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Satnavs - Which One ?
perksy - 25/4/16 at 07:09 PM

The boss has decided she wants a satnav for the tin top

TomTom is a name that springs to mind straight away, but wondered what folks recommend ?

Any links to good deals would be appreciated, although I know Halfords do some good deals now and again

Budget is under £100 if possible as I don't think it will get used alot


Thanks

balidey - 25/4/16 at 07:15 PM

If it won't get used much then I would suggest a 2nd hand one. Easily get one for less than £50.
Map updates are not as important as you think. The off new stretch of road, but for when you are in the 'middle of a field' then you just follow the signs.
I often think about getting a new one, but the amount of times I (don't) use it, my 2nd hand one is fine.

Doctor Derek Doctors - 25/4/16 at 07:15 PM

If she/you have Smart Phone with Google maps it has SatNav included now. Works really well, has live traffic and its free.

loggyboy - 25/4/16 at 07:18 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Doctor Derek Doctors
If she/you have Smart Phone with Google maps it has SatNav included now. Works really well, has live traffic and its free.


This. But make sure u phone has decent gps. Or consider a 10htz bluetooth module. Will be lots more accurate than even dedicated satnavs and only cost about 40 (used).

sonic - 25/4/16 at 07:19 PM

I had one of the first Tom Tom Ones and it was great, fast forward a few years and after selling my car that had satnav built in i got bought one of the new Tom Toms, i have got to say it is to slow, i have updated it many times online and it is really pants.

daniel mason - 25/4/16 at 07:21 PM

I use a garmin nuvi 2599 With live traffic.it works really well

benchmark51 - 25/4/16 at 07:51 PM

I used to use Tom Tom regularly and it worked really well. Had a few 'occasions' with it like new roads and bridges missing. At the time garmin was rated because it allows for what you were driving, car, bus, lorry. As mobile phones improved I switched to a smart phone and am quite happy with its satnav. Golden rule is, they do not replace common sense. If it says turn left and it happens to be a river then don't. Some numpties do!!

gremlin1234 - 25/4/16 at 08:02 PM

quote:
Had a few 'occasions' with it like new roads and bridges missing.
went to LeMans one year and the satnav kept trying to put us on a road that was still being built.

russtik - 25/4/16 at 08:13 PM

The short answer: Buy an older TomTom off eBay, you should be able to get one for less than £50 if you're savvy.


Why? Simple reason is the older ones come with a really useful (vital) feature called 'itinerary planning' that got dropped from the newer models. This feature is great if you're going out on a group run to a pre-organised route, you can all share the exact route and not have to worry about keeping sight of each other all the time.

Good models are the GO range (GO 5##, GO 7## etc...), XXL, One 2nd Gen and probably a few others. SD card slots are a feature to look out for as this allows you to buy a card big enough to fit European maps on.

If you're technically minded (or know someone who is) maps and firmware can be updated for free with files from sites like this:

http://gpsunderground.com/forum/gps-navigation-systems/tomtom-gps-syst ems/

And remember; the cheaper you manage to find one the less precious about it you'll be when it gets wet, so that's a bonus I have two, so one's spare for this eventuality.

Russ

andyace - 25/4/16 at 08:18 PM

Halfords have a number of ex display models, Tom Tom and Garmin on offer at the moment .... good value .... Personally I have had tom tom and Garmin models and have found either are good, Garmin I have found are priced better.

Adamirish - 25/4/16 at 09:07 PM

I just bought a harming, can't remember the model but it's £99 in halfrauds. It's very good, has free lifetime updates etc too. Much much better than the cheap one I had before.

geoff shep - 25/4/16 at 09:20 PM

Does she have a smartphone?

owelly - 25/4/16 at 10:20 PM

As said, the older Tom Toms were a lot better than the newer ones!
I have http://navmii.com/ on my smart phone. Watch for battery use as it's possible to use more than can be replenished by the USB charger! I also have it installed on my cheapo Android tablet. Both devices can be used as a heads-up display which is quite nifty at night! Navmii allows you to upload maps to your device so you don't need to have interweb connectivity whist you're driving!
The last time I used my Tom Tom, by the time it managed to switch-on and get started, it was twenty minutes too late to be of any use!!

nick205 - 26/4/16 at 07:57 AM

A smart phonr app is IMHO the way to go, but you need and on-screen holder and a charger plugged in to keep it going. That said I've recently had a very poor experience with the CoPilot app on my Samsung Galaxy S5 Mini phone - it just didn't work and CoPilot's technical support email was hopeless. I'm looking to try something different now after getting a refund from them (some effort involved to get it though).

David Jenkins - 26/4/16 at 07:59 AM

I found that my Nexus 4 smartphone got really hot during a long journey. There were also times when I couldn't get a good signal, rendering the map useless (I know I can pre-load maps, but you have to know your route before you start).

My Toyota has a built-in TomTom satnav, and it's a bit... meh... it works, but it could be better.

russbost - 26/4/16 at 08:18 AM

Have to say I disagree with much of what has been said "buy a second hand for less than £50" - all maps & more to the point, speed cameras will be out of date, battery life when not plugged in will be dire & it may well give up the ghost within a few weeks or months anyway. If you want to go the cheap route then buy a brand new but cheap unit off Ebay, my daughter paid around £30 for one about 3 years ago, still going strong, has an MP3 & video player & loads of other stuff besides the satnav - is it the very latest technology & newest graphics, no - to a certain extent you get what you pay for.

"Use a smartphone" - well, depending how new your smartphone is that might be a semi-sensible option & if you already have it, then it's "free" - but satnav is known for making phones run hot, which I doubt is good for them, & unless you have it plugged in you'll finish up with a flat battery in a couple of hours or so. They are good in that maps/cameras are up to date or (usually) can be brought up to date for free & there's some good software available like "waze" or similar, but a phone is designed for making calls/texts rather than its gps capabilities & I once drove from Essex to Birmingham with 5 people & 7 phones in the car & none of them could consistently pickup gps/3g signals just because weather was heavy overcast - my dedicated satnav worked perfectly the whole time. The other thing is that although the phone (depending on phone & software) will "see" traffic in realtime, I have yet to see a phone programme that will offer an alternative route you can choose with just one click to avoid the jams - if you see the bad traffic on the programme you're going to have to pull over & work out a way around it

My suggestion would be to buy a new Tom Tom, I bought the 500 (5" screen), cost around £125 with lifetime free map updates (hunt around as you can pay a LOT more than that), I also pay £20pa to keep cameras up to date. It's massive advantage from my point of view is that it's 100% reliable & 99% reliable to have the "smart" traffic features (very occasionally the Tom Tom servers aren't available). This means that when it says you will arrive at x 0'clock it is rarely more than 5 or 10 minutes out, if traffic suddenly gets worse up ahead then it will recognise that & offer you an alternative route. It is also "aware" of areas that have heavy traffic at particular times of day etc. so if you travel the same route at different times it may well not offer you the same route, but some deviations which avoid the traffic. Is it better/worse than earlier Tom Toms as some people have suggested - well MS seem pretty good at creating updates or new programmes which are worse than the ones b4, so I'm certainly not going to say Tom Tom haven't done that, but as I've never had an older Tom Tom (I had a Garmin b4 that was, quite frankly awful!) then I can't comment, but I think a certain amount of criticism may come from the fact that when you're used to the way something works then it's annoying that a new method replaces that - my biggest gripe with it is that when you're away from home, you have to go thro' a couple of screens to select home as a destination

Hope whatever you choose works for you!

Slimy38 - 26/4/16 at 09:50 AM

quote:
Originally posted by russbost
I have yet to see a phone programme that will offer an alternative route you can choose with just one click to avoid the jams - if you see the bad traffic on the programme you're going to have to pull over & work out a way around it


Google maps does recalculate routes if it can find them, I frequently get prompts saying that I could save x minutes by going a different way. Although the only drawback is that it's often wrong about the average speed on some of the dirt tracks it considers as being a 'diversion', and going round the traffic can often take longer than just sitting in it. If the saving is less than ten minutes I dismiss them as it's not worth the risk.

It was a boon once when coming back from London to Birmingham. Oxford and surrounding areas were completely screwed, it took me cross country and eventually ending up on the M5 to head north (normal route is M40/M42/M6 toll). I was only half an hour longer than I had expected to arrive, but I found out the M40/M42 had been blocked for pretty much my entire journey so it would have been far later if I hadn't trusted the maps.

russtik - 26/4/16 at 10:39 AM

quote:
Originally posted by russbost
Have to say I disagree with much of what has been said "buy a second hand for less than £50" - all maps & more to the point, speed cameras will be out of date, battery life when not plugged in will be dire & it may well give up the ghost within a few weeks or months anyway.

As I mentioned maps (& speed cameras & other things) can be updated on older devices for free using files readily available online. It may not be as straightforward as plugging the thing into TomTom Home and hitting the update button but it's all very doable. Batteries can be replaced for little money, I've done it to both of mine and they were about £5 each and for the best part this is irrelevant as they spend their entire time plugged into a 12V power supply. Even a brand new sat nav is unlikely to last more than a couple of hours on battery.

Older models have the benefit of being cheap, good (still prefer it to any smartphone app I've tried) and have the 'itinerary planning' feature (missing from newer models) that we use extensively in SKCC for all runs and trips that require navigation between a set of chosen way points rather than basic A-to-B navigation you get with virtually all other methods.

I'm only saying this so that people know what's available to them. By all means fork out for a brand new device if you like things simple

coyoteboy - 26/4/16 at 11:59 AM

Have had access to all sorts of sat navs including built in, tomtom and garmins. Always just end up using my phone as it's generally more up to date, doesn't require updating manually and is always with me anyway.


quote:

I have yet to see a phone programme that will offer an alternative route you can choose with just one click to avoid the jams - if you see the bad traffic on the programme you're going to have to pull over & work out a way around it


Google maps shows up to 3 different routes at the start or if you click on a nearby road when you get stuck in a traffic jam it'll report the expected increase or decrease in time. It's based on live data and will put you on whatever is currently the quickest route depending on current or *projected* traffic levels.

[Edited on 26/4/16 by coyoteboy]

Toprivetguns - 26/4/16 at 06:18 PM

Well I recently bought the new U2 model SatNav and I must say it's rubbish....

the streets have no names and I still haven't found what I'm looking for !!!

[Edited on 26/4/16 by Toprivetguns]

coyoteboy - 28/4/16 at 05:44 PM