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Last Updated
March 10, 2010 Editor's Rating 
 
The TomTom Ease is one of the latest GPS devices from TomTom and it appears extremely similar to the TomTom One 140 S. They both have 3.5-inch QVGA color touch screens and TomTom's EasyPort mount. The "inside" of the products however show their true differences.The Ease's power button has been moved to the back of the device rather than the common top edge position. Along the bottom edge there is a mini-USB port for charging and syncing the device. All map updates must be synced since the Ease doesn't feature an SD or microSD card slot. The "EasyPort" mount was anything but easy; to dashboard mount the device you must remove, rotate and replace the entire EasyPort assembly in order to angle the suction cup for connection to the included adhesive dashboard mount.
The biggest change to the TomTom Ease like I've said is beneath the surface; the Ease's home menu has been dramatically simplified versus the standard TomTom interface on the One and other devices. Previous TomTom products pit the user onto a home screen with six or more options to go to from there and menus become like a bad puzzle. The Ease features a home screen with two main options: Plan route and Browse map. The home screen also features a row of five smaller options for sound, day/night mode, help, options and done. Plan route takes the user to a submenu of destination options. Users can navigate to a preset home address, favorite destinations, a specific address, recent destinations or searchable points of interest. The browse map options takes users to an overhead map view for selecting a point on the map as a destination. The live navigation map doesn't differ much in aesthetic from other TomTom devices. In the upper corners are buttons for zooming in and out of the map. Along the bottom edge are information fields for speed, direction, destination information, etc. The Ease is TomTom's entry-level navigation device but it still benefits from advanced feature such as a text-to-speech engine, IQ Route's technology (which uses historical anonymous speed data to create time-sensitive routes) and TomTom's Share free user-generated map corrections network. We like that the Ease packs features such as text-to-speech and TomTom's advanced routing technologies into a package that is both smaller and simpler than other TomTom GPS devices. The Ease is also less expensive than its $139 twin competition. The Ease is available in three housing colors: black, white, and red. At a starting price of $119, the TomTom Ease is a steal. If you're interested in purchasing your first GPS or something meant simply for portability, then this device won't let you down.
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