Navman or Tomtom Bluetooth?

[Elise]

Hello,



I'll get a GPS for my HP Ipaq 2210. I don't know if I should buy the Navman 4400 GPS Bluetooth or the TomTom Navigator 2 Bluetooth GPS. What are the pros and cons?



Another question: how important is DGPS, and do Navman and TomTom have it?



Cheers

[DavidW]

I'll leave the first part of your question to others who have more experience of the two units. Of course, it's not just a hardware choice, but a software one: the Navman comes with SmartST Pro, and the TomTom unit with Navigator 2 (presuming you buy it bundled that way). You may find your eventual choice is more down to the software than the hardware.





DGPS is not at all important for street navigation. Street navigation software uses various techniques to 'snap' your GPS position to the nearest street - for example your direction of travel is used to help resolve any ambiguity.



I read one review that said the TomTom Bluetooth GPS didn't support SBAS (in Europe, that means EGNOS - the only sort of DGPS that is realistic on these consumer units as you haven't got a seperate beacon receiver) - which I found a little surprising considering the underlying GPS chipset I believe it uses. I haven't got access to a receiver to verify this - but the most important thing is to not to worry about it for street navigation.





In any case, EGNOS is not operational yet - it's still in test mode and results are still somewhat unreliable. There won't even be a usable EGNOS test signal in Western Europe after the end of this month until some time in October.







David

[Elise]

Thanks a lot for your fast reply.



What about the differences in the software?

[Dave]

Elise, have you read the full Navman 3400 review, TomTom Navigator 2 review ?



We also have a comparison between Navman SmartST Pro and TomTom Navigator 1 (not 2) and it s available here.



From the Navman perspective, you will get SmartST Pro bundled with the 4400 receiver, but the TomTom receiver you can by bundled with Navigator or on it's own.



The main differences is going to be battery life. The TomTom BT GPS has a Lithium Ion battery, and the Navman uses desposable AAA batteries, which Navman currently boasts will last around 30 hours. The TomTom and Emtac/Socket Bluetooth receivers will only last up to 6 hours.

[DavidW]

There is a pretty good comparision on this site here - though it's got somewhat out of date now. There have been some fixes released for the Navman software since that article was written, and TomTom Navigator has been superseded by TomTom Navigator 2.





If you are unsure, there should be no bar to switching to TomTom Navigator 2 if you buy the Navman pack (though this isn't that cheap an option), but you can't buy the Navman software as a "software only" product.





It may be a case of reading through both forums here, hunting around for reviews and trying to judge for yourself. You may like to see if you can track down any information about relative map quality for whichever country or countries you want to use the system in - I have no idea how good or bad the Swedish maps are in both products. No matter how good the software is, if the maps are awful the result will be awful!





I can't personally offer any comparisons as I haven't used the Navman software.





The other thing to say is that both of the Bluetooth GPS receivers in the packs are new - the Navman one so new that this site hasn't had time to review it yet. I don't think the review will be long in coming, though.







David

[Elise]

Thanks a lot - again!



It seems like Navman has the best hardware and Tomtom the best software.



The maps are probably better in Navman and Tomtom is a bit less expensive...



Not a simple choice!

[Dave]

The Navman 4400 review will be available soon

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