18. Pros

• Elegant, handsome design
• 4.3" wide-screen LCD display
• Easy to use
• New, 2007 (v675) maps are a significant improvement over TomTom's previous North American maps
• Broad language support with voice prompts for over 30 languages
• Support for routing to longitude/latitude coordinates
• Handy, time-saving address entry system pre-populates lists with recently used cities / streets / house numbers
• Preferred arrival time feature lets you specify what time you need to arrive, and the ONE XL will report how early/late you'll be
  Itinerary planning allows you to view routes ahead of time
• supports multi-destination routing (but not route optimization by distance)
• Lots of customizable display options
  

19. Cons

• Slow - ONE XL feels underpowered and is annoyingly slow at route calculation / re-calculation and other common tasks
• Poorly designed windshield mount (difficult to get the ONE XL on or off the mount without hitting the windshield glass -- you need to angle the mount down, slide on the ONE XL, then re-position the mount)
• Announces upcoming turns using yards instead of feet
• Screen not as bright as other wide-screen GPS units
• Occasional bugs (i.e. sound would sometimes turn itself back on while navigating, even though I had muted the volume)
• No text-to-speech (GPS only announces generic maneuvers, not actual street names)
• No hands-free speakerphone calling support
• Very limited bluetooth cell phone compatibility
• Poor routing engine
• Important menu options (i.e. cancel route) hidden until you manually enable all menu options
• Text font used on the map screen is too small, can be hard to read from the driver's seat
• ETA not as accurate as other GPS units - time displayed on map changes too quickly while driving (i.e. drive 75MPH for 1 minute, and you're ETA drops in half. Come to a stop light, and it doubles again)
• No route optimization feature
• Real-time traffic (and all other TomTom PLUS services) requires a compatible Bluetooth-enabled cell phone to be paired with the ONE XL
• AC adapter not included
• 3D angle of the map is too steep
• Poor customer support

20. Conclusion

TomTom's ONE XL is a handsome turn-by-turn GPS navigation with tons of customizable display options, broad language support, and unique features not found on other devices. The ONE XL brings wide-screen navigation to TomTom's popular ONE product line, and adds newly updated 207 maps that are a significant improvement over TomTom's previous North American maps. I really liked TomTom's time-saving text-entry features, as well as the ability to specify a preferred arrival (and then see how late or early you'll arrive).

However, TomTom's ONE XL feels decidedly under-powered, and the unit feels sluggish. Common operations, such as entering an address and calculating the route are frustratingly slow. Worse, TomTom's routing engine came in last place when tested against Garmin and Magellan GPS units.

The ONE XL suffers from many of the same issues that plagued the TomTom ONE. The XL still lacks text-to-speech, supports only a very limited number of Bluetooth-enabled cell phone (though not for hands-free calling), and the 4.3" wide display wasn't as bright as some other similarly priced GPS units.

With the ONE XL, TomTom has delivered a GPS that's heavy on style and light on navigation. Given the poor routing performance, slowness, and various other issues with the ONE XL, I recommend a similarly priced Garmin or Magellan GPS instead -- either will be better at the GPS' core function: navigation.