Digital Trends

TomTom ONE XL S

May 15th, 2008 | by Josh Norem

Use and Testing

When we first powered on the XL S it walked us through an introductory setup routine that included asking us how we wanted to view the time, our preferred language, whether to show distance in miles or kilometers, and it let us choose a navigation voice. There were five US English voices, four women and one male voice. From there we chose our default map colors for both nighttime and daytime driving, and set our home address. The process ends with the option of taking a tour of the device, which is a nice touch and let us get familiarized with it in a very brief period of time.

After the five-minute setup process completes, you’re free to begin navigating. The main screen lets you navigate to a destination (address, favorite, home, recent destination or point of interest), get “help’, add a favorite destination or change a wide array of preferences. A secondary screen lets you prepare routes and itineraries, correct maps and manage Bluetooth phones. A final third screen lets you access optional extras such as TomTom Plus services and TomTom traffic as well as view the guided tour of the device again.

The core experience is, of course, navigating to destinations, and the XL S is largely very easy to use. Tapping in street names and addresses is easy thanks to the screen’s large buttons and bright display, and the detailed maps and text-to-speech feature make it very easy to see where you’re going and what you need to do. It also displays what you need to do next in the lower-left-hand corner in case you are curious. Our only complaint is with the text-to-speech feature, which includes the same bug we found in our review of the GO 920 T. If you select a human voice it tells you that a human voice can’t say street names, and asks if you would like to select a computer voice to do that role. If you select yes and choose a computer voice, the street names are still grayed out on the menu, and the only way to get text-to-speech to work is to just select a computer voice.

The interface TomTom provides is well-designed and easy to navigate. The unit is also very responsive and there’s virtually no lag whatsoever when switching between screens. It takes a few seconds to calculate the route but it happens so fast you will likely not even notice it. It’s also able to quickly re-calculate a route if you miss a turn.

The points of interest (POI) database is large and all-inclusive. Though we weren’t always able to find what we were looking for in the pre-defined categories, we were always able to successfully find a store or location by typing in its name. TomTom also provides the functionality to edit the POI database, and it’s most useful for adding new categories, which you can then populate with your own destinations. Unfortunately, you have the ability to delete POIs, but out of the long list of POIs that are pre-installed only Fire stations and School were available on the delete list for some reason. It would be handy to be able to delete any POI we wanted.

Image Courtesy of TomTom

Aside from basic navigation there’s not a whole heck of a lot to the ONE XL S. We’re not complaining mind you; after all, it is a GPS unit designed for car navigation. What we mean is there’s no music or movie player, no photo slideshows or any of the other add-on type of features we normally see. However, we’ll also admit that these types of features are rarely used and typically poorly implemented, so we’re not too concerned by their absence. You can add traffic data to the ONE XLS, but the additional antenna costs $129 and includes one year of service.

When you’re not in your car you can attach the ONE XLS to your computer via the included USB cable and allow it to install the TomTom Home software. The software is very well-designed and has a lot of great features. Once you connect the device it will automatically look for updates to anything installed on the device, such as the Home software or new updates to maps if you choose to join the Map Share program. As stated previously, the Map Share program lets you edit maps and upload them to other users, and you can also download their updates, and it is an excellent feature for sure.

Aside from updates you can backup the device to your computer, see the items on the device, get updated maps and browse accessories. The coolest feature is the ability to download custom voices for a fee as well as community-made voices. We love this feature, and the available voices for free download range from Droopy dog to Clint Eastwood (“You’ve reached your destination, punk!”).



Conclusion

The ONE XL S offers very solid navigational performance at a reasonable price point. It’s easy to configure and use, and we imagine most users would be able to be up and running in just a few minutes, which is great. We like the text-to-speech feature and the Map Share too, but we especially enjoyed all the free downloads and updates. Of course, the text-to-speech feature does have a configuration issue, and it’s too bad we can’t totally customize the POI lists, but having the ability to add our own POIs is a great benefit. All in all we like the XLS better than the flagship GO 920 T just because it’s not as complicated, is still easy to use, and costs a lot less.


Pros:

• Big screen
• Text-to-speech
• Map Share
• Great downloads and add-ons

Cons:

• Setting up text-to-speech is flawed
• Can’t totally customize POIs