Dan said:
Or buy it with an Amex card and get a free double warranty. I think each has its pros and cons. I like the TomTom interface better and the fact that you can connect it to your PC and create routes to download (say you want to take a scenic route). Garmin has better maps in rural areas and very good customer service. Skip the traffic crap, I live in the DC metro area and its totally worthless. If they can't get traffic right in a major metro area, don't count on it working elsewhere.
As I understand it, the double warranty (well, assuming one year of mftr warranty- some electronics mftr's only have 90 day warranties for instance) is free just for buying it from Costco. If you have a
Costco Amex card, then you get a
third year of warranty for free.
For the OP, I've never used a TomTom, but nearly everything I read points to Garmin Nuvi as the best choice, and therefore that's all I have bought. I got one for my dad at Costco, maybe a month or two ago, and the two choices for Garmin were identical in price- one was with lifetime updates, and the other was with a 5" screen. I chose the latter as my father is old and can use the larger screen. (0.7" increase over a 4.3" may not sound like much at all, but it's actually a huge* increase when accounting for a typical aspect ratio of a display device, with the particular sizes we talk about with GPS devices.)
I can't be bothered yet, but if I chose my credit card all over again, I'd probably get that Costco Amex. What also makes it different is that it's not miles based, but it's cash back. Varying %s of cash back on all kinds of things, including gas.
