Comparing costs of the tomtom live unit with the new Garmin 1690

[doctormstein1]

Just a little heads up for tomtom users. I love my tomtom but I thought everyone would like to know about the costs of garmins new connected unit the 1690 model. The following was said

An otherwise typical premium GPS, the 1690 ($500 by this holiday season) comes with two free years of n?Link! service—a wireless data plan with local Google search, traffic, weather, fuel price, movie, flight, event, and telephone listing information plus a bit of Garmin's proprietary Ciao social networking service thrown in. After two years, the service will cost you $5/month


As you can see that their top of the line connected unit will come with 2 years of traffic and then only $5 per month to continue service. I hope tom tom is listening.

Any forum people, please give your opinions on this matter, thanks.

 

[mvl]

Tomtom has historically been cheaper than Garmin on device sales, and more expensive on map/traffic subscriptions.

So this isn't that surprising.

Overall the Garmin should be cheaper in the long run. However Garmin directions are worse than Tomtom and deteriorating. For the "don't get me lost" crowd Garmins will save some money. But for the "get me there as fast as possible" crowd, it's hard to beat a Tomtom (especially those who get paid to drive, where the Garmin roundabout directions cost you money).