For our second test, I started out at Fry's Electronics in San Jose, California and entered a destination address at 300 Grove Street in San Francisco (about 46 miles in distance):

Again Garmin chooses the best route, Magellan chooses the second best route, and TomTom's ONE XL chooses the worst route. While Magellan and Garmin both route us along the 101 highway from San Jose to San Francisco, TomTom's ONE XL instead chooses highway 880 North to 80 West -- an odd choice that adds around 4 miles (6 minutes) to the journey. Even worse, TomTom again has us arriving on the wrong side of the street, with our destination address on the left.

Both the Magellan Maestro 4050 and the Garmin nuvi 680 arrive with our destination address on the right side of the street, but only the Garmin actually tells us what side of the street our destination will be on. Occasionally the Magellan unit would verbally announce what side of the street the destination was on, but that was the exception and not the rule.

Garmin's maneuvering instructions are also by far the most detailed. It's not shown in the table above, but the angle of Garmin's turn icons actually vary to indicate the upcoming turn's actual angle, a feature not found on either the Maestro or the TomTom ONE XL. Garmin wins routing test #2.

For the third test, I chose a short, 3-mile trip from Beacon Street in Boston to Cambridge, Massachusetts:

The results of test #3 are consistent with the previous two tests: TomTom's ONE XL chooses a route that's about 30% longer than Magellan's Maestro or Garmin's nuvi. Garmin chooses a route that's slightly longer in distance than Magellan's Maestro, but is actually a shorter drive time, and Magellan's Maestro plots an acceptable route that's only slightly worse than Garmin's. It's interesting to see such varied routing results even on a short trip of less than 3 miles -- just goes to show you how different every GPS unit actually is.

The routing engine on the Maestro 4050 produced consistently solid results, soundly beating TomTom's new ONE XL unit, and closely matching Garmin's routing engine. Garmin edged out Magellan in all three tests, choosing slightly more efficient routes with more detailed turn instructions and shorter drive times.

TomTom's ONE XL unit performed poorly in all three routing engine tests, producing the longest routes in all three tests, and putting us on the wrong side of the street at our destination address.

Again, only Garmin's GPS unit announced what side of the street our destination address was on.

Verdict: Winner - Garmin

All three tests showed Garmin's unit as the clear winner with the strongest routing engine. Magellan's Maestro unit performed admirably, coming in second place. TomTom's ONE XL (with TomTom's newest maps installed) came in a distant 3rd place in all three tests.