All right, folks–saddle up, because your old buddy Steve is taking you for a ride in his clearly spectacular car for a special review.  The folks out at geeks.com sent me a TomTom XL340-S portable GPS to review, and this sucker is an adventure machine.

Go ahead, open the side door–don’t mind the drift of clutter on the floor.  You probably had me pegged for the messy sort to begin with, and I don’t get many passengers.  I’ve even got some good audiobooks if you’d rather not listen to me talk, or worse, sing along with the radio.  My last round of karaoke did a bang-up job, even if the room was a little lit up at the time, but unless you’re up for Man of Constant Sorrow we might have a problem.

And while you’re listening to that, I’m going to talk TomTom.

It’s the TomTom XL340-S, and it’s a doozy.  It comes with a 4.3 inch screen, text-to-speech for spoken street names, an interface that supports up to twenty different languages, the “Help Me!” menu that gives you area-specific information about roadside assistance and hospitals, “map share” technology that allows you to share information with other users online, pre-set “points of interest” to travel to (and there are a LOT of those), and optional services that let you find the cheapest gas on your route and get updates on traffic conditions.

And lest you’re worried about not being able to find your way, they’ve got maps for all fifty states in the US, all ten provinces and three territories of Canada, and thirty five percent of Mexico.  There are a lot of places in Mexico you wouldn’t want to go to anyway.

Folks, this thing is great.  I set it up to show me how to get to my favorite local coffee shop, figuring that, even if it botched the job I’d still know how to get there myself.  I know the routes there like second nature.  It showed me the fastest route there–and my usual one–but when I tried to deliberately throw it off by straying from the route, it would automatically recalculate at every intersection.

It’s not always accurate, though–sometimes it would insist I need to continue another couple hundred feet to reach my destination despite the fact that I was already there.  And sometimes it would insist I was already at my destination despite it being directly ahead of me.  And there were moments when the satellite feed would cut out, so don’t count strictly on it.

But aside from that, the TomTom XL340-S is a really nicely put together GPS, and will do most every job you want it to do.  It may not have all the options, but it’ll tackle the big stuff just fine.

The Good

Plenty of options

Mostly reliable

Very easy to learn and use

The Bad

Not always accurate

Not always dependable

Score 7 /10

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