are often washed out by the sun or too small to read with my driving glasses. -- TomTom Home. The software works fairly well on Mac OSX. One feature, Operate My Device, is not available, but the rest of it seems to work and it is quick to do updates and easy to add features, voices, icons, etc. -- "Safety" camera warnings. I live near a city where there are a lot of red-light-runner cameras and I know where most of them are. The warnings on the XXL 550 are fairly accurate. An out-of-towner could avoid a nasty surprise in the mail by paying attention to the beeps and driving safely. -- Map Corrections. One of the trips I planned while testing the XXL 550 was to a new out-of-town restaurant. The XXL 550 did not recognize the restaurant name as a Point of Interest or the address as a valid street number. It did get me nearby and once I was there I was able to send corrections on both the restaurant and the new building in which it is located (the land had been vacant previously, so the street number did not exist until the building was completed). On the whole, the plusses outweigh the minuses by quite a bit, so that even with the issues and considerations outlined above, it still does what it is supposed to do and is reasonably priced in a competitive market. UPDATE: Since I wrote this review, both the XXL 550 internal software and the TomTom Home software have been updated. There have been minor changes to the layout and design of the buttons and the Operate My Device feature in TomTom Home now works in Mac OSX.