I bought the Lowrance 350 last year before I moved to L.A. and it was a great decision. Right out of the box it was fully up to date. It has the nifty extra feature of being a MP3 player with FM transmitter built in with a standard SD drive as storage. I've had 2 problems with it that may or may not be specific to the brand/model.

1. When first booting it can take 5 to 10 minutes to sync with the satellites. This may be because I have to park underground just about everywhere I go. Almost nowhere has above ground parking here so its hard to tell if that's a factor or not.

2. Heat. I parked my car on the top level of a parking garage one day and it got quite hot. The windows were up and the GPS unit was stored in one of the consoles. The battery seems to have been fried and there may have been some damage to the FM transmitter because it just doesn't sound very good anymore. The unit still runs when fed power directly so there's really no change in the way I use it but permanant damage to a $400 piece of hardware makes me unhappy. Thankfully the screen and touch-sensing are still perfect.

This was two years ago, things may have changed. I got a very large-scale (as in not detailed) map of the U.S. The two things I was looking for, detailed city maps and topos of national parks, were both add-ons.

I have Garmin Nuvi 350. There's a newer model 360 which includes a bult-in Bluetooth handsfree, and now a step-up model 660 that is basically 360, but with a wide screen and TMC real-time traffic antenna bundled in.

I am very happy with my unit. It has maps for the entire North America. The maps haven't failed me once. The unit does have text-to-speech prompts mentioned by Shiho. It's of a tremendous convenience and works, as much as I'd want to avoid absolutes, just flawlessly.

350's strength is in traveling. It's not as beefy in POIs handling. There're millions of them, but they're service and travel oriented. Some users complain that it doesn't have every BestBuy or WalMart and stuff. But you can import your own POIs.

Garmin does listen to their users and updates the software frequently. You can buy updated maps for USA (refreshed every 2 years or so), as well as for Europe (whole or piece-meal countries). There's also a nice Travel Guide software supplied by Fodor's.

The satellite lock-on works happens fast, well under a minute in any conditions, and keeps on tight. Typical precision it reports is 16 feet.

The bes testament I can give to the 350's reliability, robustness, and ease of use is that I let my wife drive with her mom on a sightseeing trip from NJ to Washington D.C armed with just Nuvi 350 plus Travel Guide (well, and my wife's martial arts skills).

Is the screen on the Nuvi 360 big enough? I mean in relative terms.

The biggest points made is that Garmin seems to have better satellite technology and a more rich POI database that comes standard. I've heard mixed reviews of the Bluetooth capability, TomTom gets marks for having only slightly better sound. Both are regarded as having pretty crappy sound, in general. This tends to make me want to steer clear of the TomTom 910 with MP3 player built in.

I have also heard that Garmin has a far better glare filter on the unit which makes them easier to read in sunlight.

Thanks for the help, folks. I'm starting to narrow my search.

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