When we first drove to France about five years ago, I treated myself to a TomTom One which did the job well enough but I upgraded it shortly afterwards to a TomTom 720T mainly because of the larger screen, which I used on several holidays to France and through Switzerland to Northern Italy.
After four years of trouble free ownership and a good many miles travelled, the internal battery wasn't holding it's charge, so I recently used £100 of Love 2 Shop vouchers that I was sent for changing my energy supplier towards the cost of a new TomTom 825, which in my opinion is excellent. The Live traffic info is brilliant and the unit re-routes around potential hold ups very quickly. The ability to search Google for local info such as petrol stations and restaurants etc. without having to pay extortionate 'roaming' charges for going online on my mobile is going to prove very useful, too.
On top of all that, I sold my old 720T on eBay and got over £80 for it, so my net cost to upgrade was less that £20.
I think that sat-navs, like cars and cameras, are all a matter of personal taste. I have only ever used TomTom sat-navs, much the same as I have only ever used Canon SLR and DSLR cameras. Whilst I don't doubt that other makes would produce the same results, I have always been pleased with what I have owned and never seen the need to change. If however, I had been disappointed with a particular brand, then perhaps I would have changed my loyalty.
