Satellite Navigation (Merged)

JMU-95

hiya just checking can anyone recommend me a good sat nav (under £100) for use in both northern and southern ireland. i have read that garmin's are best for over here, but have used sisters tom tom, which was pretty good.

also

is it still the case that Garmins have better coverage for Northern Ireland?

motorguy

As far as i know, yes, garmin still the best.

TommyGun_2

I have a Garmin and its great in NI

Pretani

what Garmin is it Tommy?

I haven't committed to a specific Garmin yet, but I know Garmin is the best for NI+Rep. I'd like the 265 if I could get it cheap, but I'm really after one with 'text to speech' where it names the road to turn onto. I think this would be handier than it simply saying left or right, especially if there's a few roads close together.

bankrollism

As someone who has tried virtually all the incar GPS devices on the market today, I would rate iGO and Tomtom the two best for NI+ROI. I've seen iGO clones in Lidl in the past. I think Silvercrest supplied them. Maplins are selling Tomtom's for £99.

Destinator 7 has (or had) the best map coverage for the ROI.
Navigon is pretty to look at and has the best POIs for this part of the world, but I found the GPS had a delay of around 100yards, so by the time the unit tells you to make a turn, you'll probably have driven past it. The on-screen information is too small.

Stay away from Miomoov and Navman (same thing with a different name). The hardware and software are top notch, but the map updates are expensive and all too infrequent. Unless you want to unlock them and then install different GPS software, buy something else.

As for Garmin... I found the software and interface looked ugly and very dated. Ok for 2006 but not 2009.

As a final thought, you might want to look at Route66, AutoMapa and Sygic Drive.

JMU-95

ok, after a bit of research was thinking of either the basic Garmin 200
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Garmin-Widescreen-Satellite-Navigation-Mapping/dp/B000TUZVBY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1227004563&sr=8-1

or the Garmin 265 (UK, ROI & Europe) which Pretani suggested, which seems to have loads more extras for £30 more
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Garmin-Nuvi-Satellite-Navigation-System/dp/tech-data/B001E97FTK/ref=de_a_smtd

Thoughts?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Garmin-Nuvi-Satellite-Navigation-System/dp/tech-data/B001E97FTK/ref=de_a_smtd

thetope

i did some research on this a couple of weeks ago, was dithering between tomtom one v4 and the garmin 255 - i went to halfords and tried both out, i had three or four streets written down that i haven't been able to find with my existing satnav (dell pda navigator) the garmin didn't have the streets, but the tomtom did. which is a shame because the garmin with europe maps was £50 cheaper!! was unable to find out wether the 1 free update download that you get when you buy a garmin would have the streets i was looking for on it, i.e. was the softwar in halfords fully up to date or was the display unit a year old

Pretani

JMU-95, if Garmin is the make you want, bear in mind that the processor in the Nuvi 200 isn't as good as the 2*5 range (205/215/255/265). The screen refresh rate in the 2*5 range is quicker making the maps look alot smoother.

The 2*5 range locks onto satelites quicker than the older models.

The 265 will have 2009 maps as it has just been released in Oct, it's not guarenteed that the older models will have up-tp-date maps.

There are also discontinued models in the 300 - 600 range and according to this site it's not clear-cut what Garmin's status is concerning the free map update for those models, although some people have claimed they got free map update for the older models.

just as point of interest the 265 is the only model in the 2*5 range which has text-to-speech in Europe. The 255 in the states has it, but not the 255 in Europe.

You can get more info here about the nuvi range or info on other GPS's, here.

Pretani

thetope wrote: »

i did some research on this a couple of weeks ago, was dithering between tomtom one v4 and the garmin 255 - i went to halfords and tried both out, i had three or four streets written down that i haven't been able to find with my existing satnav (dell pda navigator) the garmin didn't have the streets, but the tomtom did. which is a shame because the garmin with europe maps was £50 cheaper!! was unable to find out wether the 1 free update download that you get when you buy a garmin would have the streets i was looking for on it, i.e. was the softwar in halfords fully up to date or was the display unit a year old

I was concerned about that too, but an admin on the GPS forums says, "The GPS signal is more accurate than the underlying map" and another member states, "Unless your home was personally visited by one of the mapping companies, they have no way to know exactly where your property and address starts, and where a neighbors ends."

bankrollism

If you want to test them out at home then there are PC versions of Garmin, Destinator 7, iGO8 and AutoMapa that will run straight from your desktop PC (Vista or XP). You can find download links on Google.

There isn't a PC version of Tomtom but you can run version 7 from inside the Microsoft Device Emulator (you may need to download VirtualPC if you have trouble installing it).

It might help you make a decision.