SatNav recommendations: TomTom, SmartPhone or Tablet?

Wongsky

Lum wrote: »

Oh and a bonus point for using a phone. You're less likely to get lazy and leave the thing stuck to your windscreen overnight.

There is that, although personally, not something I've done, least that I can remember.

Last night, I was walking the hound, and walked past a car, that appeared to be parked up for the night, and it had a sat nav (from a distance) looked to be a TomTom, from the mount - attached but actually on.

So being a wrong-un, almost as bad as Rongo the hound I was walking, I nicked it - that'll learn 'em.

(So I'm joking, but all the same, it's one thing to carelessly leave a sat nav still in the car, slightly more to still be on the mount, but actually on? It wasn't a case of just nipped in the house for a minute, I'd walked down a fairly long main road, and saw the light of the sat nav from a reasonable distance...)

Lum wrote: »

I do leave the mount stuck to my windscreen, but it's obvious that it's just a phone mount with no device in it.

For all the things I've used as sat navs, I've had windscreen mounts - my Nokia 5230 actually had one in the box (the official Nokia one for that handset) I had to buy the official one for my N8, but think it was less that £10 from Amazon.

I've since stopped using them, in the interim, I had used one of those dashboard donut type things to mount the, um, mount on, then the phone, but had a similar problem with it falling off there, as it did, from time-to-time, from the windscreen.

So now I've got one of those generic metal hinged things, with some tacky, rubberised covering on it, and what it sits on, to stay on the dash, and my N8 sits quite happily on it, and doesn't budge, or fall off.

HandsInTheRuck

I'm looking to buy a Sat Nav as a present. I'm not a driver so don't know exactly what to look for.
I'm looking to spend around the £100 mark so am just after a basic one really. I've been looking at the TomTom Start 20, which has mixed reviews.
Can anyone advise me what to get?

Sally22_2

Im a bit late to the thread as you have already bought one, but I used to have a TomTom about 7 years ago and it drove me crazy, always freezing etc!

Then we bought my father in law a Garmin about 3 years ago and I used it occasionally for any long journeys I had to make. Found it alot better as it was the widescreen one.

A month ago I took delivery of a company car, a Renault Megane Coupe which came with the Carminat Tom Tom Live system. It is actually amazing!

It came with 3 months free subscription to the Live system but I'm more than likely going to buy renew it as I travel a lot for work and when it finds alternative routes is really cool. You can search Google for places (working late and trying to find a local Mcdonalds, its a god send!) And on motorways it displays on the screen which lane to be in, so its so easy to follow even when I mute it.

The screen is also really clear and well laid out, and because it came in my Renault I can change the arrow to a little Megane. Its the little touches haha. Im really pleased with how far TomTom have come since my first one 7 years ago. I dont know which would be the comparable one for the separate unit though.

Arfa__

Bit of an update:-
Went for the TomTom Start 60. Was in a hurry, but it came in at £130 in Tesco, who delivered it next day to the local store 2min up road. Very handy.

Used it for drive up to Midlands and back at weekend. Like it a lot. Compared to my old Becker, it much more polished. The good bits:-

• Huge screen.
• Automatically changes colour scheme between night/dusk/day.
• Name of side streets shown on map as you get close.
• Speed cam data base all there straight out of box.
• Nice slim design and minimal mount, that held it very sturdy.
• 3 months of map updates and dead easy to update. Speed cam updates require £20/yr subscription.
• Maps, lane guidance, arrival time prediction was all spot on.
• Liked info tab with next upcoming services etc.
• Liked how screen auto rotated for screen or dash mounting.

Not so good bits.

• TMC requires a separate adaptor at £50!
• Doesn't appear to be a way to wire TMC antenna into cars roof FM aerial easily.
• Micro USB socket is sunk into case, so requires a specifically moulded plug. Won't be hooking this up to PC with any old USB cable.
• Mount doesn't detach, so it needs plugging in and suckering onto dash every time you set off. Suckering is bit fiddly to get secure.

It is huge, if mounting to windscreen I'd say it would obscure to much. but mounted on dash top, it's fine. I don't like screen mounting anyway, find its too far away to reach to press buttons whilst driving, end up leaning well forward and get too distracted from driving.

Speed display was bit weird, sometimes it was spot on, instantaneous, other times it seemed to lag far, far behind and take 5 mins odd to actual come close to my speedo. Couldn't work it out.

GPS lock was so, so, sometimes quick, sometimes took a few minutes. Battery was good, got 2.5hrs out of it before first low power warning.

SMC_2

Have a Garmin Nuvi 1300 and it has always been rather temperamental but now it is getting so unreliable, just works randomly when it wants to, it is not even a year old

Anyway what new one would people recommend? Don't really want to spend more than £100.

Arfa__

SMC wrote: »

Have a Garmin Nuvi 1300 and it has always been rather temperamental but now it is getting so unreliable, just works randomly when it wants to, it is not even a year old

Anyway what new one would people recommend? Don't really want to spend more than £100.

Well the TomTom 20 and 25 are pretty much identical to the 60 I've just got, except for smaller screens and the option of a cheaper UK only map version. Think the UK only 25 comes in for a £100. Probably a good choice, unless out of the box TMC traffic news is a big deal for you.

Wongsky

Arfa__ wrote: »

Bit of an update:-
Went for the TomTom Start 60. Was in a hurry, but it came in at £130 in Tesco, who delivered it next day to the local store 2min up road. Very handy.

Used it for drive up to Midlands and back at weekend. Like it a lot. Compared to my old Becker, it much more polished. The good bits:-

• Huge screen.
• Automatically changes colour scheme between night/dusk/day.
• Name of side streets shown on map as you get close.
• Speed cam data base all there straight out of box.
• Nice slim design and minimal mount, that held it very sturdy.
• 3 months of map updates and dead easy to update. Speed cam updates require £20/yr subscription.
• Maps, lane guidance, arrival time prediction was all spot on.
• Liked info tab with next upcoming services etc.
• Liked how screen auto rotated for screen or dash mounting.

This is where I found things were all good from moving from a standalone / automotive sat nav, to Nokia maps on my phone.

I used to have a Garmin C550 Streetpilot (I've had others too, other Garmins, and a couple of TomToms), which had a wet-string TMC adapter for traffic info (came with a lifetime subscription to TMC data). TMC reception was pretty bad with the wire-and-sucker antenna. I didn't want to wire it into my car, as I sometimes drive other cars. Plus map updates cost, as did "safety camera" updates.

In comparison, Nokia Maps on my 5230 and now N8 I get free map updates, traffic info comes over data, and uses a trivial amount compared with my current data allowance (1GB per month), as do "safety camera" updates (again very small amount of data).

Maps can be preloaded for entire regions, either over WiFi, or from a PC, so that doesn't have to eat into data usage - never does for me, as I always preload the region / country, and you can use them without a sim in (obviously without the value-add that uses data, though).

Screen size on my N8 is fine for sat nav usage, and auto-rotates. You get TTS (assuming you load the TTS voice - I think it's probably the default) so spoken street names, and you get lane guidance.

It doesn't automatically change the colour scheme, though - <deity> knows why - my first sat nav - a Garmin i3 quite a few years back, did that.

Arfa__ wrote: »

Not so good bits.

• TMC requires a separate adaptor at £50!
• Doesn't appear to be a way to wire TMC antenna into cars roof FM aerial easily.
• Micro USB socket is sunk into case, so requires a specifically moulded plug. Won't be hooking this up to PC with any old USB cable.
• Mount doesn't detach, so it needs plugging in and suckering onto dash every time you set off. Suckering is bit fiddly to get secure.

TMC adapters tend to be pretty rubbish in terms of how they work, and reception (mostly a UK thing in terms of the reception). In my experience (a few years of using a sat nav with an rf TMC adapter) they don't work particularly greatly.

The version of maps on my Nokia phone you can configure how frequently it checks for traffic info - I think the briefest period, though, is 5 minutes - so not foolproof, but in practice, seems to work better than rf TMC adapters - even if they're always receiving, info isn't always that great / available on the roads you're on, and reception is quite poor in the UK.

Cost of ownership is what pushed me to just use sat nav on my smartphone - mapping updates are free, and several times a year, traffic works much better, screen size tends to be not quite as good - but on the flipside, you tend to always have your phone with you, it can be used for walking too, and the location based services aren't just limited to navigating (ie but also, what's nearby in your current position).

electrobix99

The satnav on Nokia phones is very good. Look up Nokia Drive.

You can get their Lumia range cheap and they are very very nice phones.

LisaW123

How about a map.

Wongsky

LisaW123 wrote: »

How about a map.

Yes... quite.

Next!