You can't watch a luxury car commercial these days without hearing about GPS—but what about GPS for the rest of us? Fear not: A new batch of relatively inexpensive GPS products for both in-car navigation and outdoor direction-finding have arrived.

The most popular GPS packages include the larger, more expensive portable in-car systems. But you'll also find Bluetooth receivers for PocketPC and Palm-based PDAs (our current Editors' Choice in that arena is the TomTom Navigator USA Bluetooth GPS, reviewed in February), as well as standalone handhelds more suited to open-air pursuits. All are accurate to about 3 meters from your destination and are very similar in terms of the GPS hardware. In-car systems come with color displays, but you'll pay a premium for that luxury on a dedicated handheld.

Another difference between units designed for in-car navigation and those designed for outdoor use is found in the mapping software. The Magellan RoadMate 700 (an in-car system) is the only GPS product we reviewed that has an on-board hard drive and comes fully loaded with maps. Other in-car devices and the standalone and PDA devices usually ship with only a basic base map that has major highways, landmarks, and little else on-board. For details, you have to download additional map data from software running on a PC to the unit directly or via an MMC or SD memory card.

Once you've loaded your maps and started your journey, though, you'll never have reason to get lost again.