[Closed] Garmin Nuvi with Eco Route

Had one briefly replacing a Tom Tom One. Firstly they have an annoying disclaimer screen you have to agree to every time its switched on. Unlike Tom Tom the Nuvi is very poor at giving alternative routes. With Tom Tom if you don't want to use a particular road for your trip you can get it to calculate an alternative route not using this road but the Nuvi has no such function. Also the interface on the Nuvi is much less intuitive than the Tom Tom's. I never used the eco-route thing- if you are that worried about fuel costs just drive slower. Upshot was I quickly sold the Nuvi on and got another Tom Tom Go.

I drove across the continent last year using the Nuvi, no problems at all but as it chose routes different to those by TomTom we had no lorries overtaking us in Germany. Loved it!
The eco-route option got used twice - no need for it, my car takes its diesel regardless. I drive slowly in towns, faster out of them, flat out - not in Eire.
I won't go back to the TomTom, Garmin dos it for me.

I think it's a good idea in principle. If you pay attention, you'll notice that some routes are significantly more economical than others. Hilly, windy, lots of roundabouts and urban driving = bad, flat and open = good.

Hilly, windy, lots of roundabouts and urban driving = bad, flat and open = good.

So slow routes= bad fuel economy fast roads and motorways = good fuel economy. Do you really need an ecofunction to tell you that?

If you need a satnav to choose your route for you, you also need it to take those things into account. It's actually more detailed than just fast vs slow.

For example, some 60mph speed limits give a real boost to your mpg but only if they are not hilly and windy, and if there are not lots of junctions and traffic lights etc on them. This stuff isn't on road atlases.

These things can save me 10-15% on fuel I reckon, on routes that I know all the details of.

Like I say, it's a good idea in principle, whether or not the satnav does it well is another question.

Thanks guys - some food for thought at least!

Cheers

I've just been reading up on this, you can now get an Ecoroute HD device that plugs into the coms port on your car and shares engine data (fuel use oil temp etc.) with your Garmin GPS via Bluetooth, basically turns your GPS into a fuel economy computer. It doesn't appear to be available in the UK yet, but its available in the US.

Nuvi 'agree' screen times out pretty quickly but the 3xx series seem pretty rubbish at getting you out of traffic problems and makes some really bad route choices failing to reflect that road speed is generally much lower than the posted speed limit especially if there are a lot of small villages (recently traffic calmed) or junctions.

Garmins biggest plus point is the option to upgrade to lifetime (of the device) for the whole of Europe for GBP75 which also gets you some pretty clever PC mapping software.

I will be giving Garmin a go for my next nav after having 2 problem tomtoms in a row. Having said that I think the tt software is probably the best still.

to do an 'eco' route on tt I tend to limit the top speed to 55ish, this is so it does always take the long wa around on the motorway.

For example, some 60mph speed limits give a real boost to your mpg but only if they are not hilly and windy, and if there are not lots of junctions and traffic lights etc on them. This stuff isn't on road atlases.

It does weather forecasts?

I know Kielder will be a bit hilly this weekend but - just as a 2nd opinion, you understand - you couldn't ask your Garmin sat nav what the weather will be like, could you?

Windy not windy! 🙂

There are satnavs out there that connect to the 'net and can super-impose weather images on the map. Sweet 🙂

There was also a rumour that Toyota were experimenting with integrating the Prius sat-nav to the engine management computer, and providing altitude data so that the car would know when a hill was coming up and could drain the battery going up, to save fuel, knowing that it would be able to recoup it on the way down...

Fantastic idea.