Sat nav from the states

tylerboyo

Hi,
I am currently looking for a sat nav. I then talked with my friend who is living in america for a year, he said he'd buy it, and ship it over for me. I am wondering, can the maps get upgraded/changed from US to UK? This would save me LOADS of cash.
Any answers/advice appreciated.
Cheers

PaulK_3

What sat nav are you looking at? You can certainly source map sets for most of the navs out there.

sco0ter

Most manufacturers will make you pay for UK maps.

maninwhitecoat

Sat Nav's bought in america will have the American maps on it. You will have to pay extra for the UK maps, i think they're around £50 to £70 for UK maps. Also, you'll end up with american interfaces, voices etc. (don't know if that will annoy you or not!) I had a go of one and the american postcode system is very differnt to ours, so when you are searching for an address, you will have to search it by the street name, not by the post code because it doesn't recognise it. (It didn't recognise it for me anyway)
Also, you may have to pay import tax on it if you're getting it sent by post. To be honest, a basic satnav here in the UK is pretty cheap anyway, i don't think you'd be gaining much by having one sent over from the US

tylerboyo

Thanks for the replies, im looking at tomtom and garmin. I'm sure you can get UK maps for free anyway cant you, the same as you can get free software thats not meant to be free?

superscaper

tylerboyo wrote: »

I'm sure you can get UK maps for free anyway cant you, the same as you can get free software thats not meant to be free?

??? If you're talking about piracy you're posting on the wrong forum.

tylerboyo

Sorry forget it, i found out how.
Anyway, how easy is it to install new maps on a tomtom?

Little_John

very easy, depending on which version you have some use memory cards others us built in hard drives. you connect the unit to the PC and copy the files over, opps i forgot the maps will come on a memory card from tom tom you just put the card in the unit