Prior to taking up the pen, I was a regional truck driver, with a city route in the out of town destination where I tested both devices. So I feel more than comfortable in judging the accuracy of the route planning and points of interest.

Both devices offer the ability to compute directions based on the fastest or the shortest route. Sadly, I found that neither device was capable of compiling the shortest, the fastest, or the most direct route. In fact, they both take the driver quite a bit out of the way. Both will get you to your destination, just don't expect it to be the best route available. While Mapopolis provided much better routes, and more sensible directions, it was unable to compile the most direct route as well. However, unlike the Delphi and Garmin units, the Mapopolis software didn't take me out of the way.

Regarding the points of interest, Delphi was quite accurate. In fact, it was accurate to businesses that had opened in just the past few months. The Garmin points of interest, on the other hand, were flat-out wrong. And on the Delphi unit, the POI icons and names were visible at any zoom level, whereas on the Garmin device, they were only visible at the closest zoom level.

While on my out of town trip, a family reunion with the in-laws, I checked Garmin's Nuvi 350 to see what points of interest were nearby; it listed a Dunkin Donuts a mere 1.5 miles away. Alright! We don't have Dunkin in my area any more, so I could really go for some of their coffee and donuts.

I followed the turn-by-turn voice directions and map precisely. But when the Garmin unit declared that I was at my destination, there was no Dunkin Donuts. In fact, there was no indication that there had ever been one at that location. I don't recall one being there when I had a delivery route in the area either, that was why I was so elated to see one listed on the POI. For verification, I then checked the Delphi, which did not list a single Dunkin Donuts anywhere in the entire metro area. Needless to say, I was quite disappointed.

The extras
These days, we consumers like to feel they're getting the most bang for their buck. I think this is why both Garmin and Delphi felt the need to pack in a load of extra features like games, photo viewers, calculators, and MP3 players. My feeling is that valuable storage and computing space is being taken up by a load of unnecessary applications -- storage and computing space that could be used for generating better route planning.

With the prevalence of all the portable media devices, I don't need or want those features and functions in my GPS device. What I do want in my GPS device is accurate maps, accurate directions, and accurate points of interest.

I wasn't all that impressed with these extra features anyway. The Garmin device would play MP3s while navigating, but the Delphi would not. Neither could create a playlist; merely play the files it detected in order, or shuffle. And the Delphi's video player was just horrendous. It took nearly a dozen separate tries to encode a file at a low enough resolution and bitrate that it would even play on the device. And by that time, the quality was so poor it was worthless. The audio was scratchy, and the image kept getting darker and darker, until it was no longer even visible.