which Sat Nav is good?

[bubble2bubble]

would like to get one for DH for Christmas but no idea where to start...Any pointers would be appreciated

TomTom has more tricks than Garmin in terms of apps & things (eg different voices, or having the image of your own car instead of a random blue one) but mine let me down horribly in Europe after I paid £50 for European mapping so have reverted to my Garmin (which has built-in EU mapping)

actually my Garmin is 3-4 years old, map upgrades would be about £45 for a one-off so I may well buy a brand-new Garmin for £80 instead (& avoid all the upgrade angst)

HTH

\link{http://www.amazon.co.uk/Garmin-255W-Navigation-Newly-Overhauled/dp/B0030BOWRI/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1321212517&sr=8-11\this one is only £70, even better}

Ok, all good, and how often would you need to upgrade - would it be every year?

you are supposed to upgrade regularly but I don't actually know how often - I have never upgraded my existing Garmin (I have had it 3 years in fact, just checked on amazon), & it is out of date on some speed limits, but not so much on new roads afaik

this is one of the areas where TomTom has an edge - it has an info sharing facility where users can post updates, & virtually every time you log in there is a map sharing update (though there's no telling how reliable those are). Also you can get quarterly speed camera updates for £10 a year.

will you be needing EU mapping? If not then you might prefer TomTom; it performs better in general in the UK (boots up faster etc); my problems came with uploading the 2GB EU maps onto an SD card, which was tricky in itself, & then the whole thing fell over when we landed in Italy

there was a thread on satnavs not so long ago come to think of it, will see if I can find it for you

\link{http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/cars/1271691-Sat-Nav-Which-one\here you go} - lots more opinions on this one!

oh thanks so much that is really useful ( duuh -didn't think to do a search on Satnav before posting)
Need to find out if you need to get the Europe bit for southern Ireland as that's the only place we are ( very ) likely to be using this
At least got something to go on now

Our TomTom works fine in Europe and Southern Ireland. I like them because they are intuitive, a bit like a Nokia phone. You try and do what you want it to and it works

You generally get RoI along with UK mapping, bubble - EU is a separate thing