gps nav system what should i buy ??

BAILEY · Veteran Member

gps nav system what should i buy ??

_wombat_ · Master (of Mischief)

you will get plenty of advice on all makes but for my money you cannot go past a Garmin 1490T great unit, but now you will get a few members who will say they are no good, everybody has their own opinion, not sure if the Garmin comes with free maps, it did a few months ago

milo · Guru

the new garmins are coming out with free maps for the life of the unit, i don't know how they are compared with
tom toms, which are the most popular, check out places like dick smith, hardly normals etc

Cruising Granny · Guru

I suggest doing your homework and compare notes and deals on the ones which interest you.
I have a Tom Tom, and while he's very congenial he's a bit slow at times. Nice bloke though.
You can check them all out at Tricky Dicky and make up your own mind.
Navman has had good revues, as has the Garmin.
I think my next one may be a Garmin.
There are other more sophisticated versions of GPS, so it depends on what you want it to do, and how. Homework.

_wombat_ · Master (of Mischief)

the most important thing to find out is, doe sit come with free maps for life.

the problem with checking out ANY store is the fact that most sales people work on commission and will sell you the make that they get the most commision from, can't really blame them for doing that but it does mean that you do not end up with the best model out there, so recommendation from user's is the best way to go IMHO

The above goes for any item you buy at HN or DS or any store that works on a commission basis.

PeterInSa · Guru

We use a TT for navigation and an Navig8R, i43 for speed alerts and stop light cameras, great in foreign cities ( Sydney/Melb/Syd), to me the i43 in Margarets Car and one in my Cruiser cost $78 and $85 with maps for life are hard to beat for accurate speed alerts and warnings.

For touring you need to get a unit that can download POI and be able to navigate to Lat/long positions as found in Camps books etc.

Peter

_wombat_ · Master (of Mischief)

PeterInSa wrote:
We use a TT for navigation and an Navig8R, i43 for speed alerts and stop light cameras, great in foreign cities ( Sydney/Melb/Syd), to me the i43 in Margarets Car and one in my Cruiser cost $78 and $85 with maps for life are hard to beat for accurate speed alerts and warnings.

For touring you need to get a unit that can download POI and be able to navigate to Lat/long positions as found in Camps books etc.

Peter

Good point about the POI's Pater another good option is to be able to input any co-ords manually, as is the case with the Garmin 1490T, but there must be other make's of GPS out there that have that option .

jimricho · Guru

The ability to download and/or pre-load POIs ("Points of Interest" aka "waypoints" or "marks") as outlined by Peter and Wombat above is in my view a very big plus. This enables more thorough pre-trip preparation.

To get the best out of a GPS they do need to be regularly updated so the cost of doing this should be considered. I have a "lifetime update" for my Garmin. My Garmin also has the facility to connect to some mobiles via a Bluetooth connection, a function I have never used and never likely to do so.

_wombat_ · Master (of Mischief)

jimricho wrote:
The ability to download and/or pre-load POIs ("Points of Interest" aka "waypoints" or "marks") as outlined by Peter and Wombat above is in my view a very big plus. This enables more thorough pre-trip preparation.

To get the best out of a GPS they do need to be regularly updated so the cost of doing this should be considered. I have a "lifetime update" for my Garmin. My Garmin also has the facility to connect to some mobiles via a Bluetooth connection, a function I have never used and never likely to do so.

same here JR also have the bluetooth option and have never used it, if my moblie rings while driving I wait until I can pull over to answer it, NEVER use it while mobile