Sat Navs

Hi,

I don't know if this is the appropriate place to ask but I wondeed if any one has any expereince of after market sat navs?

I can't afford one at the minute but will be looking to buy one some time.

My Dad has lent me his tom tom 300 which is pretty good........but are there btter out there?



cheers,


David

 

IMO TomToms are the best out there.

Look here for all your sat nav info :-

http://www.pocketgpsworld.com/

 

i've been using a tom tom go for several years now - the only times it's let me down is when i've told it the wrong destination - or my destination has been a brand new development (i.e. not on it's internal map) this last one could be fixed by me upgrading the map but to be honest it's not that much of a bother as long as i set the destination before i leave and can sort out the last few roads if necessary.

 

I got a TomTom Navigator 5 package for my Palm TX organiser and had a first run this very day en route to work (when I had to bring the car to transport several tons of Wadia back to the shop from whence it was borrowed). It worked very well. Only problem is, it's so fascinating to see the road rolling in 3-D before you that you have to consciously ignore it and watch the real road instead, on which there are real cars. And after a long time on the motorway, you get a shock when a cultured voice suddenly says to you, "At 800M, take the exit and stay left."

 

Thanks for the replies.

Like you, tones, I almost hit the roof the other day after being on the m'way for an hour or so.

I would say, they do tend to go by the shortest, rather than the BEST root, which meant that a bit ago I ended up driving along miles of lanes (incl a 1 in3 hill) with a sick engine.

 

Personally I'd recommend Garmins such as the Nuvi 350, but I personally use a handheld unit that I also use for outdoor activities, the Garmin 60CSx

 

david,
with the 'go' you can select all sorts of criteria in order to plan your route. shortest, quickest, no motorways etc.
shortest is always a laugh as it's litereally tried to take me down the side of fields to get to places. i usually stick to quickest. the thing i like about them is that if you know certain areas you can dive off down your own route and it just sorts itself out and shows you where to go when you don;t know again.

 

Cool, have you used the 'walking' function, would like to know how good that is, I would like to get this for my 02 XDA mini S (I-Mate K-Jam).

 

thanks for that

Cheers, Julian, my Dad said you couldn't do that.........I felt sure you must be able to. I'll give it a go.

AS you say you can miss a turning (deliberatly or otherswise) and it'll usually pick up the pieces after a bit. Very clever.

 

I use a Mio 701 phone/pda/satnav thing. it has tom tom on it and it works very well.

 

David,

I can endorse the recommendations for a TomTom, but whatever you do, don't leave it, or any of its bracketry etc in the car.

I found this out to my cost at Wembley Arena a few months ago!

 

Yes, agreed.

I was speaking to a taxi driver about them a few days ago, he said hed lost 2 (= apprx £900) in quick succession. Those were top of the range models; he now uses the base ones. they are now more nickable than stereos 'cos no wires.

Insurance (for him) futile as they crawl through some loop hole. Hope you had more joy.

As you say you only need to leave the tell tale ring on your windscreen......

I could be tempted with the pda/satnav idea..........a mate is very keen on the Hewlet Packard 4700 (IPAQ or something) but I ca n't justify an expensive one.

 

I work at Halfords so I have had a fair chance to play with most of the popular models out there...

IMHO, the best 'budget' model is the Tom Tom Great Britain at around £200 (this has replaced the Tom Tom One, which in turn replaced the 300 - it is functionally identical to the TomTom One but has slightly updated menus, and is slightly smaller and better looking).

There will shortly be a Tom Tom Europe which is the same but will also have European roads on a CD in the box, if you need this feature then I'd suggest waiting.

In terms of interface Tom Toms is the easiest to navigate, with the most logical and intuitive menus (the Garmin Nuvis come close but are not quite as user friendly, though bear in mind I have more experience with Tom Toms from the 300/500/700/900 range etc going way back so it may be a case that I'm just more familiar with the Tom Tom way of doing things).

You can go cheaper than the Tom Tom Great Britain (the Navsure 200i, 300i, and the Navman iCN520 are all cheaper ) but these models aren't as good, offering an inferior postcode search (4 digit rather than full 6/7 digit), smaller and poorer screen, and they aren't 'finger press' touchscreen operated which makes using them more fiddly, instead they use a pen to touch the screen or a combination of buttons/pen respectively.

In terms of updates and extras, TomTom has the edge - the TomTom plus services are easy to install onto the unit, and can include things like speed camera locations. As far as I am aware none of the cheaper models can be updated with this.

The higher end TomTom models offer a larger widescreen display, but also the following additional features:

510 - Bluetooth hands free, Major Roads of Europe

710 - As for the 510, but full European mapping

910 - As the 710, but with built in mp3 player with 20GB hard disk (!), American and Canadian mapping. All of the maps are on the hard drive which saves faffing around with different SD cards as well.

For the 'average' person who doesn't drive abroad though, the TomTom Great Britain does the job nicely enough IMHO - the additional features of the higher models add considerably to the cost, but in terms of getting around the UK (the actual navigation, which is the whole point surely!), you'd see little difference between the basic TomTom One or Tom Tom Great Britain and the higher end units.

My 2p...

 

Nice one Will, thanks very much.

I wondered where the 300 had gone....