Satnav

[ashley karyl]

Hello Everybody,

Recently I have been looking at various SATNAV devices. The various PDA units look interesting because I'd like to be able to use one hand held if necessary and I was looking at the Medion PNA 100, which is on sale this weekend at Halfords for £199. It comes complete with maps of Europe which seems to set it apart from the other ones I have seen so far. Does anybody here with experience of SATNAV's have any advice on what to look out for or avoid with these units?

Thanks

Ashley

[ashley karyl]

I had a look at the Medion but ended up with the Tom Tom 300. I hope I made a good choice.

At least it got me home :D

[Jones~32]

I had a look at the Medion but ended up with the Tom Tom 300. I hope I made a good choice. 

At least it got me home  :D

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Bit late now, but i recently bought the Navman 520, great bit of kit!

[Blaze]

medion isnt that good

[ashley karyl]

I really wanted to like the Medion. It offered great specs on paper that the others just couldn't match unless you were prepared to pay 3 times more. Its tricky to choose when your standing there in Halfords being guided by one of their in store "experts" but while running searches for various local addresses, it just wasn't finding them so it looked like a non starter. There was a Garmin which looked pretty good but it seemed to lack a few options found on the Tom Tom. I was tempted to get the Navman 520 for another £50 which included a free snooper device but I already felt like I had spent more than I originally intended.

The Tom Tom seems user friendly and in the end I think I went with this one purely because they seem to be the most commonly used, though perhaps that's a twisted logic because there must be more Fords on the road than Toyotas and we all know which is better :D. The 300 unit seems to get good user reviews for the most part though I have heard that the company could use a few lessons in customer care for after sales support.

[Jones~32]

I got my navman from PC World, order online and collect at store, only cost me 299 :D

[Tegan]

I have to agree that every time i walk into Halfords they havent got a clue what im talking about - couldnt even get the right headlight bulb or a ford Ka for petes sake! i walked in and picked out the right one straight away - and its not even my car

Anyways - its up to you which one you buy - dont be swayed by people who are 'brand snobs' - like yeah the tom tom might be the most popular, but the thing that really puts me off - is its STUPID NAME!

Why did they have to call it tom tom? :!Removed!:

Just choose the one that meets your needs best and is in your price range

[SMW]

Why did they have to call it tom tom?  :shutit:

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According to TomTom . . . .

Why "TomTom"?

Some experts say that language may have begun with drumming, and simple drums like the double-headed Native American tom-tom and the talking drums of Africa, have always been used for signaling, imitating the pitch patterns of language and transmitting messages over many miles. Just like us.And like TomTom products, the tom-tom is simple but versatile, reliable and fun to use.

[ashley karyl]

I suspect (says the man with less than a day of experience with SatNav) that the real world differences in hardware are probably quite small but the changes will mostly be related to software for ease of use and accuracy, so it will largely be a personal choice. That's the way it works with a lot of high end digital camera backs which share the same sensor but deliver different looking image files because of the software being used to create the raw file.

The guy at Halfords was clearly pushing the Tom Tom over the other ones but it did seem like a fairly solid option in the end. I am just waiting for the first time I find myself on a bridge going over water and it tells me to turn right...

[Kev Mc]

I'm definately going for the Tom Tom One after seeing 5th Gear last night, it's similar to the Tom Tom Go 300 only it's quicker & slimmer (but with worse sound quality apparantly) & a bit cheaper. I looked on Froogle before & it's going for £220 there, I'm going to get it after Christmas

[Flat Pack]

I was tempted to get the Navman 520 for another £50 which included a free snooper device but I already felt like I had spent more than I originally intended.

If you want some speed camera detection too, then head over to www.pocketgpsworld.co.uk and get their speed camera database. It'll work with most of the portable sat nav devices now. I use it with TomTom Navigator on a PDA and it works well :) Don't know how the database compares with the pay for offerings from Snooper, Road Angel and the like but it doesn't seem to miss much.

[ashley karyl]

I've already downloaded the file from pocketgps and it seems to work pretty well, though I don't suppose it would be of much use if somebody was hiding behind a tree and taking readings. Frankly I don't really go speeding anyway but nobody wants to get lumbered with a fine and points of their license for having driven a couple of miles per hour over the limit at the wrong moment, so any warning is more than welcome. I set up the preference to moo like a cow when entering a "safety" area and my daughter who loves animals thought it was supposed to alert me when there were cows nearby!

One thing I find perplexing is hearing about all the people who have to sit around for 5 minutes or longer just to pick up a satellite signal in many cases. As long as I am out of the house I have never had to wait more than 5 or 10 seconds at most. I think they are showing 5th gear again tonight so I'll try watching it.

[ashley karyl]

hmm, I saw 5th gear last night where they said that the TomTom One was the winner of their mini test including the Navman 520 a tiny Garmin and one I'd never heard of called a Becker. Having looked at it now compared to the 300 Go I am struggling to see how they justify selling the 300 Go for more money. Its bigger (but not the screen) and has a slower processor but the other specs pretty much identical unless I am missing something crucial here. Were Halfords pushing the 300 Go so heavily simply to clear them from stock?

[Kev Mc]

hmm, I saw 5th gear last night where they said that the TomTom One was the winner of their mini test including the Navman 520 a tiny Garmin and one I'd never heard of called a Becker. Having looked at it now compared to the 300 Go I am struggling to see how they justify selling the 300 Go for more money. Its bigger (but not the screen) and has a slower processor but the other specs pretty much identical unless I am missing something crucial here. Were Halfords pushing the 300 Go so heavily simply to clear them from stock?

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I think they just decided to bring the Tom Tom One out in place of the Go 300, they're smaller, faster & cheaper so maybe people who didn't want the Go 300 would be tempted to buy this 1.

I was torn between going with Tom Tom Go 300 or 1 of the Navman's because I know people who highly recommend both so I was made up that I caught 5th Gear, saved me a fair bit of grief.

[ashley karyl]

I think you'd be pretty happy with the Tom Tom One. The sound quality on the 300 is excellent, so if its only a little worse it will probably be fine. The One appears to have a better built in antenna and satellite configuration for fixing and holding your location so that can only be good and while I am not sure how the faster processor will help in practice it certainly can't hurt. Sometimes I think the distances being announced by the Tom Tom 300 are not always 100% accurate, so perhaps the faster processor is able to update and deliver that information more effectively.

The positive aspects of the Tom Tom range for me is the easy clear set up & display and I think having the ability to put in a full post code is essential, so I cannot understand why this isn't standard across all SatNav devices. Down here in Cornwall for example there are many roads which don't have a listed name so the only way I can see of getting to your location with some sense of accuracy is through the use of a full postcode.

[Kev Mc]

Yeah, tbh I dont even care if the sound quality is bad, as long as I can hear where I need to go when my Speakers aren't drowning out the sound it'll do me, as long as my tunes sound good I'm happy enough. I can't wait to get it now.

[ashley karyl]

There was a very good security tip on 5th Gear suggesting that you clean the marks off the window where a SatNav was placed because thieves look out for those as a clue that a SatNav might be in the car. Cleaning those marks might save you the hassle of a smashed window at the very least even if you had removed the device.

[ashley karyl]

Something I've noticed about the SatNav is that it consistently shows my speed as being about 5mph slower than the speedometer on the car itself. The part I question is whether the SatNav is out or whether the speedometer on the car is deliberately set up to make us think we are going a little faster than we actually are as a safety measure of some sort. Part of me thinks that the SatNav must be right or else it couldn't judge the distances properly for turnings.

[Flat Pack]

Satnav is right, the speedo is wrong ;)

I think its because a speedo is allowed to overread by a certain amount, but must not underread at all. Given that speedos can't be completely accurate, they're all setup to overread a bit just to make sure.

[DaveSR]

Something I've noticed about the SatNav is that it consistently shows my speed as being about 5mph slower than the speedometer on the car itself. The part I question is whether the SatNav is out or whether the speedometer on the car is deliberately set up to make us think we are going a little faster than we actually are as a safety measure of some sort. Part of me thinks that the SatNav must be right or else it couldn't judge the distances properly for turnings.

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Oooohhhhh ..... I haven't got that feature on my Navman 520 *or more than likely I don't know how to turn it on !

I haven't tried the speed camera pack from the site you mentioned, however the latest software release includes speed-camera locations and the ability to search using the whole postcode (anybody know of a site ?)

£190 for a software update is a rip off in my opinion <_<

[chatman]

I have a HP 2210 PDA with TomTom 5 bluetooth. Very accurate. I also use it for my speedo as well, mine is + - 4mph out.

Also worth looking at this site http://www.pocketgps.co.uk/modules.php?name=Downloads

I downloaded the Speed Camera DB and have recently installed the new Camera POI capture. (spend lots of time traveling around) get it free now before they charge you for it....

Good site and caters for most major makes.....