Motoring sat nav

[Beardy]

Garmin or TomTom? (Here or Vroom is another question  )

My TomTom 6200 is on its way to the great PCB in the sky and it’s time to look for a replacement. So the simple question is Garmin or TomTom for a car based satnav. Has anyone got experience of the most recent products either or both of these manufactures.

I’m a long term user of Garmin GPS tech, going way back into the 90s, but I bought a TomTom 6½ years ago after vowing never to by another integrated unit and I’ve not been disappointed with it. But Garmin still make the tidier looking unit and it also looks like TomTom have moved from lifetime updates to a subscription model. Any relevant comments welcome. 

[Diver300]

About 3 years ago I had a TomTom that got traffic updates by bluetooth from my mobile phone.

Or rather it often didn't. I could sometimes get it to work for a week or so, without needing to be touched for that week. The Tomtom would connect every time I turned on the car.

Then it wouldn't. I could spend hours pairing and re-pairing, and often when I went into the bluetooth settings screen, it would just cycle round "connecting", "connected", "off" (or something similar) every second or so. The handfree bluetooth audio would work fine, but the car did that anyhow, and I just about never use it. The phone had a data connection available all the time.

The phone was an iPhone, so about as mainstream as you can get.

I got rid of the TomTom and got a Garmin. That has an RDS receiver inside the 12V adaptor / lead. The traffic information isn't quite as fast and or detailed as the TomTom was when it was working, but the RDS data just works.

[Gattopardo]

Why not a phone based gps that you can use off line.

Wouldn't recommend the update of here now maps tho.

[telstarbox]

Seconded, any reason not to just use Google Maps on a phone? Even a cheap Android would undercut a dedicated satnav.

[rafletcher]

Google maps, or Waze on a phone would do.

[Beardy]

I’ve never been happy with just how hot my phone gets when I use it for navigation purposes, it feels,like I’m using it up or wearing put some how. 

It’s also a right pain when the person you are visiting rings you when you’re about 5 minutes away from them and you lose navigation just when you are on totally unknown territory and NEED the sat nav. This happened to me last weekend when I was using my phone in the hire van I was using to move the boy. I went the wrong way and had wonderful fun in the one way systems of that London as a consolation prize! 

[Polar Bear]

If you haven't already sold your previous iPhone why not get it a data sim on giffgaff and repurpose it as a satnav?