brookewebb

Hi All,

Planning on making the purchase to help me navigate down to the South of France. Can anyone comment on what's good and what's not? Been eying up tomtom 700's on ebay...

All reviews welcome!

thanks

kris

Garmin C330, overall okay but it's good to still have a look at a real map before you start your journey sometimes the suggested routes are a bit weird. One of the main down sides is the time it sometimes takes to pick up a satelite after you turn the device on, can be really ennoying sometimes.

The Russian

I did a lot a research before I bought mine Tom-tom 700, very easy to use, fixed speed camera uploads for UK and France are very useful!
My only problem is it sometimes wants to take you off the motorway onto a minor road because the minor road is shorter in distance, even though you asked for the fastest route. The Tom-tom doesn't recognise the fact the motorway is quicker and I cant find any way of increasing my average speed into the machines calculation. Once I was heading back to London on a Swiss motorway, the Tomtom took me off the motorway onto a minor road and took me up and over the Alps. It was snowing and I had no snow chains, I did have a sense of humour failure. The only way to solve this is go through the route and make the appropriate detours.
Apart from that its faultless, its never lost a satellite signal or got me to lost!

PS Never leave the bracket stuck to your window, it will invite thieves.

Christer

Mio 269+ - have driven 4000 miles all over Europe - has never gone wrong - and the maps are awesome. Some of the places I have been to in Germany and Denmark in the middle of nowhere and it has always taken me right to the door. My girlfriend's family have a TomTom and I have tried it on several occasions - there are some minor functionality advantages to the TomTom over the Mio but the TomTom does go the wrong way sometimes which can be quite irritating (obviously). My vote is the Mio 269+

Christer

having read the Russians comments above - this is not a fault on the Mio that have detected in 4000+ miles - it will calculate your route dependent on which routes/roads are permitted, down to whether you are on foot, bike or slow to fast car! The routing has not been (obviously) wrong at all so far (after 6 months)....

brookewebb

Interesting about the TT - also not heard of the MIO. How is the volume of the instructions in the car?
Also any experience with a Nuvi? They look pretty smart & v compact...

Seight

I've used aTom Tom go with Europe maps all over Germany, France, Austria and Switzerland many times over the last 2.5 years with no issues. In fact I just got back from an 850 mile round trip (to the French Grand Prix at Magny Cours with a Roger Waters / Pink Floyd concert on Fri night too!!) and it behaved impeccably. It never routes me off the motorways unless I ask it to. I was also pleased to see the 964 ran like a Swiss watch too.
I would definitely recco the Tom Tom.

Cheers
Alex

Christer

The Mio is also ergonomically superior - i.e. the screen is a bit larger and it is nowhere near as deep...but anyway here is a link (by tge way it comes with maps for all of Europe and Scandinavia)...no affiliation


http://www.mio-tech.be/products/gps/269/default.asp#

ttAmerica RoadsterAWD

nice mute shade......if you're color blind ;-)

robbed666

I have a Mio as well. I also have a TomTom. The Mio is always is my first choice. I've taken the Mio to the Arctic circle (-40 C), didn't miss a beat and this on batteries, hand held, on a snowmobile!

brookewebb

What are you refering to?

robmug

Christer - the Mio looks excellent. Especially with the European maps included.

I use TomTom on my PDA which has always been fine, as you get a bit more functionality on the windows platform than on the bespoke TT units. GF has a TomTom One which is nice, but having read the Mio stuff, if I was buying today I think I'd go for the Mio.

Christer

Hi Rob
The reason I purchased that one was that I happened to see one in a black cab in London one afternoon. I asked to have a look and tested it out by typing in my grandparents address in Norway (a very small cul-de-sac in a small town in Telemark - population 12000) and it had not just the road but also house number! I tried other obscure addresses in Denmark and France and it had them all. So far, the only address it hasn't actually found is of a summerhouse on the Danish coast - but then it is off a small gravel road in the middle of nowhere...funnily enough when you type in the address it doesn't have it, but when you turn onto the track it does display the name....! So as you can imagine, incredibly detailed maps - I would think that not every area of every country is to that sort of standard but so far over all those miles in the middle of nowehere half the time - it has always been a revelation. I particularly like the pedestrian mode as it then also ignores all the 'one way routes' etc. and takes you directly to where you are going (with an ETA as well, ha ha!). They say that it has a 4.5 hour battery time which I think is about right, however I have used it for more than a day when walking round as it doesn't have to be on all the time as you don't walk that fast. So for example when it gives you easy tio remember instructions for the next mile, it will take you 15-20 mins to walk that far so you just switch off because when you push the on button it is almost like it has been on standby and it just flicks back to the navigation you had entered....itmight take 1 minute to pick up the satellite signal but this means the battery couldlast a couple of days I am sure....

I am not saying its perfect - and I haven't compared it to anything but the Tom Tom 700 - but I like it - one of the better 'investments' I have made.

One last thing, (and before I totally sound like a Mio salesman) because it has a 2.5GB hard drive and the maps don't take up a lot of it, you can actually download your MP3's to it (and quite a few of them as well - probably about 1.5GB at least) and just plug in your headphone....nice.... (I am sure the others offer this as well but its pretty cool)...

964Patrick

I'm using TT on my mobile (Symbian S60) very pleased with it. Get's me everywhere I need to go, by car or otherwise (foot, bike). No experience with other brands but I can certainly reccommend TT. Be very careful not to leave any traces of your device though, even a suction nap mark on the windshield is enough for busted windows these days!

robmug

Christer - that sounds amazing. The TomTom One just has a 1Gb SD card...
I'm still happy, overall, with my Orange M500/Imate Jam device..just one thing to carry around that is my phone, PDA, satnav and MP3 player...