Using a satnav used to be so simple!

[Richud]

Quite frankly, I'm getting sick to death of my stand alone satnavs. I originally started with a TomTom One first edition - which was absolutely brilliant. No messing with a thousand and one pointless menus and clear to-the-point car navigation. The only reason I had to ditch it, was due to a manufacturing fault in many TomTom One's that started to make it impossible to switch the bloody thing on!

So I went on eBay and got a TomTom One version 3, as some of my charging devices and cables were compatible from the old One. This is where my troubles began. Unlike the old version of One, the third version only allowed me to enter the first three digits of a postcode. This became maddening when after entering three digits, I was then asked to choose a road! How the hell did I know what roads were near where I was going?! The whole point is to take me somewhere, not ask me to be f**king clairvoyant!

I ditched the satnav and decided to go up-market. I spent about £200 on a different make this time, a Garmin Nuvi 3790. Over time, this has pi**ed me off more than my previous two TomTom units put together.

Rather than writing a full tirade, let me simply list the irritations and poorly thought out design:

1. It will not let me enter a town destination without eventually choosing an 'A' road - which of course I do not know because I have never been to that town before!
2. There is no quick way out of a line of menus. You often have to go back, back, back, back and back.
3. Voice operation is completely pointless and when it does work, you still have to manually choose some things from a list.
4. Compared to the TomTom units I owned, the Nuvi is slow to respond to turning around tight areas of towns and cities - refreshing too slow for having to make quick decisions on route.
5. The favourites list is very annoying. It does not auto-arrange alphabetically and you have to start manually spelling things. Unless you remember to edit your favourite prior to saving it, you have to go back and find a postcode and change it to a name afterwards - often resulting in the back menu problem mentioned above.
6. This unit has not been designed around a single person driving. You need a passenger who can work stuff for you while you are on the move. The navigation of important menu decisions is crap and you are more likely to crash than modify your destination - due to the amount of fiddling and messing through trying to re-type a postcode or finding the bit of menu info needed!
7. The irony of satnavs seems to be that you can only really learn how to use them when you are moving - and in my case, driving. When you are driving is not the time to be trying to work out how to use it properly!

In conclusion, I just so wish that at least one manufacturer somewhere would come up with a driver-friendly, simple-to-use satnav. I do not need phone connectivity; I do not need a f**king media player, TV or games console! It's a bloddy navigation device, not a bloody Nintendo DS or Wii.

So manufacturers - get real! Make something fit for purpose.

[Kremmen]

How true.

I haven't got it to hand but I think there is a way to avoid the back,back issue on a Garmin by holding down some area for a few seconds longer than normal.
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Lets be careful out there !

[MaFt]

I'm currently in the process of reviewing a Garmin nuvi 30 which is their entry level 'basic' device. It has the following features:

simple menu
lots of 'where to' options
text to speech
lane guidance
junction views

For an entry level device it does a lot and works well.

Hoping to get the review finished over the weekend or early next week.

MaFt
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[mikealder]

The One Third Edition does offer full postcode look up, your device will have been missing a couple of files that were/ are easy to download and add to the device, you should have posted up a query at the time rather than ditch the device.

Voice control on any Nav unit that I have tried have all been nothing more than a source of entertainment for the kids, absolutely useless in practice - Mike