Which Sat nav to buy - Tomtom Garmin

[MarriedBlonde]

Hi

I am looking to buy a new portable satnav for my bus, I've been a fan of Tomtom's for years. I bought a new tomtom last year with the new interface and wasn't keen, even less so when the gps reciever couldn't lock onto a signal. This was returned.

Does anyone know if the new versions are any better?

Or do I look else where. It needs to have a decent sized screen and cover Europe.

Thanks,

J.

 

[billy21]

I had a Tom Tom device - it was good but I found the map updates troublesome and expensive. I paid £50 for a European map and it didn't load properly (despite several time consuming attempts). In the end I cought a cheap Garmin device with the European maps pre-loaded for about £80 and it was just as good as the Tom Tom.

 

[Dec]

If you have a good smart phone try it with Sygic … Sygic | GPS Navigation for Android and iPhone
You can have 2 or 3 sat nav on one device.

Dec

 

[brucemillar]

Have you looked at a Wife-Wife?

Set up costs are expensive and ongoing maintenance can be high depending on where you keep it when not in use.

Down side: Very irritating voice with no pitch control and intermittent mute facility.

Upside: Great directional control if looking for retail outlets. Variable response to road tests on pubs.

Three versions are available:

The Widebody - Requires a regular upload of pies.
The Nagger - Comes in Wide or Slim but does get easily confused - Your fault.
The Wallet Emptier - Best avoided. Looks great when purchased but deteriorates rapidly and does not provide you with a good servicing. When discarded does what it says on the tin.

 

[Ted]

The Widebody - Requires a regular upload of pies.
The Nagger - Comes in Wide or Slim but does get easily confused - Your fault.
The Wallet Emptier - Best avoided. Looks great when purchased but deteriorates rapidly and does not provide you with a good servicing. When discarded does what it says on the tin.

Worth pointing out that all three can be installed on the one device.

 

[brucemillar]

Have you looked at a Wife-Wife?

Set up costs are expensive and ongoing maintenance can be high depending on where you keep it when not in use.

Down side: Very irritating voice with no pitch control and intermittent mute facility.

Upside: Great directional control if looking for retail outlets. Variable response to road tests on pubs.

Three versions are available:

The Widebody - Requires a regular upload of pies.
The Nagger - Comes in Wide or Slim but does get easily confused - Your fault.
The Wallet Emptier - Best avoided. Looks great when purchased but deteriorates rapidly and does not provide you with a good servicing. When discarded does what it says on the tin.

The makers have asked me to point out the following updates have been applied.

The Widebody - This now has Dynamic Avoidance Routing as standard. It will Dynamically re-route to avoid:

Salad Bars
Gym's
Swimming Baths

The Nagger - Has been updated with Voice Sensitive software. This means that the unit will ignore most/all commands that you issue and will only route to destinations in it's own logic. Certain words can cause a system melt down and should be avoided:

Pub
Golf
Mates
Footy

The Wallet Emptier - No upgrades are planned at this time.

 

[ChrisA]

ahhhh yes, just like the Wife's TumTum, you need a compass to get around it!

 

[wongl]

I had a Tom Tom device - it was good but I found the map updates troublesome and expensive. I paid £50 for a European map and it didn't load properly (despite several time consuming attempts). In the end I cought a cheap Garmin device with the European maps pre-loaded for about £80 and it was just as good as the Tom Tom.

+1 for TomTom, but maps and live-traffic update can be expensive once the bundled stuff expires. Look out for the newer models that comes with lifetime map updates and even with lifetime free traffic updates.

If you drive in Europe, worth consider getting the European models and get roaming charges included in the live traffic updates while driving outside of the UK.

 

[MarriedBlonde]

If you have a good smart phone try it with Sygic … Sygic | GPS Navigation for Android and iPhone
You can have 2 or 3 sat nav on one device.

Dec

Hi Dec,

I am looking for something with a 5" screen as a minimum. I need it for my 69 VW camper. Noisey, uncomfortable and not the smoothest. MY iPhone screen is too small. :-(

J.

 

[MarriedBlonde]

+1 for TomTom, but maps and live-traffic update can be expensive once the bundled stuff expires. Look out for the newer models that comes with lifetime map updates and even with lifetime free traffic updates.

If you drive in Europe, worth consider getting the European models and get roaming charges included in the live traffic updates while driving outside of the UK.

Happy to buy one of the new tomtom's that have the traffic and map updates included. What I am not so happy with is the new interface. The last one I tried was rubbish. I was hoping someone would come along and tell me the new ones are now fixed and pretty much bug free.

J.

 

[MarriedBlonde]

Have you looked at a Wife-Wife?

Set up costs are expensive and ongoing maintenance can be high depending on where you keep it when not in use.

Down side: Very irritating voice with no pitch control and intermittent mute facility.

Upside: Great directional control if looking for retail outlets. Variable response to road tests on pubs.

Three versions are available:

The Widebody - Requires a regular upload of pies.
The Nagger - Comes in Wide or Slim but does get easily confused - Your fault.
The Wallet Emptier - Best avoided. Looks great when purchased but deteriorates rapidly and does not provide you with a good servicing. When discarded does what it says on the tin.

I've had one of those, it was the nagger, not great at giving turn directions, generally I think the inbuilt GPS was about 10 foot out.

When I threw wife wife out of the car it was expensive to refit her.

The accesories are very expensive as well and not really worth while IMHO, meant wife wife nagged less for a short while but nagging soon returned.

 

[IanA2]

I have an v. old TT which is still pretty good, but mostly I use TT with iPhone and one of those clever TT mounts. Works for me.

 

[markdt10]

Garmin every time - they are a much bigger (and better) company than Tom Tom !

 

[Giantvanman]

Garmin for me. Lifetime updates is one of £99 with updates every three months. Satellite lock is very quick.

 

[Sp!ke]

Consider perhaps a cheap 7" android tablet combined with sygic.

The mapping is excellent.

 

[wongl]

Happy to buy one of the new tomtom's that have the traffic and map updates included. What I am not so happy with is the new interface. The last one I tried was rubbish. I was hoping someone would come along and tell me the new ones are now fixed and pretty much bug free.

J.

Interesting you should you say that. I thought that TomTom had the best interface on the market - didn't Which? made this conclusion too? Last year I picked up a rental car in Germany to drive up to Denmark. Got given a Garmin and with the help of the service desk, the destination address was duly programmed into the Garmin which wouldn't start guidance - was told that it wouldn't start guidance because of a lack of GPS signal inside the office. Fair enough, started driving, left the airport, got onto highway, still no direction. Ended calling the help desk which was useless and ended up having to reboot the Garmin to get it to work properly. Not a great experience and certainly not as intuitive as the TomTom.

 

[malluboy77]

I have been using Navfree on my iPad on iPhone for a while. The app is free and works well. Can also switch tracks on the same app while navigating.

 

[Dec]

Hi Dec,

I am looking for something with a 5" screen as a minimum. I need it for my 69 VW camper. Noisey, uncomfortable and not the smoothest. MY iPhone screen is too small. :-(

J.

Having a sat nave on a phone, and if you want it t be pocket portable, you can’t really go much bigger than a 5 inch screen but if you are thinking on a dedicated devise for sat nav then 7 to 10 inch screen, or more, is the way to go.

The day of single use sat nav device is numbered because you are restricted to one brand and one purpose only.
With a large screen like an ipad type device you can access the internet as well so its multi purpose.

Dec

 

[MarriedBlonde]

Interesting you should you say that. I thought that TomTom had the best interface on the market - didn't Which? made this conclusion too? Last year I picked up a rental car in Germany to drive up to Denmark. Got given a Garmin and with the help of the service desk, the destination address was duly programmed into the Garmin which wouldn't start guidance - was told that it wouldn't start guidance because of a lack of GPS signal inside the office. Fair enough, started driving, left the airport, got onto highway, still no direction. Ended calling the help desk which was useless and ended up having to reboot the Garmin to get it to work properly. Not a great experience and certainly not as intuitive as the TomTom.

I've an old Tomtom that my wife uses in her car (even though she has the latest command in her ML but there you go) it has the old interface and is about 3 years old. Works perfectly has the HD traffic.

I bought a new one last year to go to Le Mans with (I also have command but didn't trust it abroad) it was one with the new type of interface. It locked onto the satellites once and never worked again. I didn't like the new interface so returned it and haven;t got round to replacing it yet. But I need one for a trip to the south of france later this year and also the speedo in my bus is a work of fiction

Reading the reviews it seems like the new tomtom does seem to win all the tests, although the Garmins are not that far behind.

 

[chrisaaaaa]

I have had them all over the years.

TomTom has the best UI - most expensive maps.

Garmin is useable but lifetime map updates and TMC are quite reasonable. Weirdly POI coverage in the USA on a fully legal downloaded update was poor.

Cheap ebay jobs are slow, but I find iGo pretty useable, and being ebay the vendors often provide world map coverage.

On android, best of the bunch is waze, but it needs a data connection for traffic and re-routing.

MB command - provides a nice flat surface to mount a real sat-nav