With its extraordinarily comprehensive feature set and a list price of $1,099, the new StreetPilot 2720 assumes the top spot among Garmin's GPS automotive offerings in more ways than one. Not only is it the top of Garmin's line, but we are awarding it our Editors' Choice for high-end in-car GPS navigation systems as well. We still think the Lowrance iWAY 500c is the best product in the midrange price category, with the TomTom GO 300 close on its heels (a review of this product is coming soon). The Garmin 2720, however, has even more configuration and setting options, an impressive text-to-speech ability (not found in the other two products), and add-on options that raise the bar (and the price).

Although the shape is similar to the StreetPilot 2620, the new model comes loaded with additional features. The StreetPilot 2720 is a WAAS-enabled portable automotive GPS navigation system with a 12-channel receiver and an internal antenna. A standard MCX antenna connector is available should you want to use an external antenna. Otherwise, the weighted "bean bag" mount secures the unit to your dashboard.

One of the most important characteristics of an automotive GPS navigation system is the quality and readability of its screen. The excellent 3.8-inch (454 by 240 pixels) touch screen found on the 2720 represents a significant improvement over those found in the 2620 and the "C" series products. A built-in light sensor allows the screen to dim the brightness automatically as the ambient light decreases, and to change to the night color scheme after dark. During our extensive road tests in varying lighting conditions, we found the screen to be very readable—even when viewed in bright sunlight through polarized sunglasses.

The 2720 features Garmin's new, easy-to-use interface, first introduced in the C330. It shares many of the C330's other features and menus, but adds many more configuration options. For example, the 2720 has multiple navigation options, and for each route set up, you can choose among the shortest, fastest, or off-road routes. There are eight different types of vehicle routing profiles (auto, truck, emergency, etc.) as well, and nine avoidance (highway, toll road, carpool lane, etc.) preferences that you can set. The 2720 supports multisegment routes, and has four separate mileage logs to help businessmen who have to report mileage.

Two large touch-screen buttons, "View Map" and "Where To?" adorn the 2720's opening screen. There are also smaller icons for Tools, Settings, and Volume. Four hardware buttons aligned along the right side of the unit perform major functions, including Find, Menu, Map, and Speak.

The StreetPilot 2720 comes preloaded with complete maps for the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. As with most GPS navigation systems in this class, it provides several choices for orienting the displayed map: 2D (dimensional) North, 2D Track up, and 3D track up views are available in both the map and navigation modes. You can also adjust the displayed text size for most screen elements, including street names, exits, and city names. Though it's buried in the menu system, you can even configure which data fields you want to appear on screen for both the navigation and non-navigation map views.

Also new in the 2720 is text-to-speech conversion. This means that the unit can not only tell you which direction to turn, but it will also announce the name of the street or highway. We found that it did a very credible job of pronouncing even tongue-twisters like Massanutten, Virginia.

You can get live traffic data on the 2720 if you buy the GTM10 receiver ($199 list). The GTM10 is a radio data service (RDS) receiver that gathers live traffic data in more than 50 major markets, using Clear Channel's Total Traffic Service, and feeds it into the 2720. Traffic alerts appear on the map screen, and the 2720 can be set to automatically reroute you around congestion. The first 15 months of service are included with the purchase of the GTM10, service after that is available at $50 per year. Though the data about construction delays, lane closures, accidents and congestion is not as complete as what you might receive from radio stations with traffic copters, it was helpful during our tests.

One other clever feature we really liked was an infrared remote control. With its 16 buttons and tiny thumb joystick, you can exert a great deal of control by feel without having to look at or touch the receiver itself.

We logged more than 1,200 miles during testing of the StreetPilot 2720, and throughout it provided accurate, turn-by-turn directions. It is quite simple to save new favorites and find points of interest near your current location or near a destination that you select. All of those features, combined with the nifty text-to-speech function, make the StreetPilot 2720 our current favorite among high-end in-car GPS navigation systems.