Help me decide on a sat nav.

MisterKatz

Hi

Does anybody know if there are any Sat Navs which automatically give you alternative routes around traffic jams?

Ta

Buster_Danog

goldspanners wrote: »

well franco how did it perform?

Well, I am impressed with the technology and it does get you from A to B. I'm convinced it gave me bad directions at least twice. Once coming off a roundabout it failed to give me directions for a slip road. However, it rerouted me and gave me much clearer direction when I approached the roundabout from the other direction.

The second time it told me to take the 4th exit off a roundabout when it seemed to be the third exit I needed. I have checked both of these roundabouts on Google Earth. In any case the road was closed by the police so I had to find another route. One flaw with the C510 is that you cannot just hit the reroute button. You have to press the menu button to get to the reroute button which takes your attention off the road for too long.

By the time I had missed the exit it had already recalculated a route, but seemed to want to bring me back to the closed road. If the reroute button was there on the screen that would have solved my problems as I could have just hit it straight away so it would have planned a different route. I ended up finding a route I knew and ignored the sat nav for the rest of the way.

I had pulled over and tried to plug in the TMC receiver, but it did not work. It could not even pick up an FM signal to verify the subscription. My windscreen is not a modern one so that was not the problem.

It recalulates routes very quickly. I have now realised that text to speech is an important function. Driving on A roads around London is just a blur and I would like to have at least known the names of the roads I was on.

If I was reviewing this I could only give it 3 stars out of 5 due to it seeming to give bad directions on the roundabouts, but that would be a fussy three stars as it will get you there. The TMC unit seems to be rubbish so that gets 0 stars.

Overall I think it is worth spending a bit more for a slightly less bulky unit. The things I would like are text to speech, a reroute button that is on the map so you can hit it at anytime, and a TMC unit that actually works.

I think I will end up returning this unit and looking for something else - even if I have to spend a bit more.

Buster_Danog

MisterKatz wrote: »

Hi

Does anybody know if there are any Sat Navs which automatically give you alternative routes around traffic jams?

Ta

Yes. Look up TMC, trafficmaster etc, but many of them have problems.

dstill

Franco78 wrote: »

Yes. Look up TMC, trafficmaster etc, but many of them have problems.

I was looking to buy a TomTom with traffic, what are the problems to beware of?

thanks

Buster_Danog

Only the fact that just about everyone says they are useless. They rarely if ever pick up a reception - this includes people who have driven near to radio masts to try and get a good FM signal. It seems we just don't have the right signals being sent out in the UK. I did see more positive feedback regarding units that had the TMC built into the car aerial somehow.

Another possibility is to get a TomTom with bluetooth and get traffic updates via your mobile, which costs money.

Apparently Tomtom are currently testing another system in Holland for traffic updates, but it is not going to be available here anytime soon as far as I know.

inmypocketnottheirs

I use Tom Traffic on a PDA windows smart phone running Tom Tom Navigator v5. The TT Traffic requires a GPRS subscription and the Traffic subscription is £20 p.a. I drive 40k a year, and to me it is worth having the traffic subscription as for example today it successfully navigated me around a 1 hour 15 minute delay, getting me to my destination on time.

If you are looking for the cheapest solution, avoid TMC. It is not reliable and does not work at all in a lot of cases. Sometimes it is not possible to be MSE. As they say 'buy cheap, buy twice'.

Buster_Danog

Good advice. I had come to that realisation so I suppose TMC is off my list. The good thing with Tomtom is you can at least listen to bulletins on the radio and, if possible, pull over and choose to avoid a certain road on your route.

With Garmin the above is not possible. You can not see your route, and even if you press the detour button you do not know where it has rerouted you to. All guesswork with the Garmin.