GPS for car

[RoadRunner]

I looking to get a new GPS for my car, i wondering which GPS is the best on market atm?

i heard a lot about TOMTOM being good GPS system for car but wondering if you guys got any and your thoughts on this.

which GPS you recommend or is known for being very good?

[handscombmp]

I personally would go for Tomtom. My old mans got a tomtom one and he says it's excellent and very easy to use. Worth its weight in gold according to him. When i've messed around with its i've found it to be very good.

[dave87]

If you've got the budget/are going to use it regularly, then nothing I've used beats a decent Garmin.

However, if like me it is something that you don't know how much you are going to use it/don't want to spend a fortune, the new TomTom One is what I've bought myself. (Garmin is my father's).

I got the TomTom One WE, for £119 - 2.13% and a £10 gift card in Currys, which I didn't think was bad...

[Stringent]

I stand by TomTom, but no satnav is perfect.

[RinSewand]

The higher end garmins (£250+) are supposed ot be amazing, but personal preference at the lower end of the market has me going for TomToms.

Had a ONE XL stolen and replaced it with a Garmin 260 series, which felt far too cartoony. The map wasn't clear, and the program seemed less polished than the TomTom, it also had what I would consider to be appauling sound quality. Replaced it (after a few days) with a ONE XL V2 which felt so much more expensive and higher quality than the Garmin, it also comes with a mount that can be removed without taking up loads of space in a pocket!

RwD

[nichomach]

I'm on a TomTom Go 920T, and that's been great so far. Windscreen mount's a bit carp, but a better one cost a few quid. Navigation's excellent, and I use the Bluetooth hands-free and MP3 functions quite a lot.

[RoadRunner]

i was wondering which tomtom, is the one which can show you road conjestion ect then plot another direction to avoid it?

also isnt there a one with trafic reports ie, road closed ect and other good info.


basically which is the best tomtom out there atm??

[Barakka]

TomTom ONE XL here and it works fine for the occasional use it gets.

I think they can all do the traffic and speed camera updates but you subscribe to it 19.99 each/year or 34.99/year for both. They then use bluetooth to connect to a mobile phone to use the WWW connection to get the info so you will potentially have that extra cost too.

IIRC with the TomTom's the cheaper ones (like mine) are just a GPS device, the more expensive ones have bluetooth handsfree and MP3 player functions.

[finlay666]

Navigo modded ftw £65 for a widescreen one

[handscombmp]

Haven't Halfords got 50% off on all sat navs this weekend?

[RoadRunner]

They then use bluetooth to connect to a mobile phone to use the WWW connection to get the info so you will potentially have that extra cost too.

.

isnt that ilegal.... you cannot acces mobile phone network without consent.

Basically which tomtom would you advise me to get then if i have 100-200quid to spend.

traphic updates ect.and alternative routes.


also whats the best one atm which seems to be best for my budget?

[Saracen]

I've got a TomTom One and a Garmin 660, and the Garmin is, IMHO, a far better unit. The screen is in a different class, especially when there's any glare from a low sun, and the routing it gives me is better. The difference is routing is sometimes subtle, but on routes where I know the roads well, the Garmin has come up with better routes.

Having said that, both are a couple of years old so might not be representative of current models, and the Garmin was a lot more expensive than the TomTom, so it sure ought to be better. But, when I bought the Garmin, I did do direct comparisons with the equivalently-priced TomTom and the Garmin still won comfortably.... and the screen was still far better, despite the price of that TomTom model.

One thing though. My opinion is that the Garmin and Tom are marketed in different ways, and largely, are designed to appeal to different users. The TomTom seems to me to be loaded down with loads of bells and whistles (not that my Garmin doesn't have a few that, in my view, are useless too, like a world clock and audio book player). But the TomTom is far more fun if you like playing with menu options and configurations. The Garmin feels much simpler, perhaps even inadequate. But in reality, it's because the interface design is, in my view, much better thought out, and it has features that might not be overly obvious, because they're largely done by being context sensitive .... like waypoints.

I use the GPS all over the country. I might be around Dartmoor one day, and Durham a day or too later, or be going from Canterbury for one job to Cheltenham for another. The Garmin has yet to fail to get me there, and by a route that strikes me as pretty good.

And that's the crunch point.

TomTom make a range of car satnav gear, and by the time you get to the £300-£400 point, you're top-of-range. Garmin start at the other end, and have worked down from professional gear into the consumer market. At the end of it all, my opinion is that the quality of a satnav is really about routing quality, and that comes down to two things - the intelligence of the planning algorithms and critically, the quality of the map data. And on that basis, my view (last time I looked) is that Garmin had TomTom thoroughly beaten. The excellence of screen quality and a simpler but smarter interface are nice, the FM-based traffic services are useful when they work but not central, and all of the rest of the features (like that world clock or an MP3 player) are mere gimmicks.

For flashiness, with lots of menu options, go TomTom. For more refinement and for quality in core functions, go Garmin. All IMHO, of course.

[Agent]

isnt that ilegal.... you cannot acces mobile phone network without consent.

No. It just uses the data conenction on your phone to the network to pull the info from the internet

[RoadRunner]

so guys with my budget of 100-200 pounds for satnav, what you recon the best option then.?

i would like to have some taphic updates on satnav and alternitive routes ect if example a road is closed sat nav will let me know and then have option to plot a alternative route.

what sat navs would you recommend i look into getting then based on this brief?

hopefully can get a list so i can go down to shops and look more into them

[ajbrun]

I need to get a sat nav in the next couple of weeks as well, and I think I've pretty much decided. Here's my thought process:

* I didn't want a tomtom - most of the tomtoms seem to have a vastly inferior windscreen mount when compared to the garmins. When I was borrowing a tomtom from a friend, it kept falling off the windscreen, but the garmins all have a lever to properly attach it to the window. Everyone seems to be more worried about the software, but I think the hardware it comes with can be just as important.

* Only the latest garmins have the better software (showing speed limits, showing next turns, showing traffic problems all on the main screen etc).

Therefore, I've narrowed it down to 2 choices:

The 765T - £247
Comes with lane guidance, bluetooth, free traffic warnings and a slightly better UI.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Garmin-Satel...8619373&sr=8-1

The 255T - £137
Comes with free traffic warnings. There's the 265T if you want bluetooth as well.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Garmin-Satel...8619367&sr=8-2

Note: The traffic warnings are all ad supported, but are apparently very unintrusive, and only appear when stopped for 10 seconds or longer.

If money was no object, I'd definitely go for the 765T (or even a later model), but I'm probably going to go with the 255T as I don't think it's worth the extra £100 to get the lane assistance and the ability to customise one of the fields on the main screen (it's set to the time of arrival on the earlier version).

[XA04]

Another vote for Garmin. I have it for my N95.. really is amazing. Works great.