Sat Navs

We have the Avtex/Garmin camper sat nav, as advertised by the club,  in our MH (standard fitting). It has never taken us down unsuitable roads but that may be because we set it up to use fastest, rather than shortest, routes as well as setting the dimensions slightly oversize.

It's been good but I’d not pay the extra money to get a camper version when good old common sense is much cheaper.

My TomTom Start 60 with Camper Maps loaded has been excellent. It's about seven years old which was before free map updates were in place and I think I have updated once in that time. Do you really need to buy a new one just to get the latest maps? Roads don't change a lot although things like speed limits do. Having had a couple of Garmin sat navs in the past (not specialist camper ones) I would be reluctant to buy another as what you describe happened to me. If you really have to buy a new sat nav I think I would pay the extra £80! Have you looked at the Aguri sat navs? I like the idea of having the built in dashcam but have no experience of how they work in camper mode.

David

I have the start 60 but not camper version with free map updates. Very happy but prefer my common sense to camper version in UK at least

My sat-nav consists of a UK atlas and my wife's finger ,she looks at the map and points out which road

That is all very well if you only tour in this country where you pretty much know what the difference in roads are and know what to expect but "over there" it isn't always that obvious and maps, which can be poorly presented, are not a great deal of help in some countries.

You also don't always get given detail of the best routes to sites either.

peedee

Thanks for responses so far.  I check routes with maps but that still did not prevent us getting caught out in Versailles (with an earlier non-camper Tomtom) when confronted with a tunnel with maximum height of 2m or in Marbella when we found ourselves in a pedestrian plaza.  Never had such experiences since combining maps with a camper sat nav.  Further experiences of Garmin Camper sat navs would be welcomed 

I cannot vouch for Garmin, I have never had one but I run Co-pilot Truck on an Android 7 inch tablet and it hasn't taken me on unnavigable routes in 3 years of use. Co-Pilot also do a caravan version. I have only had limited experience with this but it also looks to be good at avoiding problem areas.

peedee

We also had an ancient Tomtom which generally navigated us well (in conjunction with a map!) but support for it was withdrawn a while back. Tomtom have since emailed me and offered 20 to 30% off a replacement if I were to purchase directly from them. I suspect this may be account specific but if you haven’t had such an offer it may well be worth a call (or online chat – which I found very useful) with Tomtom to see if they are prepared to offer such a discount.

Although the actual offer I received was for a Go Premium, on contacting them directly they advised that I was alternatively able to obtain a 25% discount off the price of the Go Camper. This reduced the price to £285 - and they threw in a carry case as well - which actually made the Camper around the same price as the Garmin. 

Haven't had any experience with Garmin and like you I found mixed reports for both makes. On balance however I thought the reviews marginally favoured the Tomtom and so have elected to go with them. Purchasing direct was easy and delivery only took a couple of days.

why change because no updates. there's not many new roads built over 5-10 years in Britain so surely its worth keeping for a few more years at least and you can always check beforehand using other means like google maps.

Sorry but why not just use google maps, plus the fact it has live traffic updates. Can't see the use in any other software specially as g maps is free.