What happens to my TomTom abroad?

BMWobbleU

If i took my Tom Tom abroad, somewhere i don't have maps for, can i just use it for plotting waypoints so i don't get lost walking? It's the TomTom ONE Great Britain V3.

CHR15

I dont know about TomTom One but on my mobile I use TomTom Navigator.

My map display will come up as an error but I could still go into the preferences and see the Lat & Long in the GPS config page, but that is all.

Not much use without a map to plot it on!


I don't rate TomTom much for walking though. I cant even save my GPS position if I am in a car park properly. I must be on a named road for it to store correctly.
It is quite annoying, last time I was in France on business I stored the hotel car park location.

Used Satnav to get me to work, afterwards I tried to go back to the hotel but had an error (no known route). All because it was in the car park and not the road.

nej

TomTom is no good for walking - it tries to snap you to a road, and usually you aren't when walking. Get hold of small hand-held GPS if that is what you want to do.

If you want to use your TomTom for driving abroad you can buy different maps and they're 50% off at the moment. I'm about to buy the American maps for mine for when I goto Florida later in the year.

CHR15

I used my TomTom in Texas!

Holy moly, it was MILES out. They weren't new roads either. It really struggled with getting me anywhere. The only accurate thing was the pointer indicating the destination as-the-crow-flies.

I lost count of the amount of wrong turns I made driving around Houston and San Antonio.

TomTom may rule the roost here but certainly not in the States.

Make sure you have a paper map as backup (or Route66 or something a bit more Americanised)

startrekker

Sorry, have to add my tuppence.

Used my Tom Tom in Pittsburgh USA and in surrounding areas and it was fantastic...

Used my Tom Tom in Northern Ireland and I got lost, which is stupid really as I am from Northern Ireland....:D

BillScarab

Tom Tom use Teleatlas maps which are reputed to be cheaper but less accurate than the Navteq maps used by Garmin and Magellan for instance.

totalsolutions

Tomtom does not rule my roost in fact I would never recommend one. Thanks for updating me with their faults and I will continue to love my Garmin
Dont forget to wander over to https://www.pocketgpsworld.com

Little_John

I have used tom tom in the UK, Ireland, Italy, Germany, France, Florida, California and Nevada without many problems. I keep my maps up to date, the only problem in california was it took us off the I5 accross the junction and back on to the I5. Florida a junction had been redesigned on the I4 for the 192 and it just took us to the next junction and back to the I4 by a preferd route that ended up closer to our hotel.

In Italy and Germany I used it for walking routes, I was lucky I think as the cities I was in were well mapped. I wasnt useing the major roads of europe maps which helped.

As for the OP's question, it will work you will get a signal but you will be in the middle of nowhere you can set your hotel and use tom tom to guide your hotel from where ever and use the compass on screen option to point to your destination and basically use it as you would a compass. its not brilliant as you will not be able to tell it to take you anywhere you want unless it is a location you have added to favorites in whch case you will have to have already visited that location before. so you will already know where your going.

buy the maps or find the way to get them free

buglawton

Has anyone tried a mobile phone with GPS on it and Google Maps for walking? Should map the whole of the UK.

BillScarab

A colleague at walk has used an N95 in towns but if you're on about walking in the wilds you're better off with a proper hiking GPS and OS maps in my opinion. You could run something like Anquet, Tracklogs or MemoryMap on a PDA though.

chalky_75

Tom Tom was fantastic from Santader to Murcia in Spain --- apart fro around Madrid when it went mad and took us on 4 different toll roads!!!!!! It nearly went out of the window