Sat Nav. Which one?

[Kayzr]

Can anyone tell me a decent sat nav to get? I've been looking at TomTom but I was thinking if it's going to cost me over £100 to buy I don't want to spend another £40 on the cradle for it.

Thanks

You don't need to buy a cradle for a tomtom, it comes with the window mount.

DH and I have had 5 tomtoms between us. Before getting our current one we tried a few others as we were peed off with tomtom. However we found all the others to be utter crap. The best of the others was the garmin which did all the things that the tomtom does but not as well. We found the maps to be a little confusing, it constantly zoomed in and out, was slow to calculate routes, e.g. wouldn't route while in a car park so you had to hope that upon reaching the exit of the car park you went the right way. The things we didn;t like about the garmin tbh were all niggly things but there were just too many niggles for us to ignore so it went back and we bought another tomtom.

That has been fab, but now we've had it a year and like all our tomtoms before it it's got to a year old and it's started playing silly buggers.

The best, easiest to use sat nav, imo, is tomtom, but they do have this bug that messes about with them after a year of use which is a pita as tomtom cs are useless so it takes a lot of hassle to get things back to how they should be.

Lots of people love their garmins, and I think if I'd never used a tomtom I'd have been happy with it, but it was just too different and not user-friendly enough for a former tomtom user if that makes sense.

Sorry, not sure if that's any help ,in short tomtom - fab, but watch out after a year. Everything else - just haven't got things right yet and are nowhere near as good as tomtoms.

Ah right. I was looking at a tomtom but it said that the cradle cost £40 and I didn't want to pay for the thing that sticks it to the window.

We had tomtom, then a garmin, then another tomtom. I'd say the new tomtom is the best, though still occasionally tries to send you down a farm track. The garmin was OK too; it was supposed to do traffic alerts/avoidance but that was fairly useless most of the time... iphone with RAC app saved our bacon yesterday! (iphone not good enough update/resolution to totally replace sat nav unfortunately)

We've never bothered with a cradle, theres a place on our dash it will stay propped up.

IIRC on the garmin you had to swap country between Scotland and Eng/wales for addresses, so if that still pertains I wouldn't get one if I lived or travelled near the border a lot!

I've got a Garmin & a Tomtom. The Tomtom is much easier to use - agree with 26minutes about car park nonsense etc, plus when you first plug it in in the car you have to sit for 2 or 3 minutes while it boots itself up again, even though you have it switched on & ready to go beforehand.

I won the Tomtom in a prize draw last year - it's an old model although it was new (iyswim). I paid for UK & EU map updates (& speed camera updates) but the first time I tried to use it abroad, although it recognised that we were in Europe & went on to the Europe maps, it didn't bloody work!!! Then I got in a loop of taking the memory card out & putting it in again, switching it on & off etc, & at one point the screen was showing streets in London, France & Italy all at the same time

Haven't yet contacted TomTom CS - although to be fair they were quite helpful when I was having problems uploading the EU maps - & have gone back to the Garmin because even though it's less useful overall it behaves itself (apart from the car park issue).

I've got a Garmin & a Tomtom. The Tomtom is much easier to use - agree with 26minutes about car park nonsense etc, plus when you first plug it in in the car you have to sit for 2 or 3 minutes while it boots itself up again, even though you have it switched on & ready to go beforehand.

sorry, that's not clear - car park/booting up is the Garmin, not the Tomtom

I've never had to buy a seperate mount. I've just looked at a few of the new ones on the internet and they all seem to have the built in mount.

Just one tip, if you do get a tomtom, don't use the map share. It really screwed a couple of mine up. IQ routes are fab though.

"Ah right. I was looking at a tomtom but it said that the cradle cost £40 and I didn't want to pay for the thing that sticks it to the window."

We have a TomTom XL and it is great. It comes complete with the window stick on attachment. It wasn't an expensive one, and is an excellent gadget. I did a bit of research on the Which website and it was one of the ones they recommended.

My mum has a tomtom and she has got loads of random voices downloaded and I am finding that quite tempting

Yes Grimma, we were having a play with my dads garmin the other day (we're quite sad and were having competitions to see whether our tomtom or his garmin would find the best route quickest we don't get out much), and I was trying to navigate to a place in Wales and was ready to punch the thing because it wouldn't recognise the post code before DH reminded me that I had to change from England to Wales.

The POI on the garmin is a lot better than tomtom, but tomtom now has the google search which makes the poi on it obsolete.

The cradle is a big dish thing that sits on the dash I think, instead of having to stick it to the screen.

The Garmin screen mount is easier to use than the Tomtom.

The random voices do your head in after 5 minutes, Kayzr

Tomtom will let you put in just the name of the town you want - Garmin insists on an actual address which can be really annoying esp if you just want to do a via

I have a Garmin Nuvi and am delighted with it. I bought a beanbag thing for it from halfords which had the right bracket on it so I don't have to stick it to the windscreen.

I've had no issues with it at all, not even any slow booting up issues. It certainly never takes 2 minutes. It also shows me where to go when I get out of any car park as it colours the route road purple and has no zooming in/out issues :o

I happen to have my Garmin on the table in front of me and it boots up in 15 seconds.

Oh I don't know!! I have my driving test in 8 days and DP said he'll buy me a sat nav as a well done present if I pass.

I suspect you'll be happy with the one you get IYSWIM. I've only had a garmin so I am used to how it works. I've also had Garmin hand held GPS units.

I've had my Garmin (Nuvi 250) since Dec 2008 - they might have improved a bit since then

It's in the car, I'll time it tomorrow with & without connection to cig lighter.

I may well have liked the garmin if I hadn't used the tomtom before. There were a lot of 'gimmicky' things on there that were very good and I did like, it was just the navigatio & maps side of things that I thought were pretty crap.

I would say as you will have only just passed your test that the tomtom would be better. The maps are a lot clearer, there's a lot more going on on the garmin maps which I found confusing, you had to actually look at the map to tell where you were whereas the tomtom only requires a very quick glance. It's a much simpler map that I think would be better for you. ALso the lane guidance on the tomtom is so much better. The lane guidance on the garmin is pretty pointless as it doesn't stay up long enough and it's not very clear, i.e. it only stays up for about 5 seconds and only shows that you have to leave the motorway whereas the tomtom stays up from 1/2 mile away from the junction, is very clear as to what lane you need to be in, so for example if you could use 2 lanes it will show you. It's great when you're on a motorway that you don't know that has confusing junctions. The voices on the tomtom are much clearer too. The garmin voice is very computerised which can be quite confusing with the road names, whereas Jane on the tomtom is very clear.

Also the tomtom gives you directions ahead, e.g. cross the roundabout, 3rd exit, then take the middle lane or in 800yds turn right, (name of road), then 2nd left (name of road). The garmin however will say enter the roundabout, then won't tell you what exit you need until you are on it and then once you're finally off of the roundabout doesn't tell you which lane you need until it's too late, and the other example was turning into my road, the garmin would say in 800 yards turn right, then once you'd turned right it said in 400 yards take the next left, completely missing out the 1st road. Would be very confusing if you didn't know where you were going.

God that makes it all sound like I work for tomtom, I don't I promise. I actually would love to have a satnav other than a tomtom as there are things that others do better and the company seems as though it's now so big it doesn't care about it's customers so I'd love to take my custom elsewhere (especially as our year long live services run out next week so we're going to have to pay them even more money to keep that up and running)but unfortuately, imo noone makes one to compete with the tomtom yet.

Sorry, but your Garmin is clearly completely different to mine! I only have to glance at the map which is very clear and the directions, given in advance, are "In {distance} enter roundabout and take the second exit" then "enter the roundabout and take second exit" and "take second exit"

The lane guidance is always there in the top left with a picture indicating what your next move will be. I think this was one of the settings.

I've not had an issue with the voice. Certain stresses on some road names are odd where it is clearly made up of composite sounds but, on the whole, it has never been a problem. Elfred the Elf was tricky, I admit. Dr Nightmare was fun though, especially "Arriving at your dreadful destination" :o

Agree with soupy re Garmin directions - they are very specific, esp in Europe when you really do need to be in the correct lane - so on the autoroute, for a complicated junction, it will say, eg:

"in {distance} turn right, then keep left (or keep right)"

which is wonderful when you haven't got a clue (& European road signs bear no resemblance to UK ones so you do need the help!)

in 400 yards take the next left, completely missing out the 1st road - mine doesn't say that - just "in 400 yards turn left" & the display names the road. the only prob I have is occasionally turning too soon, usually when there are 2 turnings close together & I haven't looked at the map properly

It is true that the Tomtom maps are slightly better, but not enough to make you miss a motorway turning, for instance

(soupy, my Garmin does take only about 15 secs to boot up from battery, but when plugged into cig lighter - even when already switched on - it's at least a minute before the voice kicks in again; & if I forget, & plug it in before finding destination, I have to twiddle thumbs until it's ready. 2 mins was an exaggeration though!)

I can't be arced to take mine into the car to check... :o

Battle of the SatNavs - which will boot up first? I'm pitching it to Channel 4 as a series.

Tomtom will boot up first

but I am now LOUDLY UNRECOMMENDING TOMTOM because when I enquired about mine having failed so dismally & then conked out in Italy, the best they can offer is repair (£93) or 20% off a new one. The £55 I have already spent on European mapping & speed cameras is money down the drain, so how can they think I will willingly pay out yet more money when repaired/new one might well pack up next time I try it???

So sticking to Garmin from now on. Which? magazine tested dozens of both & although their top best buy was one specific Tomtom, Garmins got far more recommendations overall.

How strange, the garmin we had was the nuvi 1400 (I think) it was the all singing all dancing one with lane guidance & spoken road names, my dads is the basic nuvi 1100 (again I think that's what the numbers are). Both were exactly the same wrt the spoken instructions. Both only give one instruction at a time and were giving the instructions far too late to be of any use. The delays in giving instructions in a car were late but you could, if there was space, get into the correct lane quickly, however as DH is a lorry driver it would have been utterly useless for him as he would have ended up stranded in the wrong lanes unable to get to the lane he needed. We also used my dads once when we borrowed his car, I wasn't too sure where we were going but knew the rough area, the satnav directions and map managed to confuse me even in areas that I knew well.

My dad loves the garmin as he hates tomtoms, doesn't like the voices on tomtoms, finds the maps on tomtoms confusing etc.

Yes ponders, that's the only thing with tomtom, fantastic until something goes wrong and then their customer service is diabolical. They just don't seem to get the problem and don't understand that their solution is just not acceptable.

Garmin, reputedly, have excellent customer service.

Interestingly, I used my Garmin today and it didn't reboot at all when I plugged it into the car. I think it's been reading Mumsnet.

I've got both a Garmin 255 (still in regular use since 2009) and I recently bought a TomTom Start 20M as insurance in case the Garmin packs up. Have to say I like the simplicity of the 'old' Garmin, prefer the 2D map clarity, and finally, what I really appreciate is how by touching the bottom right of the screen you get close-up plans of the next couple of turnings (however far ahead they are). Eg single press brings up next, two presses bring up one after that. There are situations when this info is very helpful. I accept the new TomTom does more re route planning but like I said, too complicated for me as occasional user.