Garmin Satnavs

I am on my third TomTom. Halfords usually have some good deals. Good support as well via an 0845 number.

There are two ways of getting on the net for live traffic..

A: BT to phone and using your phones data contract.

B: built in GPRS, no phone needed.

The BT option is cheaper.

They may also use BT for handsfree.

The tomtom devices still appear to have the edge in routing and live traffic.

Gradually it seems that sat nav maps and real time data are going subscription based and I forsee a future where its on your phone and you pay part of your contract for the updates etc for the satnav bit of it. I guess there will always be stand alone ones but maybe for specilised usage. Certainly the European sats that are about to go up will be backed up with terrestial based signals for awkward to navigate indoor areas etc, ad I suspect it will all get very complicated!

Brian

Three, TMC. Transmitted in the RDS data stream of many commercial FM radio stations. I thought some of the stand alone, rather the vehicle built in, Satnavs used that and it was free but wonkypedia doesn't support that idea.

I was once given a TomTom One and hated it compated to my previous (stolen) Garmin Nuvi 205W. I like the way the Garmin recalculates if you choose to change your route. I had the TomTom nagging me to turn around just because I entered my home road from an alternative junction. I ended up buying another Garmin and love it. I have downloaded free maps for the Canary Islands and the Balearic and Greek Islands and usually upload places I want to visit and my accomodation before I leave home.

Funny that. I started off with a Garmin Nuvi something or other since I already used a Garmin handheld for hill walking but was absolutely appalled by it. I don't hang about driving but on major routes the ETA was usually optimistic and I think it fair to say that you could never match the time without regularly exceeding speed limits but the real pain in the posterior was in route finding. The Garmin failed to distinguish between single carriageway roads and single track roads which meant that I was often diverted onto roads where 20 mph was a good average speed rather than the 40ish that Garmin programmers thought appropriate. It is disconcerting to be driving towards your destination and watch the ETA recede into the distance as though you were actually stationary or even going in the wrong direction. Garmin may have improved since for all I know but I wouldn't recommend their car based sat-navs although I would still recommend their hand helds.

What a difference the Tom-Tom made. ETAs based on real driver averages (time to take a break and still get there early) and the instructions are also made at a more appropriate time.

I thought it was possible to input your preferred speed on different types of roads - but I can't find it. Did I imagine it?

They do. My venerable Garmin Nuvi 610 does.

No, there is a subscription, but some satnavs (mine included) came with the option of a lifetime subscription.

SteveW

Is that meant to be a plus point?

tim

I don't know but I never found anything like that on the Nuvi.

OTOH I seem to remember that the ancient CD I had from the AA for route planning had some such facility.

I gave up using my Sat Nav & now use a smart phone. Better in every way.

Never tried telephone support but email support was rubbish and one particular journey (both directions) destroyed any idea that it was good at devising the fastest route. Didn't think much to their website either. Route instructions were very good however.

Same here. Just as good as my Tom Tom, so I gave the Tom to my son.

I have almost given up using my TomTom satnav. Either use work's one which is a much enhanced model. Or, since partner got an iPad, get her to use that. I *know* I hate most social network crap, but have found Waze remarkably good on both iPad and, when I need to, on my Android phone.

Have to say that at some point I might be very tempted to have a tablet with its own 3 & 4g data with a screen of around seven inches for all the smart things and a cheap'n'cheerful phone for voice.

In message , Martin Brown writes

When SWMBO went to some ladyshop, I wandered round Tesco Extra(?) where I came across a Garmin Nuvi50 (? again) at what seemed like a good price, I think under £50, with a big sign above it saying free maps for life. This seemed an excellent deal, so I accosted an assistant and asked if it meant what it said, and what "for life" meant. He led me to a small area with a PC and a chair, and he went onto the Garmin website, but failed to find whether it meant my life, the life of the unit or the time it remained a current product. He then decided to ring Garmin, so we hung on for, it must have been, about 20 minutes, whereupon an obviously senior colleague came over and accosted him about the cost of the phone call. He was rebuffed because it was a freephone number.

I gave up and bought the unit, got it home and emailed Garmin to ask if it really had maps for life, and what it meant. I got an email back saying that it meant forever. About a week later I got a second email saying that model didn't come with maps for life.

I seem to have updated the maps twice and haven't paid anything extra.

It works very well. The street name pronunciation can be really bizarre, and the bottom right corner of the screen is more poke than touch. Like my older Garmin it doesn't cope with double roundabouts.

I also have a GoClever 7" Android 4 tablet that has GPRS, windscreen mounts, car charger and also does DVB-T with its little aerial, so I can break all sorts of laws at once. It might even be usable as a dashcam if I could work out how to record from the cameras into a circular file.

I haven't yet worked out how to do real satnav on that, though.

My Tom Tom uses it for free. No subscription ever paid (to whom, I wonder?). Google on Android is pretty good but not a patch on my TT. Lawrence

What smartphone, droid or apple and what satnav software?

Had the misfortune to (try to) use some ones iPhone "satnav" and it was pants compared to my ancient vesrion of TomTom running on an HP iPaq.

The droid version of TomTom gets a fair slating in the reviews and is expensive for an "app".

I have always thought that Nokia maps offered the best value for money. Just a pity that it does not work on Android phones.

Some aspects to consider:

a) Do you have a choice between North and direction of travel for the screen orientation.

b) Can you easily zoom in and out during a journey so that you can see what route you are taking.

c) Does the map show your personal saved points of interest.

d) Are updates charged for?

e) Google maps now show traffic info.

f) The last taxi I took was using some iphone app for traffic info. H had the phone moun ted in is car just for this.