Hi all,

Just looking for recommendations of a good, easy to use and reasonable value for money sat nav for our T5 for family trips in the UK and across Europe.

What’s good?

Ta.

Tom Tom for easy operations. (Though it may be a left/right side of the brain thing… as some don’t seem to get it)

I got the one with bluetooth and live for the traffic. Was worth it in the UK

Using Garmin in the car, motorbike and MTB… great back up via their websites, for cities and towns its brilliant… worth it to reduce stress and arguments alone as well as calculating toll free road alternatives.

Garmin / TomTom, probably wont go wrong either way. They come in nice big screen versions nowadays too…

You probably know already not to use the phone as you will get raped financially for data charges….

Tom Tom XXL classic iq wide with euro mapping here. Love it. Reserve and collect at Halfords for less than £120

Garmin all round here too. Don’t like Tom Toms. Window mounts were rubbish and always fell off. Think the Garmin has a nicer UI and quicker to pick up signal

We bought a Garmin to use in the motorhome. The best feature is the lane indicator which tells you which lane to get into as you approach junctions. Useful in heavy traffic and on unfamiliar junctions.

Apologies if this is bad form but I have this for sale over in the classifieds (price is now negotiable)

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/fs-ot-thule-roof-bars-and-tom-tom-sat-nav

Tomtom go 720 has everything you need including 1 year free live services which gives you all the speed camera’s, google in case you need to find a whatever. I find mine so invaluable en france, belgium, italy and sweden too. Good luck with your choice.

Tom Tom worst customer service I have ever experienced (and I have used Three Mobile, Talk Talk and NPower). 720T failed after 13 months – battery life non existent, charger broke, never picked up satellites). Despite them acknowledging they knew about these problems they refused to do anything about it. In the end I smashed it up, put in back in the box, did a shit in the box and sent it back to them.

Garmin way better, as is navfree on the iPhone.

Thank you peoples! Loving the last response 😀

Garmin for me. Tried TomTom after owning Garmin but found it lacking in features I’d preciously taken for granted. Just changed my Sat Nav to a Garmin 1695 and think its brilliant, Google and the lane assist as mentioned earlier is a really useful but limited to major roads. Try and get one with lifetime maps to keep it uptodate.

Just driven to Pisa and back twice in one month, using my Garmin. No complaints. My mate had a Tom Tom with him. Exactly the same untill we hit the city centres. My Garmin took us right to the hotel door, his Tom Tom didnt seem quite as accurate, it stopped one or two buildings out, or on the wrong side of a street corner. Having said that, his hadnt been updated for 3 years.

I would use Garmin, purely as they are involved in cycling 🙂

Sc-xc ……funny story

Garmin for me, still going strong after 5 years. Particularly useful for towns as noted above, we’d have never found our rental apartment in Marseilles without it a few years ago. Never rely on it 100% always ensure we understand the big picture route and make our own choices, have had some bad experiences where SatNav has tried to send us a long way round via motorway rather than shorter direct route.

Despite being a confirmed Garmin user for hillwalking and cycling/running GPS’s I much prefer the Tom-Tom for satnav. I’ve used mine (a 730) over much of the Europe and even in the US (having bought the north America maps on an SD card) with no complaints.

Which Garmin model to be specific? I need one too … 🙂

D’oh! So it’s Garmin 1695 … 🙄

If you’re in possession of a modern smartphone, CoPilot works pretty well, and certainly seems to get better reviews than either TomTom or Garmin, and it’s a lot cheaper. I’ve got the older version which worked really well taking me to a pub in a tiny little fishing village in darkest Devon the last couple of years. It does require a bit of menu digging to get route selection sorted, to avoid inappropriate route choice, mind… 😉

Currently using Nokia Drive on my Windows Phone ,picks up a GPS signal lock way quicker than either a Tomtom or MIO sat nav that I have owned previously and so far it seems more accurate than the TomTom.
Downsides are that the search functions are pretty basic.
I wouldnt buy a standalone satnav anymore.