UKC

Some collective UKC wisdom needed. My better half is driving home from Sweden this summer on her own and is vaguely nervous about find her way back to the ferry etc. with out getting too lost, so we are considering getting an in car GPS. At home we can both use our smart phones as GPS if necessary, but data roaming is so expensive abroad looking at the prices it seemed buying a dedicated one might be a reasonable investment.

What experiences do people have? We've been looking at a number around EUR 80 (so about 60-70 quid UK prices) that come with western Europe maps preloaded. Do people have good or bad experiences of particular models around that cheaper end of the market?

In reply to TobyA:

Tomtom on my iPhone is a revelation, assume it does android too...

In reply to TobyA:

In my experience you can't really go wrong with any of the garmin or tomotom kit.

Electronics is cheap these days, so a lot of the money is going on the map data, to the extent that you will find that most of the difference in price between units with and without detailed maps for area X is the cost of the map.

Most units have an SD card slot, so you can download maps & updates and add them later. I think they are ubiquitous, but it's worth checking before you buy.

In reply to hindu:

Tom Tom say they "are not active on the Android platform yet".

I read whilst reading up on it a while back that they think the development costs to port it to so many different configurations of handset (numbers of buttons, type and size of screen etc) make it a difficult proposition.

http://uk.support.tomtom.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/14133

I agree about Tom Tom on the iPhone. It is sleek intuitive and hasn't done anything but an excellent job for me. I would say that a big part of the consideration is how accessible and ergonomic the interface is. If you get a dedicated unit, look for one that doesn't have big fisher price clunky buttons and one that has either touchscreen or a large number of option control buttons. I'm not making any moral judgement, I expect everyone who has a satnav has acquiesced to use it whilst driving, so with that in mind, cycling through things whilst driving is likely to be a big hassle and make the device either less appealing to use or more dangerous to use.

In reply to TobyA:

I bought a Garmin and then soon after a Tomtom (top of the range in both cases), the Garmin was crap and the Tomtom was excellent - the difference was really quite astounding.


Chris

In reply to all: Thanks everyone. I had also understood that there were GPS apps for phones that avoid you needing to be on 3G all the time. My wife has an iPhone (I've got an HTC) so we can have a look at the Tom Tom one - so thanks Hindu and EZ.

In reply to Chris Craggs:


Astound us a bit - in what way was it better?

In reply to TobyA:

O2 have literally just texted me telling me that a day of data in Europe will be capped to £1.99 from July. So that might worth looking into?

In reply to TobyA: I bought a TomTom with EU mapping to replace my Garmin. The whole unit wasn't much more expensive than just the maps to update my Garmin. I much prefer the TomTom. I have satnav on my Android but it has a tendency to crap out if it tries to find an alternative route after I have gone wrong. I think that's probably a lack of memory problem. One of the things that quite clever on the Android is that when you arrive at your destination Google street view automatically shows a picture of the address.

Al

In reply to TobyA:

One of my mates has Copilot on Android and speaks fairly highly of it.

Neil

In reply to The_JT:

With a fairly low megabyte limit, if I recall, and it's a fixed charge, not a cap.

I think they're taking the mick, TBH. It complies with the letter of the EU rules, no doubt, but not in the slightest with the spirit of them.

Neil

In reply to TobyA: My phone and old old HTC has a GPS reciever and software in it, it's great as I don't use data and it still works where there's no phone signal - Co-Pilot that's the software! The company are shit to deal with but their software is pretty good.

In reply to Neil Williams: I've used co pilot to get me to Switzerland and Belgium and back a couple of times. I've found it great the biggest advantage has to be the maps are stored on you phone so doesn't need a data connection which means no sneaky charges while on the continent. The app itself is easy to use and clear to follow too I would recommend it damn sight cheaper than buying a satnav for 70quid.

In reply to TobyA:

We've had a Garmin for years and it's brill...my wife decided to 'upgrade' and bought a new Garmin and paid extra for a 'widescreen'...it's crap. Sounds like a female version of Stephen Hawkins. Really poor quality compared with the original.

In reply to digby:

>

If you know a postcode if was fine but any attempt to use the map interface (for a place you know but don't have a postcode) to zoom in out ended up jumping all over the place, plus there was a lot of lag, it was basically unusable.

I was also unimpressed with the fact that in Spain, N routes were always called North (not National) and E routes were East (not Euro) which struck me as pretty crap! I know it is an American machine but really.....



Chris

In reply to digby:
Garmin in car satnavs are astoundingly bad compared to TomTom.

The faults with my girlfriends Garmin (not including the issues with their awful maps which are worth a separate rant):

It gets left and right confused - Seriously! I can't even start to figure out how this happens but it happened several times on a recent trip to France and occasionally throws a fit near the A5 in North Wales.

It suffers from lag, meaning it can be several junctions behind your real position when driving in towns.

It drops signals with amazing regularity, when my tomtom and 2 smartphones both had good coverage (yes I'm sad enough to have compared 4 different satnav systems at once).

The display is rotten, their designers need to go back to school and learn about things like perspective. You can't tell the difference between a hairpin and a straight!

Lane guidance is non-existant, unlike my TomTom that was a cheap model 2 years earlier.

It has advanced traffic warnings unfortunately the calculations it does with this information have more in common with Bistromaths than actual numbers. ( http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Bistromathics ) For instance a 40 minute delay on the M1 recently took over an hour off our arrival time?!?!?

Basically don't buy a Garmin satnav, you'd be better off drawing maps on beer mats.

In reply to Chris Craggs:
Oh and don't try to use a Garmin to find something near a national border, I'm convinced that Garmin think there is a no-mans land between Wales and England.

In reply to Akers:

I was just looking at the app - it seems to be EUR 65. So cheaper but not by much. Tom Tom for iphones is actually more expensive that a number of satnavs we were looking at.

In reply to Chris Craggs:

I've got the Garmin nuvi widescreen and always use the map view. I don't have any trouble like you've had but what really annoys me is that the car is always in the middle of the screen. I don't need to know where I've been only where I want to go. I realise all GPSs are like this but they f@@k it up even further by putting menu bars at top and bottom restricting the view even more. I think there is a Tom Tom one that you can turn 90º and use portrait. Don't know whether it's good in other respects though.

In reply to TobyA:
Oh I don't know what your phone contracts are like but I've discovered that for £3 a day Vodaphone will allow me to use my contracts inclusive minutes+ data anywhere in Europe. So if you only need a couple of days then it'll hardly cost you anything.