road angel versus tomtom.. speed camers alerts ?

Lum

That's only true for the new "Connected" version of the Road Angel, not for the classic Road Angel which the OP seems to be looking at.

withabix: How are you finding that database in terms of false alarms? Last time I tried it they seemed to be very good at adding new sites but not so good at taking them away when the cameras are removed. Too many false alarms and you'll eventually start to ignore the warnings making it a waste of money.

As for the "drive within the law" comment, it's far far too easy to screw up these days. For example if the council decides that your local 40mph road needs to be a 30, all they do is remove the 40 signs, not put up new 30 signs, so if you're commuting down this road every day and they put up a camera on both sides you could easily rack up 6 or 8 speeding offences (enough to get banned twice over) before you get the first ticket in the post

withabix

Lum wrote: »

How are you finding that database in terms of false alarms? Last time I tried it they seemed to be very good at adding new sites but not so good at taking them away when the cameras are removed. Too many false alarms and you'll eventually start to ignore the warnings making it a waste of money.

They do updates every 1-2 weeks these days and indicate how many cameras have beed added and removed.

I find them to be very up to date. The updates rely on official data and subscriber-submitted info. They seem to have lot of active subscribers these days, so the data gets better and better.

TomTom's own database is rubbish.

pennymakespounds

Graham.. good to see you on here.

Looking at my original post on here.. where i was querying what i get on my tomtom one for the £19.95 a year ... versus what a road angel plus does ...

seems as though the responses so far seemed to say i should just have a tomtom with pocketgpsworld £20 a year updates.

I'm really struggling to see why / how the road angel is better ?

thanks.

molerat

Road Angel has directional cameras, Tomtom just uses a point on the map, it will warn you whatever direction you are approaching it from even on dual carriagewys. Road Angel has a speed limit display far superior to TT's.
Road Angel has an excellent database of accident blackspots, schools etc.

RA is far superior to TT as a safety camera device but you have to weigh up the cost against your existing TT and the very good PGPS database. TT's own database is rubbish

Lum

The difference is purely down to the quality of the database. I use an Origin B2 (these days called Pogo Alert), a product which I'm sure Graham is aware of since I'd view them as Road Angel's main competitor. Prior to that I used a Morpheous Geodessey which was the first GPS camera warning system out in the UK (and still the only one that's really useful on motorbikes).

In terms of quality of database, Origin and Road Angel seem to have pretty similar procedures in terms of how they get their data and the fact that they verify it in person. The PGPS database seems to be a community database, my experience with this was setting it up on my mum's satnav a few years back and comparing the two.

I found that a lot of old cameras would be left on the PGPS database after they were removed and that the type of camera was not mentioned (though this may have changed since then) as as hinted at in an earlier post, from time to time some muppet would flag a trafficmaster or CCTV camera as a speed camera.

I guess ultimately it comes down to how much you drive and where you drive, and whether the savings you make are worth the inaccuracy and inconvinience. For me I do about 40,000 miles a year all over the country as part of my job so it is worth paying the extra for a more accurate database. If I mostly just pottered around town with the odd regular trip to Newport (ie. journeys where I know all the camera locations anyway) then the PGPS database would likely be fine, I'd quickly get used to the false alarms and would only have to worry if something new popped up.

As for the choice of the Origin B2 over the Road Angel, that was purely down to the physical shape and mounting options available. RA sticks to the windscreen with a single cigarette lighter lead available which is nice and convinient, but the B2 comes with a separate mounting cradle that you stick to the dashboard and wire it in, then position the GPS antenna and laser detector separately. You can remove the actual device and leave all the wiring in place. It allows the potential for a much neater install if you're prepared to take the time. I had to buy a second cradle for the other car, of course.

withabix

molerat wrote: »

Tomtom just uses a point on the map, it will warn you whatever direction you are approaching it from even on dual carriagewys.

Wrong! - well it certainly is wrong for the Pocketgpsworld database - only alert in the correct direction.

banger9365

well i have had a road angle for years and there good put the data base is not a patch on the pocketgps data base ,pocket gps data is far superior than the road angle data base and it cannot be updated on a vista 64 where has the pocket gps data base you can and that's not including the price difference of £30 a year
plus you can get a sat nav for how much ,now a days
road angle really needs to look at it's pricing and support for it's hardware
well garmins safety cameras are only £30 and there better than the road angle data base too,
i driven many miles over the years,towns ,city's,rural roads,motorways and never had the laser go off or found a mobile site with the road angle and it's even missed fix cameras,i had four fixed cameras in my area and told road angle about them and it still took months to get them on the data base put hay i only paid the subscription ,why would they listen to me a lonely HGV driver.
at the same time there was a lot of people at work with the road angle and we all us sat nav's now with pocket gps camera data base on,and we have not missed a camera or mobile site with it

Lum

Ok that's pretty bad, Vista 64 has been out for a year or so now. My Origin B2 update works just fine on Vista 64

mountainbiker

Sorry guys - think my last post was moderated off for some reason

molerat

mountainbiker wrote: »

Sorry guys - think my last post was moderated off for some reason

You need to contact the admin team to be allowed to post as an official spokesperson.