It will CHANGE your life.

The key advantage it has over Tom Tom is its portability. You would be hard-pressed to slip a Tom Tom in your pants pocket (at least without attracting attention). The Nuvi is about the size of a smartphone. I charge it in the hotel room each night and it runs on batteries all day. I just place it on the center console or in the cupholder when I get in the rental car and off I go. I'm zipping around cities I've never been to before like I'm a local.

Oh, yeah, it's also an mp3 player. But, isn't everything these days?

Only a couple of hitches in my Nuvi experience ...

- When you start up the unit in a different state than it was last used in (i.e., fly somewhere, get out, and power up the unit), it takes awhile to find the satellites (maybe 2 minutes)? I just factor this into my time and turn the unit on as soon as I get out of the terminal.

- I love that I can type in the name of a business (i.e., "Best Buy") and see the closest matches. But, every once in awhile, the Nuvi will lead me to a location that closed down, or never existed at all. Conveniently, it also has the phone number for these listings, so I just make sure to call before I press "Go." (There may be some sort of software update for this to download from the Garmin site, but I haven't figured it out yet.)

Best of luck in your search.