Tomtom or garmins

mikealder · Posted: Sat Jan 26, 2008 10:02 pm Post subject:

Just out of interest what is the symbol of the truck for in the shortcut button? I don't ever recall seeing that - Mike

kissinuk · Regular Visitor Joined: Feb 05, 2005 Posts: 107

crazyfingers · Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2008 4:38 am Post subject:

john877 · Lifetime Member Joined: Mar 16, 2007 Posts: 468

Yes that is what I was meaning !! I think it is all down to personal preference and if you have used one make of sat nav you get used to how that sat nav views the road ahead.
The thing that I find useful is that if the arrow (left hand corner icon) is showing as in the example above to" turn right at the next roundabout "you know to get into right hand lane well before you approach the roundabout.

With the garmin it could read on some roundabouts "take the 3 rd exit" but the roundabout may have 6 exits so in fact you would probably be going straight on .

I know at the end of the day its no big thing but its what you get used to also the Garmin seems to show the roundabouts as blobs until you get there unless i am wrong.

crinkley · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jan 24, 2008 Posts: 1

I am yet another newcomer looking to buy a satnav and find it difficult to assimilate all the info! And, how to choose.

Your most frequent asked questions seem to be overwhelmingly about Tomtom. Does this suggest they have more problems? Tomtom does seem to have far more complaints about their poor after sales and back up service.

Someone is lauding another mapping service to download as better than that on either of garmin or tomtom and my interest in pocketgpsworld centres on their speedier camera up date facility.

But does this mean that if I load this, my manufacturers warranty is invalidated?

At the moment, my interest is on the Nuvi 250W partly because of its slim design. I accept they all suffer shortcomings but you do not know what they are or if you can live with them until you use it which can be a bit late!!

Ther experience of users would be appreciated. Crinkley

john877 · Lifetime Member Joined: Mar 16, 2007 Posts: 468

garcor

I also think it is a personal preference as to TT or Garmin.
I just bought the TT Go 920 and I like many of the features on it over any other GPS out there at the moment.
(1) First of all it is loaded with 4GB of internal memory and will also handle a 4GB SD card giving you a total of *GB of memory.
(2) It comes with a remote so you don’t have to be reaching and touching the screen while driving especially good if you have in mounted on windshield and a deep dash.
(3) The best feature that I found with it is that you can plan say 1000 Mile trip on Google Maps and and using the Google Map interface drag the rout and make any changes that you would like and then save it as an itn file.
(this can be done by using this sitehttp://houghi.org/tomtom/index.php) on your TT or SD Card and when you are ready just upload it and you are all set to go.

Cfcfan · Occasional Visitor Joined: Feb 27, 2008 Posts: 14

I am trying to decide between these two. Seems to come down to Garmin traffic information looks better and easier to use. TomTom 920 newer product with voice recognition and 4gb memory.

Any views guidance on these features?

Glynn · Occasional Visitor Joined: Apr 14, 2005 Posts: 19

Well I bought a Nuvi and it was useless.
It couldn't find it's way out of it's box.
In my opinion they are a POS.
Tomtom on the other hand are excellent.

crazyfingers · Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 6:27 pm Post subject:

Cfcfan · Occasional Visitor Joined: Feb 27, 2008 Posts: 14

I must confess that I have been disappointed with my TomTom920T. The traffic service is very poor. The FM reception is pitiful - works OK when the car is stationary but looses the signal when moving. I drove from Portsmouth to London and had reception for barely 5 minutes.

When you get reception the service is totally unreliable. On the M1 in the evening it correctly identified road works but forecast delays of 3 hours - this was nonesense as traffic was light and there was no delay at any of the road works. On the A1 my Trafficmaster identified a severe delay and advised me to avoid - TomTom had nothing.

The second problem is that I cannot even get the mobile phone traffic data - TomTom Plus not available with Blackberry 8100

rover220 · Regular Visitor Joined: Jul 18, 2006 Posts: 63

different end of the scale i know but i had a nuvi200 for a couple of days while my one v3 was being sorted.

i hated the nuvi, in my line of work it was next to useless and seemed overly difficult to use.

id choose tomtom everytime and mine has been relaible so far and it simply does what it says on the tin.

chris_ah1 · Regular Visitor Joined: Feb 24, 2008 Posts: 106

having demoed a lot of devices - the sonys, all the tomtoms, the garmin 200 and 700 nuvi ranges and the mio iGo units, I have found that they are all flawed in some very fundamental ways although the problems are of course going to be biased heavily by me needs and opinions.

The real problem however has not been in evaluating all the features and demoing them fully since I know what compromises i would have to make with each device, but that all the devices I have used within brands and within model numbers have all been different!!!!

I tried to use a garmin 770 but it wouldn't work on anymap other than taiwan. It would hang when 'drawing' the uk.
I then used a garmin 770 elsewhere and it was fine for uk.
Garmin 200s seemed to be quite slow too. The screen was responsive, but you could tell it didn't have much of a cpu inside compared to the tomtoms. As a mapping device rather than a navigator i couldn't use the 200 series.

I tried a tomtom 520 and it wouldn't let me scroll around the map. but another two 520s worked fine, albeit slowly even with map details down and pois off.
I tried a tomtom 720 that scrolled fine with the touch point. One unit i tried was snappy with redraws. Another was unbearably slow. ?The one that redrew fast took forever with route calculations even holding the unit outside, the slow redraw unit was nippier.

I really loved the mio as a mapping device however since it was fluid and fast to scroll around and I could modify the 3d angle. and am saddened that the igo software is no longer supported. But even then there were glitchy things with the unit (but i only had the chance to try one mio). Not to mention a crazy price.

As for the sonys - mostly the ones on display were broken. When they did work, redraws took forever, the unit was slow to respond, quirky and just terrible.

Then the navmans - broke almost as often as the sonys. Most were terminally functionless on the display and a sales rep told me that they had to constantly use new navmans to repopulate the peter jones display. The units were not nippy in the menus, fiddly, and the map scrolling method is an ugly joke. Ironically the S70 is the most reliable of the navman line with it being fine every time I use it. s90 and s50 and s30 not so lucky.

Either way, it's a minefield out there with all the differences, but within the tomtoms, within the garmins, and within the navmans the quality difference between units of the same model and between units of the same company is just incredible.

p.s. I will probably get the garmin 760 since it is quite cheap now and I like the 3d map view and have warmed to the colour scheme (because i have to probably). However, I wish there was some way to get the 8**/25* series interface tweaks on the 760 Sad

gatorguy6996 · Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2008 3:11 am Post subject:

As many posters have pointed out, personal preference is most of the factor here. The nuvi 700's have more than a dozen features not offered by TT, but if those features aren't important to you, then it matters little. I would want to point out an important caveat with mapshare. It's a great service, one that I wish other manufacturers would offer and improve on. But if you are not running the most current map, mapshare will be of little use to you as older maps are not eligible for mapshare updates. Thus you are pushed into map updates whether you need them or not, or live without mapshare updates.

	PocketGPS
	Web