XL-340M vs XL-350M???

[ontherock]

Hi:
New to your forum so here goes....
I'm planning on purchasing a TomTom in the next few days and have a few questions for those of you who currently own one. I've been reading reviews on both of these models and they both seem good (I'm leaning towards the 350) but here are two questions on the 350: one reviewer said that it always displays North up as opposed to your direction of travel while the other review noted that it would revert to the screen saver after a few minutes if you were not using a predefined route. I own a Garmin handheld for hunting and have used a Lowrance for hiking as well so I'm sort of familiar with GPS usage. I'd prefer to use route up as opposed to North and will often be driving without a predefined route. Anyhow, can someone enlighten me on this? I appreciate any help you can offer.

 

[canderson]

Route will be UP in the 3D view, north UP in the 2D view.

I cannot strongly enough express my preference for the 340 over the dumbed-down menu system of the 350. You will lose quite a few useful functions with the 350 menu system. If you are familiar with GPS units, you'll no doubt have expectations about how they should work, and may well be disappointed with the EasyMeny system on the 350.

 

[ontherock]

Thanks for the info!!!
Just to be sure I'm understanding the terminology - the 2D view is the "normal" navigation view, correct? if so, why in Heaven's name would you have it as route up only, especially when traveling in unfamiliar areas? Going back to map & compass, you would always orient the map to your direction of travel to make sense of the landscape.
I was looking at a Garmin Nuvi 265WT as well but TT's lifetime maps and Map Share system are making me lean towards the 340 / 350 products.
Again, a newbie question - does the Map Share system work as great as it looks???

 

[Rick F.]

Thanks for the info!!!
Just to be sure I'm understanding the terminology - the 2D view is the "normal" navigation view, correct? <snip>

No, the 3D view is normal, but a few people prefer the 2D view. The 3D view is from behind and above the car (or blue arrow) symbol slightly showing the road and turn ahead. Here's an image:

 

[canderson]

Thanks for the info!!!
Just to be sure I'm understanding the terminology - the 2D view is the "normal" navigation view, correct?

As RickF says, not for most of us, no. Most of us use the "3D" view you see in his photo. The 2D view is a view straight down, just as if you were looking at a flat map. Some TomTom units allow for having this view as either north up or direction of travel up, but not all do.

Going back to map & compass, you would always orient the map to your direction of travel to make sense of the landscape.

Not always. While I do the vast majority of my driving in 3D view, there are times when I will change to 2D and zoom out a bit to get a good map view of a selection of POIs. In that case, it's actually better for my brain to have a normal "north up" map that shows my direction of travel against the map as the little car icon arrow. As an example, I may see that the POIs I am interested in are all north of me while I'm traveling west, and that tells me I need to start thinking right turn to get there. Then I'll bop back to 3D view again.

I was looking at a Garmin Nuvi 265WT as well but TT's lifetime maps and Map Share system are making me lean towards the 340 / 350 products.
Again, a newbie question - does the Map Share system work as great as it looks???

I understand that Garmin has started offering some sort of lifetime map subscription for City Navigator as well (n?Maps Lifetime). Looks like they're getting $89.95 for them now.

The MapShare system is so-so. If you set the filter low enough to catch the day-to-day changes, you may also be allowing in some errors posted by users not very proficient in using the system. If you set it too high, you'll get almost no changes at all. However, even if you do not accept any inbound changes at all, the system can be very useful since your unit retains a local copy of all of the changes you are making. So if you block a road, you don't need to send that info to TomTom and wait to get it back -- your unit already knows about the error and won't route you there again. Note that you can't ADD roads that way. Roads being added can only be reported to TomTom, not added to your unit's map.