I struggled about whether I should have gotten the BMW gps when I got my X. I finally decided not to get the option, mostly because of it's very limited features and the cassette player, I do love the integration but at $1800, I thought I could do much better.
Last week my girlfriend and I, decided to drive to Phoenix, spend the new year there and then visit the Grand Canyon(first time for me).

At last I had an excuse to get a new GPS. By that time I had looked at all of the options and brands for various GPS units, I narrowed down my search to two units, the Garmin C330/340 and the TomTom 300/700. Design wise, I liked the look of the Garmin C330/340 better, but after reading all the reviews, and playing with each of the units, I understood why the TomTom was on top of all the reviews I read. Better feature, better integration! My first choice was to get the TomTom 700, but I couldn't find one store in Los Angeles that had it in stock, so I got the TomTom 300.

The main advantage of the TomTom for me, is the realtime traffic info. it does require a subscription, but you get the 1st year for free. The way it works is it connects to you phone via bluetooth and download the traffic info ( you can also get weather and all sort of other things.) which is more convenient than the Garmin C340, which can only connect with an extra fm receiver(which cost an extra $200) that need to be connected to your car antenna, etc...

After Driving around 1500 miles, I have to say that I am more than pleased with the TomTom 300, it is very fast and full of features, downloading traffic info or weather is a matter of seconds, you can custom the colors of the maps, you get night/day modes, the entire maps of the U.S including all POI are provided in one SD card. You also get a CD for Canada. The whole unit is highly customizable, and dead accurate. Need to find a restaurant, all you need to do is enter the name (which most likely is already in the memory so typing the 1st few letters is enough) and voila, just follow the direction. The bird-view mode is great, especially at night, it's like having night vision, you can see on the screen what's ahead before you can see it "live", I love it. You can also see how far the next gas station is, etc... It also has a battery build in.

I highly recommend the TomTom 300, I paid $649 with a $50 money back and 1 free year of TomTom Plus which include Trafic info, etc... You can even get better prices online, but since I was leaving the next day I couldn't go the online route.

Happy new year to all.

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04 X5 4.4