a nav one for the car, or a hand held for hiking. I love my tomtom and would definitely buy another. i also have a garmin efx hand held, very easy to use and works well.
Garmin is a sponsor of our show so I know there product pretty well. Although it depends on what you want to do with it. I like the Garmin nuvi for the car nav stuff, but If I go backpacking, I am taking the Magellan handheld, the triton series is good.
For hiking Magellan is just better. They use the National Geo maps for the base maps and for hiking they are great.
As for the car stuff, most in car navs have a similar base map, most just use different color representation and icons. The main differences are the routing systems they are using. I would rate Garmin, Tom Tom close to the top for small removables, the better bargin will be the Tom Tom, but if you can afford it the Nuvi is the way to go.
My friend has a Pioneer (I think thats it) in dash touch screen for his fox. Worked great on our trip to South Carolina. Used the Tom Tom before and it too works well.
magellan 4250. 4.3" glare resistant screen. preloaded U.S., Canada, P.R. on 2gb internal memory, 6 million POIs, text-to-speech (says street names), voice command, 4 hour battery life, bluetooth, AAA. and it looks good. normally $499, $399 at radioshack right now.
also check out a company called Navigon. newer company so prices are still relatively low, but they come with lifetime traffic updates for free where you normally have to pay either monthly or yearly for (about $100 a year) with the other brands, all units have text-to-speech, and is the only company to have "Reality View" maps.
The reviews don't look so good on that navigon though, and you can get the magellan 4250 for $10 cheaper. I agree though that the picture and view looks sweet on the navigon.
All the tow truck drivers rave about them. They say it saves them priceless time and money. Most of them talk about a "tom-tom". I don't have one, so I personally don't know how much they are or how they compare to others.