Garmin sat nav

I bought a new Tomtom Via 62 a few months back (having used Tomtom before) and have completed two longish continental trips with it, in the van...

the actual driving 'experience' with it had been very good...

the maps seem accurate, 'fastest route' prioritises major, faster roads, the traffic information I'd far more accurate that I would have guessed and the subsequent rerouting to avoid any severe hold up proved fast and clever to replan.....took us round a accident hold and saved us loads of time with a very small detour.....(could have just followed the locals I guess......)

However, other elements of its use a just plain bad.....but I am working around them....

updates from my desktop PC are slow...

POI point of interest file management (campsites, Aires, GPL stations etc) is hopeless whereas previous models were simplicity itself) 

there is a complementary app that allows planning 'offline' and then can be sent to the satnav...very clever you'd think......however, while the App allows the user to input the size/speed of their unit (and the result works really well) when transferring this 'planned route' to the satnav it only actually sends the destination and replans on the unit, which of course, doesn't have the MH size info and just plans as a car.....Doh!

the workaround is to use waypoints along the App planned route as these also get sent to the satnav.

so, some really good stuff and some frustrating stuff....

with just a tiny bit of effort, this could have been a brilliant unit, with clever off line route planning tailored to your vanning unit.....but spoiled by not following the process through properly.....

despite the foibles, I'm sticking with it for now.....they may improve the bad bits as there is a lot of flak on the Tomtom forum.

Having just returned from a three week meander around Normandy & Brittany, my inbuilt TomTom had some "interesting" views on the 'fastest route. Some of the decisions it made were quite bizarre. Seen a few interesting housing estates though.

Is there any merit in researching trucker satnavs? Presumably they don't take you round the tiny backways Cyberyacht & I recounted.

We're wondering what to replace our Garmin with, as frankly in France it was sometimes more hindrance than help.

The new TomTom truck also has a facility to change vehicle type from a car, van/motorhome to a full sized HGV. My aging Start 60 with Camper maps installed has been pretty reliable. As BB says the loading of third party content like POI's leaves a lot to be desired which all goes back to the dumping of the Windows FAT32 file system some years ago. In the old days it was just drag and drop!

David

Pippah, I prefer the female voice as they are never wrong - or so my other half tells me!

Since I can't trust my built-in satnav (it was out of date the day the car rolled off the production line), plus it does daft things, I bought a Tom Tom 6200 which has all the bells and whistles but, most importantly, uses the "MyDrive" App to assist in route planning.  It allows me to plan the route beforehand, researching bits on Google Maps Street View if necessary, and then transferring it to the Tom Tom by WiFi.  So far, it has stuck absolutely to the selected route thereby avoiding any nasty surprises.  Downside is that it does take time to set the route up in the first place.

Agree that the “franglais” town pronunciations are laughable on the Garmin.

We have found occasional errors in the mapping despite regular updates and I wonder how the mapping suppliers are advised of changes. Perhaps in quieter parts of Europe there is just no mechanism for getting the road change information to the mapping people? On the other hand we have found the speed limit information very reliable and a great asset. On many motorhome like ours the speedo is difficult to read and not very accurate.

my experience is a bit difference....

i have a Via 62 which also interfaces with My Drive.

i like My drive as I can set my vehicle size and the resultant routes seem valid....

however, when I try to send the route to the satnav it only sends the destination and recalculates the route, which is often different due to it calculating for a car rather than the MH as for MyDrive. 

this 'anomaly' has been verified on the Tomtom forum and the only way to mirror the route successfully is to incorporate waypoints (based on the MyDrive route) as these are also sent to the Tomtom...

i am still looking for an easier workaround and Tomtom suggest that full route transfer might happen.....sometime.

Standard Garmin named Brunhilde and she’s spot on

Isn't that strange.  I have just come back from Dartmouth - to East Yorkshire, via Broadway - almost 400 miles and, having made quite a few changes to the route initially selected by MyDrive, it followed my route exactly.  I have also done this with numerous other routes I have loaded into it, and again, it stuck to my preferred route. The only anomaly that jumps out at me is that on my version of MyDrive, there doesn't seem to be the option to select vehicle size - wonder if this has anything to do with it?