Luxury GPS receivers

Voice commands now available on cheaper models

There's increasingly less reason to spend more than $350 for an auto GPS receiver these days, according to reviews. Luxury features that cost $1,000 in mid-2008, such as the ability to recognize voice commands, are popping up on under-$300 GPS receivers, but if you want the absolute top of the line, U.S. critics like the Garmin nuvi 885T (*Est. $400) best.

"The nuvi 885T succeeds where many others have failed, delivering speech recognition that actually works, and ease of use that other devices can only dream of," says GPSMagazine.com. "Virtually every GPS function can be performed using your voice."

However, you don't even have to pay that much: The Garmin nuvi 855 (*Est. $275) is identical to the nuvi 885T, except the cheaper GPS receiver omits Bluetooth and uses an FM traffic receiver instead of MSN Direct. Critics point out that with these voice-command auto GPS devices, you'll give up some of the useful features from the midprice Garmin nuvi 7x5 series, including 3-D building view and a faster map refresh rate.

TomTom dominates in the U.K. market, and testers there prefer the TomTom Go 930 (*Est. $380) and its version with traffic information included, the TomTom Go 930T (*Est. $420). Reviewers say these car GPS receivers include some nifty features: advanced lane guidance (similar to Garmin's lane assist, which tells you which lane to be in at an interchange), IQ routes (which draws upon other TomTom users' experiences to pick the best routes) and dead reckoning, which allows the units to keep navigating even if they lose the satellite signal.

But U.S. reviewers find flaws with these high-end TomTom GPS systems. Advanced lane guidance and IQ routes aren't available in most areas. TomTom's free Home software -- which you must use to download any new voices or map updates -- "is so buggy I had to uninstall it in order to restore my PC to a functioning state," writes GPSMagazine.com's Previn. Rich Owings of GPSTracklog.com says the software failed the first time he tried to install it.

Finally, testers say the TomToms understand some voice commands, but you can't run them by voice alone as you can with the Garmin voice-command GPS receivers. The same holds true for the cheaper TomTom Go 730 (*Est. $265), which is almost exactly like the pricier TomTom Go 930 except it lacks dead reckoning.