Thinking of a Garmin? dont! Stick with Tomtom

pr1970 · Occasional Visitor Joined: Feb 17, 2005 Posts: 36

Hi All

Just thought i`d warn people after I made the mistake of moving to Garmin after using TomTom for 4 years. Bought a Garmin nuvi 255WT a few months back as ny TomTom was feeling a bit old and slow.
The Garmin look nice but thats about all. The most important feature is the routing and the Garmin is awful compared to TomTom.
It doesnt take into account traffic lights, junctions, roundabouts etc when finding routes. It will always look at the speed limits of roads and assume that you will drive at the maximum speed of the road.

The journey times are also woefully out , Tomtom was always very accurate but the Garmin will aways be adding time to your journey as it hasnt calculated for normal delays.
I mainly drive around London and it will always try to take you into central London rather than take a fast dual carriage out to the M25 and round and back in. A longer route but much faster speeds, it makes no difference what setting you give it, i keep it on faster time and is always wrong.

Other annoyances is the voice will suddenly announce "TURN LEFT.......IN 5 MILES" when driving down an A-Road!
It will also say things like "IN 100 YARDS TURN LEFT.THEN TURN LEFT..TURN LEFT." It drives you nuts!!

Alternative routes...well you get one detour. If you dont like it tough.

Plan route prior to leaving with multiple waypoints..cant be done on Garmin.

Compass...nope..

The real time traffic system is non-existant. In the whole of London it finds about 5 areas of bad traffic. I tested it the other day, looking on the web first I found 2 websites that warned of bad traffic on my route i`d be travelling. When I got there the Garmin said nothing. It added 15mins to my journey.

So my advice is stick with the TomTom.

Anyone want to buy a used Garmin? Its great! the graphics are nice , you can change car navigation icon to a beach ball. Erm..you can upload your photos to it and then point to them and it will take you there (via the slow route of course).

MaFt · Posted: Thu May 28, 2009 10:15 pm Post subject:

which tomtom are you comparing it with? you do realise that the 255 is an entry level model so really should only be compared to the tomtom one?

the extra routing options are available in the higher models.

i also wasn;t aware that tomtom took into account traffic lights, roundabouts etc? i always found garmin's times more accurate that tomtom's. tomtom apparently add 'delays' into the routing on the assumption that you will be stopping every so often on a long journey and i would then always arrive way ahead of the proposed time...

but still, personally i believe that those who begin with tomtom prefer tomtom, those who begin with garmin refer garmin... kinda like the mac/pc argument!

each have their pro's and cons - one day i might to a comparative review of 2 similar devices but then by the time i'd written it (i'm not known for brevity in my reviews!) tomtom would have brought out 3 new navcores and 6 new devices!!

MaFt

layingback · Regular Visitor Joined: Feb 12, 2009 Posts: 124

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PaulB2005 · Posted: Thu May 28, 2009 10:49 pm Post subject:

It's a bit more than that, there's also the routing engine too....

MaFt · Posted: Thu May 28, 2009 11:32 pm Post subject:

layingback · Regular Visitor Joined: Feb 12, 2009 Posts: 124

PaulB2005 · Posted: Fri May 29, 2009 7:35 am Post subject:

MaFt · Posted: Fri May 29, 2009 11:39 am Post subject:

jimbo_hippo · Frequent Visitor Joined: May 18, 2005 Posts: 444

pr1970
Interesting post kind of confirming what I believe. It's hard to find an alternative to TT because as a basic navigation device I found TTN6 on a PDA to be a far more pleasant experience to Navman or Destinator. Back when I changed to TT I paid a premium for the software because it had a well thought out interface and was 'comforting' experience next to destinators somewhat wobbly delivery of screens and commands and some downright stupid menu options such as only being able to TOTALLY avoid toll roads or accepting them all.

But I think this forum is full of people with a beef about what you get when you buy premium version of TT. I moved up to a 720 but others paid even bigger bucks for newer variants with LIVE capability. All the bells and whistles are flawed in some way or another. I'm probably beoming legendary for my bashing of TT now but in my heart I really do wish they'd sort out all the other bits because I still WANT it to be good.
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pr1970 · Occasional Visitor Joined: Feb 17, 2005 Posts: 36

HI Thanks for the responses.

I`m comparing it to TomTom Navigator 5 that I had on my PDA.

I have to disagree with the routing, the TomTom I always found very close to the time it original stated for the journey.
Maybe it doesnt take into account traffic lights,etc neither. But when I come home it takes 15mins from the M25 to my house. TomTom would always say 14-15mins. The Garmin always says around 6mins. I can manage that if I drive 10 mph over the speed limit and jump all the red lights but usually after I`ve been stopped 3-4 times by the traffic lights it manages to add up the time to what it shouldve been.

Also if I need to travel to the otherside of London. The TomTom would first try and set me off through London. But after a mile of the A-road out to the M25 it would realise the M25 is the best option. The Garmin on the other had, tries the across London route. But not until within a few hundred yards of the M25 does it finally decide thats the best route to take.
Also whereas the TomTom will say "turn around where possible" , the Garmin will just say turn left or right and then send you round the houses back to the road you were on but going in the other direction, instead of just asking for you to turn around.

Maybe I`ll do a test with both units in the car and see what happends. Perhaps I`ve just thought I`d get more for my money with the Garmin than what I got.

Oh another thing I prefer about the Garmin is its speed of the interface. The TomTom would end up searching for towns in the rest of europe making it painfully slow. But that could be my old HP Ipaq thats at fault.

Thanks

Paul

MaFt · Posted: Fri May 29, 2009 9:52 pm Post subject:

Calomax · Posted: Fri May 29, 2009 10:44 pm Post subject:

pr1970 · Occasional Visitor Joined: Feb 17, 2005 Posts: 36

DennisN · Posted: Mon Jun 01, 2009 12:50 am Post subject:

TTN5 comes from the older stable of TT software, back when "Turn around when possible" was the order of the day. More uptodate "improved" versions are less likely to do so, thinking probably that you don't want to, or maybe it's not too safe? They'll often send you round the houses too nowadays (left, left, left, right). And then they have IQ Routing ("IQ" - what score?), so now they know the route is better through London than round it!! Good old TTN5 simply knew motorways were (expected to be) faster than your back streets.

navver · Posted: Mon Jun 01, 2009 8:52 pm Post subject:

I have to say IQ routes is brilliant. The routes now are the one I would choose as a local, and the times are spot on.

As the predicted times are correct, barring occasional holdups, it gives me confidence that quickest really is quickest.

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