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Man, I'm full of car questions today! Been meaning to get a Satnav for ages to use in hire cars, but not sure what's the best available for my budget... Looking around £100, but would stretch this to £150 max if there was a compelling reason to do so...
Again, as always, I appreciate the time and advice of the STW hivemind! 8)
I got one of these recently (refurbished as below - you'd never know it wasn't brand new) and it's been great.
Cant you hire it with the car?
could do, but it would cost around £70 for the week, may as well buy our own and use it again and again?
Just for UK i doubt you will find better than this:
Try satnaveasy.co.uk
They seem to be the CRC of santav, and have some great deals
Other than that, get a Garmin. They are sooooooo easy to use and their customer service is the best.
Try the Ebuyer site got one for £40.00 at Xmas and beeen able to put Tom Tom on it.rechargeble so you can use it out of the car not sure for how long.
the maps that come with it are very good and right ups seem ok, I think it is about £44.00 now but next day delivery if you want normal is two days.
I'm using my phone, a 2 year old O2 XDA Orbit, for which I have downloaded (*cough*) western europe Tomtom. Works a treat.
If I go anywhere I bring my phone anyway, and if I know I need it as car Satnav I bring the air vent holder and car power lead.
Also great for MTB (and my white water kayaking) trips as emergency phone. I can start it up and get lat/long for helicopter extraction should I need to, much better than "3rd turn after the hill with the pole" (although I hope I'll never need this feature).
Phones with built in GPS often comes with Satnav software, so might be something to look at?
Agree with tragic69 about the TomTom - I really love them. Just bought the same model but with European mapping for £99 from Halfords 2 weeks ago. Just sold my 39 month old TomTom v3 UK & ROI (same as the one on the Amazon link) on Ebay last night for £64 + delivery, so you don't even lose much money on them. Never gone wrong, easy to use, nice colour display that shows your current speed (some Garmin ones don't) - get it bought!
Nokia E71 (well E72 now) on vodafone
they offer Vodafone Satnav and it is VERY good. updating over the network for traffic etc.
plus you get a pretty good phone to boot.
Base Garmin from Halfords, £89 does all you need it to do in the UK plus revenue cameras locations on it.
[url= http://www.satnaveasy.co.uk/garmin-nuvi-760wt-fm-special-offer-price-will-end-today-i11664.html ]How about a Nuvi 760wt for £120?[/url] reduced from £300? I guess it's an older/superceded model?
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/159765
Cheap and you can install alternative software such as TomTom etc. I've been using mine for 6 months with no bother.
That TomTom that was linked to up there by tragically1969...
Once bought, do you have to subscribe to an updates service or is it a one-off payment each time you download new software/maps or is it free?
You get 1 free upgrade of the mapping, then you can share other peoples map corrections foc after that. If you want another map you have to pay for it.
re tomtom updates - you can either 'subscribe' to them - at a certain cost, and get updates every time they come out, or just buy a map every so often. Roads really don't change that often - in my opinion a single map update halfway thru the life of the device (say 2.5 years into a 5 year use) should see you good.
my vote would be for a tomtom as well. You can update the maps 'for free' in the same way you can get it on a phone 'for free'. if thats your thing.
so I should go for a TomTom or a Garmin Nuvi, best model I can find under £150 and can't go wrong?
Not used the Garmin, used Tom Tom for around 5 years, never had an issue, dont think you will go wrong with either TBH.