X970T - The good, the bad and the ugly

perussell · Frequent Visitor Joined: May 12, 2006 Posts: 292

Am currently visiting the N East and on my journey up here my X970T exhibited all the good and bad things that I am gradually getting used to after 3 months of use. It is so close to being really good but there is certainly room for improvement still in a couple of areas.
To cut a long story short I had to travel from Wiltshire to N Wales and thence to Wearside.
Up to N Wales all was fine apart from the expected patchy TMC reception. However it was the N Wales to Wearside route that really brought out the best and worst.
Planned route was M56 / M6 / M62/ M60/M62/ M1/A1M/19.

All was well at first, fortunately the jams were all in the other direction until I started crossing the Pennines on the M62.

TMC reception was excellent (and has been way better in N England throughout our visit than down South) and I was warned of a major hold up between J24 and J27 of the M62 which was also confirmed by my T/Master Freeway as 10 miles of stationary traffic. Trouble was it started repeating the information and trying to recalculate the route EVERY MINUTE for about 10 minutes until I switched the thing off in frustration. I only need telling once but the damn thing just kept recycling every minute or so, when we got closer to J24 I switched in back on and it started repeating the info again every minute.

I turned North off the M62 at J24 and decided to go cross country at which stage I reset the routing to Shortest from Recommended. The route it provided was excellent through Brighouse and around Bradford up towards Harrogate where I could rejoin the A1M. The unit even directed me sensibly around the Bradford ring road rather than right through the middle of the city. Overall I am really pleased with the routing algorithims that the satnav uses. I have never had a satnav that suggests such sensible routes.

It would however have been useful to be able to review the route offered on the map when recalculating - I know this can be done but it is not intuitive and requires going back to the Main Menu - which I didn't find until after I arrived.

However it then all went pear-shaped again as having joined the A19 around Thirsk (resetting routing to Quickest from Shortest) for the final leg of the journey it then tried directing me into adjoining lay-bys on THREE separate occasions between Thirsk and Yarm. I can only assume that this is the same as the slip road issue suffered by other people (but which I have never experienced before)

Obviously I wasn't going to take a layby because I know the road well but the fact that the unit tried directing me into one on no less than three separate occasions is not good and could have been fatal for somebody who didn't know the road (it was pitch black night time by now)

It will be interesting to see how the unit performs on our return journey in the morning. I have now set the Traffic Info NOT to re-route in the hope that if we encounter traffic it will just accept the message once and not keep trying to recalculate the route continuously. I will also endeavour to avoid the lay-bys Laughing

We shall see! Seems as if there is still room for improvement prior to V8 (or even v7.0.4)

Postscript: No traffic problems on the return journey but the 'lay by' issue re-appeared in the same area on the A168 (which links A19 to A1M) when the sat nav tried directing me into Topcliffe Services..............

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