No idea about these any more. My mum wants to get my dad one for his birthday. Reasonably technical for a 69 year old bloke. Likes cool stuff. Also long sighted, so I don’t know if it’s better to have a big or small one..?

Budget £70

i believe the standard stw answer is google maps on your phone 🙂

i do this instead of a satnav and it works a treat. this may not be the answer for a 69yr old tho. at the very least it bumps the thread back to the top for more discussion tho 😉

there are downsides: Have to buy some kit, power lead, holder. Does use Data, not a massive amount but if you do a lot of driving it might be worth checking. If you get a text or call at a critical moment, that’s a pain 🙂

Bigger is always better for a moving map IMHO, how about lifetime maps and traffic updates?
Anything by Garmin or TomTom should do the job – have a look what deals are about.

Mildly off topic but if you’re an apple fanboi (maybe works for android as well), newer cars have carplay enabled so you can project the map off your phone onto the cars media screen. Tried it on a Skoda we’re considering and it works really well.

Caveats re: data etc apply.

Have to buy some kit, power lead, holder. Does use Data, not a massive amount but if you do a lot of driving it might be worth checking. If you get a text or call at a critical moment, that’s a pain

i didnt buy anything extra to set mine up, as i already had a power lead for car charging purposes, thats if you need one at all. bit of forethought could mean you leaving the house with a fully charged phone, plus the area youre driving in already downloaded (for 30 days before it deletes itself) so no data use.
im lucky in that the storage section on top of my dash opens up and provides a ready made ‘wedge’ for my phone (octavia) so no holder to buy either 🙂

never had a call whilst driving, do phones do calls these days?? 😀

i realise my situation could be the polar opposite of molgrips dad, and id still guess a dedicated satnav would be best for him at that age, but maybe shouldnt make assumptions.

i believe the standard stw answer is google maps on your phone

If you’re going to use a phone, may as well use Waze, considerably better than google maps. I prefer waze over the in car satnav.

If you’re going to use a phone, may as well use Here, considerably better than google maps…..and no data charges

Aldi has some very good Garmins in round about that price

His smartphone is a tiny cheap one, son probably pretty hard to read.

I think my mum is resigned to taking him to Halfords so he can choose himself.

You realise Waze uses Google?
It also reports accidents, congestion, etc back to Google for Traffic reporting.
Just open Maps in your pc browser and take a look.

Back in the 20th Century when I last looked at standalone units, there was TomTom and there was everything else. Dunno if that still applies but they were light years ahead of everyone else.

https://tomtom.com/en_gb/drive/car/?WT.Click_Link=top_nav_4

http://www.halfords.com/technology/sat-nav/car-sat-nav/tomtom-start-50-5-sat-nav-full-europe-lifetime-maps

Slightly above budget but it’s what I’d go for.

TomTom still are – having just spent 5 days in Iceland with a preprogrammed Garmin…
Lets just say the hire company were lucky to get it back in one piece…..

Garmin more reliable and long lasting TomTom better software and maps but my TomTom start 60 was a pile of poo and died in a year i have 2 garmins one of which is 9 years old and bailed me out when Tom died of heat stroke …what good is a satnav that cant take the summer heat in a car pppffff.

Garmin is the default here. Good hardware and good software. I would encourage buying one with lifetime maps and digital traffic. Mine was £99 and even has full EU mapping.

I have used both Garmin and TomTom extensively and whilst I like the Garmin user experience better some of its routing choices were odd to say the least.

In fact it was so bad that I was out on the road one day and it took me on a mile long circuit when I could have just turned left at the first junction that I stopped of at the nearest Argos and bought a TomTom and much prefer its mapping algorithms.

Both have been fine in terms of reliability. I don’t like using my phone as a sat nav. Much prefer a standalone device.

Sometimes that is as a result of changing priorities or junctions on the roads. The council might block off a u-turn gap, the mappers make the maps, then the council unblock it, which is what seemed to happen to us once. Satnav wanted us to drive a big loop to turn around when we just did a U

Sometimes that is as a result of changing priorities or junctions on the roads. The council might block off a u-turn gap, the mappers make the maps, then the council unblock it, which is what seemed to happen to us once. Satnav wanted us to drive a big loop to turn around when we just did a U

No, this was the sat nav being an arse. The road layout hadn’t changed in years – I checked…

Tom Tom’s are much better than Garmin in my experience, but either will do the job and both seem to be better than trying to use a phone.

If you’re going to use a phone, may as well use Here, considerably better than google maps…..and no data charges

Set to offline use.
Second hand smartphone with a large screen + Here, it really works well, and does give several good route options for a given destination.
It’s recently been sold by Nokia to a consortium consisting of Daimler, Audi and BMW, so it clearly has something going for it.

You also know that Google will download the maps for your route and cache them before you leave the house so doesn’t need to be online…

[edit]

I’ve asked this question before and got all of the “use a smart phone” bullshit.

MAYBE HE DOESN’T WANT TO USE A SMART PHONE, HENCE THE ORIGINAL QUESTION!

He doesn’t want to use his phone.

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