I need a new sat nav ?

Deleted member 144

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My Tom Tom is dead RIP, I am looking for a new sat nav, have always had Tom Tom and loved them, but I read that Tom Tom lifetime maps are NOT life time any more so doubting Tom now, looked at Garmin on line, they look OK just want to get to my destination easily don't need all the fancy stuff that Sat Navs do now, Will spend about £150 max on a new one , would still like to have a Tom Tom any suggestions , I do not need height and width stuff on my new one so not interested in the Lorry / van sats either , my phone has several navigation apps on it but do not like using that as I think phones are for calls and texts , old school me DOOH! I want a 5 to 6 inch screen minimum.
 
Edina said:
Plus one for the TomTom camper, great bit of kit.
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But Tom Tom is phasing out the lifetime updates to maps a nd making some models absolute, big article on the BBC News and on line, must say I have always had Toms and loved them.
 
I have two very good Garmin units with all of western Europe on. Both perfect with charging lead and option of additional SD card memory and Bluetooth phone connection. £100
 
I got the 7 ins lorry bus car one off eBay new. £30. Been germany Holland. Belgium. France and uk can not fault it got me there every time. And at thirty pounds ago. Why bother updating sell it on eBay and buy another new one.
 
My first satnav was a tiny, antique TomTom! Next car had a TomTom built in, so I was completely wedded to them by then. Having to buy maps every year was a pain though and the price kept going up of course.
I bought my first Garmin for the van in 2011 because of the height/width business and it's still going strong with lifetime updates... very happy with it. When I changed my car and lost the built-inTomTom, I decided to stick with Garmin - they'd won me over. There's very little difference overall and you soon get used to whatever you have. The guarantee of lifetime maps would be a deal-breaker for me every time.
 
I've owned TomTom devices for donkey's years, and originally their simplicity and reliability was fabulous.

More recently the TomTom 'improved' free updates have become ever more complex, including the ridiculous 3D building images.

The last update was a nightmare to install. It told me that my additional purchased and installed minidisc wasn't large enough, which I knew was nonsense. The only way to update was to delete all maps from my device and hope it recognised I was a legitimate owner and install the data again. It did.

A friend with a Garmin asked me to help with her 'faulty' device. It was all that I remember TomTom used to be and I loved its simplicity.

When my TomTom crashes next time, and I'm absolutely certain it will, I will have a long hard look at Garmin as an alternative, on condition it retains it's current simplicity.
 
I like Thomas' products and I can happily install/copyover 3rd party POI's (EG WC)
Not sure newer tomtoms allow.
In some ways garmin simpler as you can use SD card.
When my existing TomTom dies I will need to check
Although I like maps.me on a phone/tablet, and you can navigate....
I prefer a dedicated satnav when driving
 
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when your tom tom comes to the "end of it's life" factory reset it and it starts again although i still have to pay for speed cameras
when i bought my new one and the old one said no more I suspected tom tom greed and emailed them and thats what they told me to do.
if i'd known that before I wouldn't have two sat-navs now

kyran
Just remembered i took the old sd card out when it stopped updating and had to get another 16 GB one because the memory on the tom tom was no longer big enough for the maps
 
Thanks for that tip Kyran. In my case I had already installed a 16GB minidisc SD card because of the ever increasing update sizes.

In my first device there used to be a hole to press in a pin for a factory reset, but due to an 'improvement' they had removed it. As I had a blank screen they had effectively turned my device into a plastic brick.

By playing with MyDrive on my pc, I found I could delete everything on the device, including corrupted data, and then start the update again.
 
Check out how easy your new one will be to add POI's and how they look on screen and in searches. Important in my mind.
K ;)
 
Carrotts said:
I got the 7 ins lorry bus car one off eBay new. £30. Been germany Holland. Belgium. France and uk can not fault it got me there every time. And at thirty pounds ago. Why bother updating sell it on eBay and buy another new one.
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Updating is dead easy and only takes ten minutes. Easier than buying and selling.
 
Third party POI's can be put on modern Tomtoms easily except for Tomtom MyDrive which had a recent update, I still have an old 720Go which tomtom no longer supports but I can still put new maps and speed cameras on it, I prefer my Tomtom camper though, large screen, lifetime maps, speed cameras and with free lifetime built in SIM it re-routes you around any accidents or hold ups.
If you don't need the height and width settings have a look at this
https://www.totalsatnav.co.uk/tomtom-go-premium-5-sat-nav---worldwide-maps-628- p.asp
Shop around though
 
Buy an Xgody satnav. I'd suggest a 9" Android one for about £60 but a 7" one for £40 will do.
The updates and support from Xgody are useless, but the Nozatec Facebook group does it better.
Frankly, the screen is a bit dim, but the navigation software is vastly better than the others.
 
Trigger said:
But Tom Tom is phasing out the lifetime updates to maps a nd making some models absolute, big article on the BBC News and on line, must say I have always had Toms and loved them.
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They are only phasing out the lifetime updates on older models, lifetime means the expected lifetime of the unit not yours unfortunately.
When you say your tomtom is dead, what exactly happened to it?
 
I couldn’t afford the Tom Tom camper although I did think it looked amazing . In the end I got a cheap Chinese sat nav from Amazon marketed for truck drivers . You can input the length ,height and width of the MH . It’s been good so far 👍🏻
 
Tezza33 said:
They are only phasing out the lifetime updates on older models, lifetime means the expected lifetime of the unit not yours unfortunately.
When you say your tomtom is dead, what exactly happened to it?
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The screen became out of sync with the on screen keypad, the plug in for charging did not work and it could not find a GPS signal, it is many years old Via 35? now scrapped, I have a really old Tom Tom that still works well but gets lost in Spain France and Portugal as it cannot be updated and another old one that only has UK and ROI maps on it, I keep this one in our car as we only tour in our van ,I know what lifetime maps mean in Tom Tom speak, not what I and others expected when we bought our sat navs the reason Tom Tom give is that older models do not have the memory capacity for map updates as maps have now gone to 6.5 gig apparently.
 
I like the Garmins personally.
I just plugged in the Garmin Nuvi 2595LM (LM = Lifetime Maps) that I bought in 2012 into the Computer for the first time in well over a year and it is updating the maps straightaway :)
I don't know how typical it is, but it has an memory card slot to expand as needed which I guess will accomodate map updates as they get bigger?
 
After 15 years of using Garmin I bought a TomTom Rider for a trip to France on the motorbike and it almost ruined the trip! We eventually got to the bed and breakfast place, which was a biker only one and the owner tried to upload a route for us but you couldn't do it via USB he had to copy it to a memory card first, admittedly this was eventually put right with a firmware update but even when the route was on it would recalculate it according to your set preferences, ie.fastest, shortest etc. which meant you missed any waypoints the b&b owner had put on for you to stop at! When I got home I tried to explain all this to TomTom and after six months of banging my head against the wall I went on wikipedia and got the CEO's name and email, within a couple of hours of emailing him I got a call from TomTom offering to refund my money which I accepted and promptly bought a Garmin Zumo, which didn't just take me to my waypoints it actually announced them! So I'm afraid my loyalty went back to Garmin and I've never looked back. I'm sure TomTom may have sorted out their Rider by now because most bikers don't just put a postcode in they like to plan the best route for them and as much as planning a route in Garmin's Basecamp is a pain in the bottom it's better that TomTom's route planning software. So when I got a motorhome it was a Garmin Camper 760LM-T for me, which is by no means perfect, I don't believe that any satnav is perfect (although the new Zumo XT is pretty damn close for bikers) and TomTom would have to do something really special to get me to try them again, plus Garmin's support has always been good when I've needed it.

Regards,
Del
 
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