ONE XL*S vs 330XL*S

[dervari]

My father in law just purchased a One XL*S and I love it, especially the BT Data feature for downloads, etc...especially traffic.

I have enough Amex Rewards to get a XL330*S but a couple of things concern me about this unit.

1) No BT Data for downloads/traffic
2) No SD Slot

How do I get the TomTom services (weather, voices, traffic, etc) to work on the 330? Do I need to purchase an expensive TMC antenna? Can I still access the extended POIs available?

Is the lack of an SD slot really hurt anything?

Thanks in advance.

 

[theparson]

You would need to purchase an antenna to get traffic.

There is enough room in internal storage to add more POI databases.

 

[dervari]

Is there any real functional difference between the two? i'd much rather be able to use my Blackberry for communications than having to fork out $100 for a TMS receiver. Seems like a step backwards to me.

 

[mvl]

The antenna-based traffic is supposed to be inferior to the BT-based traffic.

The antenna-based traffic comes only from the local radio station. The BT-based traffic includes multiple input sources, and doesn't require unsightly additional wires. BT-based traffic does require a data plan on your phone and is very finnicky about which phones are compatible.

Also, realize that the ONE XL-S is a 2007 model, and the 330-s is a 2008 model. Both can't handle some of Tomtom's better features like IQroutes which is available on newer devices. Tomtom hasn't released a software update for either of those devices since June 2008 (and has released many updates since) so it's possible that they've been abandoned from a free-software upgrade perspective.

If you want BT-traffic and an SD card, you can't beat a refurb 720 dollar-for-dollar (see neweg/radio shack/tiger direct). It has all the features of the ONE XL-S, plus IQroutes, a microphone for BT handsfree, an MP3 player, an FM transmitter, and the Loquendo speech engine which mispronounces fewer words than the Vocalizer engine on the ONE XL-S. The 720's slot is SDHC compatible, which means it can read up to 16GB SDHC cards for ton's of music/map storage.