had a garmin edge touring for a while. cant see the screen much nowadays, constantly taking my reading specs on and off to see screen.

would it be possible to buy a 7” tablet, that takes a sd card or something, which is loaded with OS mapping and Europe road mapping?

Have a look to see if you can get viewranger for a tablet
http://www.viewranger.com/en-US/product-overview/product-features/android-tablets

OS maps app works on a tablet. 20 quid a year gets you full UK coverage, 1:25000 and 1:50000. You can then choose to download sections of map as and when you need it to be used in cases when you might not have any signal.

I find bifocals work well for this sort of stuff. On my cycling glasses I have some Hydrotac stick-on ones which so far seem to do the job well. Means I can glance down at the bars and make out detail just fine.

Garmin Montana has a 4″ screen. Would that be big enough?

Garmin Montana has a 4″ screen. Would that be big enough?

no Colin. had a look at one. 7” Lenovo is perfect size, with a mount that sits on my loops.

Viewranger is likely your best option then.

I use a tablet as a satnav in the motorhome as the dash is further away than in the car and it makes it far more visible.

Look at getting a tablet you can buy a decent armoured case for if you’re using it off road in all weathers.

But surely if Ton’s using reading glasses this is a matter of focus rather than of resolvable detail at distance. So by using a tablet instead of an Edge you just have something that’s bigger but still blurry. I can’t imagine it improving matters.

It depends, if the font size remains the same then yes but, on the apps I use font size increases with form factor so the app on a 10″ tablet shows the same map area etc as on a 5″ phone but just biggerer.

Bez, I want a screen that shows a bigger area but with good detail, like when using a say os size map.

on my garmin the area is too small, and when I zoom out the detail is not good enough.

I know what I mean and want, just a bit hard to explain. 😀

Fair enough, I thought you were just struggling to read it. Yeah, they’re a bit small for browsing maps…

yes GPS is great if you dont get lost but if you want to pna route using it or to find a track its too small for me as well

I have Memory map on an old phone to overcome this

For road touring I’d have paper maps and a typed out cue sheet.

Otherwise its another load of nonsense to mount, look after, depend upon, and have to charge all the time.

Tony, I’m in pretty much the same boat as you. Garmin Touring is fine to follow a route on screen, crap for looking at the maps. I’ve toured with paper maps (and I’m damn sure you have too), I’m experimenting at the moment with an 8″ Samsung tablet – I have Memory Map covering UK and France at useful scales. Charging and keeping the thing dry are the issues.
I’m not sure all tablets come with a proper GPS chip (rather than A-GPS that uses known wifi points to triangulate a position) – worth checking

Satmap? They have larger screens

A-GPS that uses known wifi points to triangulate a position

A-GPS is only there to give you a faster fix. You still need a normal GPS chip.

Worth checking out maps.me. You can download the entire planet (should you wish) worth of OpenStreetMaps, and then have no connection issues as its all local.

Not sure about routing, GPS etc, as, oddly, feature set seems to be dependent on os platform.

Granted its not OS maps, but worth pointing out that in general outside of the UK there are often no OS quality maps. OpenStreetMaps are very good in my experience, including UK, France and the USA.

You still need a normal GPS chip

Yup, hence it’s

worth checking

should have added, I am not to fussed about gps either.
I am pretty good map wise, and have toured home and abroad with paper maps for years, I just wanted to try and stop having to carry loads of paper maps every time I go touring.

I always used to just buy out-of-date road atlases for buttons and then tear out whatever pages I needed. Very cheap, very light, easy to annotate, no leccy required 😉

Not so helpful if you’re going off-road, of course.