gps navigation, rants, reviews and recommendations

[Pis-ton broke]

hey, after get hopelessly lost in Sydney again, stories that im to embarrassed to say about. i need to buy a plug-in navigation system.

i would like some advise , and stories etc. i,ve borrowed my friends tom tom but it gets very confused in between the buildings in Sydney, is there one that works in the big cities? and a bonus feature would be something that might cover Australia and bush/ four wheel drive tracks, if thats possible. what features do they have?
cheers mick

[GO FURTHER]

When it comes to stand alone car GPS units, of the three most popular on the Australian market... Garmin, Tom Tom and Navman.... The best is Garmin IMO.

If you do your research on the big three... Garmin is the biggest worldwide.
They make GPS units for the military, marine and other applications, and have been making them longer than anyone else... So I think they know a thing or two about navigation.

Over the years, I have used all three brands.... And Garmin was the most reliable and accurate. Navman was the worst for updating the software and features!

The Garmin I currently use is the Garmin Nuvi 2597 LMT and costs around $200 with lifetime free map upgrades.

I normally purchase a new GPS every couple of years, as like computers, the hardware gets faster and better.

I always prefer an external aftermarket GPS rather than the inbuilt Sat- Navs as you are stuck with the unit as technology improves over the years and upgrades to mapping software is expensive and far between updates. (Garmin usually has 4 free map upgrades each year).

Every year in Australia, there is said to be 20,000 new road upgrades... So having the latest map upgrade is definitely worthwhile.

I believe Garmin does have truck, off-road & bush map software as well, also maps for any country in the world.

Two years ago, I did a driving holiday in the USA, and purchased the US maps I needed which I preloaded on to my Garmin and had all my motels, and places of interest I would be visiting along the trip saved in the unit.... Not once did it let me down, and never did I take a wrong turn!
If you've ever driven in the big US cities, on their spaghetti freeways and being on the other side of the road... You know how nail bitting it can be, and taking the wrong or missing a freeway turnoff is a complete nightmare in the USA and having to backtrack... Thankfully my Garmin always gave me clear directions and plenty of advance notice of exits, etc.

I always have my GPS on when driving, as it has all the fixed red light, speed cameras, and school zones in it, and as I spend alot of time on the road, it has saved my licence in the nanny state of Victoria many times!

Garmin is brilliant... And gets my vote of confidence!

[Sabantien]

Personally I prefer the built in GPS my car has, just because I hate cables in the cabin and things being stuck over the windows, etc. The downside being it's a bitch to update the maps, but I can do it myself and for not much money. My gf's Audi is stupidly expensive to update and requires the dealership to do it, so she just uses her mobile phone.


I use google maps on my phone when in her car, or even sometimes when driving my car, because it's less fiddly to enter locations. If you're super keen, voice recognition can do it all for you.

It's always being updated, it shows you traffic conditions and can reroute you around heavy traffic if another way is going to be quicker, and when you're going to go off grid, you can download offline maps for your route.

If you're planning a long trip, you can mark out your stops and waypoints while on your computer and have that sent to your phone, which is much easier than fiddling around with the buttons on a gps unit.

I think a downside would be no big easy buttons if you want to change anything, but you should be pulling over to do that sort of thing in any case. I have come across GPS units that won't actually let you change anything while driving in any case. I really only found this to be a problem while in New York, because there just wasn't anywhere to stop. That feature was enabled in my car, which was very annoying when it was a passenger trying to operate the GPS, but I've since found the setting to turn that off.

As for GPS losing signal between tall buildings, if the buildings block the satellite then they block the satellite, I don't know if any system is going to be able to do anything about that.

[XB GS 351 Coupe]

I just use my phone, have not used a Navigator for about 5 years.

In saying that when I did have one I had a TomTom and it worked fine.

[Whitey-AMG]

Originally Posted by Sabantien

Personally I prefer the built in GPS my car has, just because I hate cables in the cabin and things being stuck over the windows, etc.

Cables ? What cables and stuff ?
Neat as and free lifetime map updates !

[Sabantien]

Originally Posted by Bluey-GT

Cables ? What cables and stuff ?
Neat as and free lifetime map updates !

image

Looks good! But that's also where my ipod is plugged in. Unfortunately still cables, but I have them in one of those cable tidy tubes.
Unfortunately the G6E didn't come with the ipod connect, so i'm stuck using the 3.5mm.

Good solution though if you are going to be using the GPS a lot.

[BPXR6T]

Work bought me a Navman for Christmas and it was okay. I found it pretty clunky usability wise. I prefer apple maps. Just ask Siri directions and the maps app starts and goes into navigation mode. E.g. Ask siri "directions to melbourne" etc... I bought a car with tech pack and use the in car gps now. Its a bit of a novelty, I still like just asking siri...

[Au futura]

I think Garmin has one of the most advanced. I bought the Mrs a Garmin Drive assist 50 LMT, as well as being a brilliant GPS with free lifetime maps it has a built in dash cam, forward collision warning, lane departure warning, speed limit reduction warning, fixed red light and speed camera warning, school zone or nearby school warning, speed limit exceeded, wrong way on a one way street handy in Sydney, fatigue warning, curve ahead, up and coming animal crossing area. It's a good unit, price is about $450, but we got it for $350 off TVSN. At the moment if you check their website they are about $330 including postage. Hema is probably the best for off road but you're looking at $500 plus.

[Dr Smith]

I just bought my second Garmin, a Drivesmart 61LMT-s and have kept the 1st a Garmin Nuvi 3597 LMT in my older van. The older one is now 4+ years old and it was used to plan delivery runs every day 5 days a week. Every month we did a run of upto 28 farms in one day, let it plan the best route and away I went, some 6 hours later back at work and never a problem. We use the PC program to save backups, also preplan routes and save them back onto the gps unit.
The newer unit has wifi, allows better pairing with a mobile phone and with the garmin phone app, you can search things and send the address to the gps for directions. The phone can also be used as the source of traffic data if your unit doesn't come with combined traffic receiver and power cable. This cable was standard on the older Nuvi 3597.

If you don't want wires across the dash you might consider buying a 12v power socket and piggy-back wiring it to the same fuse as your cigarette lighter fuse. You can buy fuse cabling that allows a connection to the existing slot and provides a second power source with separate fuse. The gps unit power socket is plugged into this fused power source, all wiring from fuse box to the position of the gps can be hidden behind the kick panels, trim of the door seals etc and all you need to expose is the part of the power cable with the traffic signal receiver. And it all powers off when the ignition is turned off.

[ozrunner]

I had the same issue when trying to decide which way to go with a GPS. After searching costs etc for the factory system and also what Ford wanted to do a map upgrade it was a no brainer. I could buy a box of good GPS's for what they wanted for the whole deal.

I went with a Garmin Drivesmart 6" and it's an awesome GPS with more features than I'll ever get to use or learn how to use I get an email from Garmin when there is a map upgrade available and they're free.

What sold me is they are voice activated, ie you say "voice command" and it displays a series of menu choices, ie find an address, find a place, food, petrol etc etc. Just say what you want and off you go although you have to speak clearly as I've found out

As far as mounting the FG's windscreen slope makes it diffcult to get an out of view location but I came up with this.

It's mounted on a small stick on ball mount and to make it neat I also purchased the Garmin hard wire kit. Shortened as needed and also ran it threw a small switch and fed the plug section via the dash so it sits near the airvent and can be pulled out for attachment as required. No messy wires and easy to use with the flick of a switch.

It's location is absolutely perfect and easy to see and select various features or change info etc.



The blue left switch turns on DC power and cable threaded threw dash etc is visible near airvent.

[olfella]

I read somewhere recently that a new Navman also has a dash cam in it.

[Pis-ton broke]

i have ordered the garmin drivelux 51 lmt, its the latest and best ( well, most expensive in the car range @ $500). yes, i,m serious about not getting lost again. it has many features and can download outback bush tracks, treks. garmin says it works off a different signal band/system, i hope it goes good in town too. i,m looking forwards to getting it.
http://www.garmin.com/en-US/shop/downloads/basecamp

thanks for all the input!

[Dr Smith]

Originally Posted by Pis-ton broke

i have ordered the garmin drivelux 51 lmt, its the latest and best ( well, most expensive in the car range @ $500). yes, i,m serious about not getting lost again. it has many features and can download outback bush tracks, treks. garmin says it works off a different signal band/system, i hope it goes good in town too. i,m looking forwards to getting it.
http://www.garmin.com/en-US/shop/downloads/basecamp

thanks for all the input!

Great choice and if not for my eyesight which was helped by the near 7" model i would have bought the same as you. Mind you I've put it in a new Transit and there is 1 km of real estate between windscreen and my eyes so when set back far enough i don't need my reading glasses...and as you mentioned with Voice Control it works very well as long as you pro-nounce-very-care-full-ee

[Mechan1k]

Always used Garmin when doing courier work .... but still had issues inner city due to tall buildings and get satellite locking. So you will still have issues when in Sydney CBD.

Other than that ... they were excellent ... my FIL has used Navman/Tom Tom/Uniden items ... and they worked OK for a short while .... but failed early in their lives ..... I got 5+ years out of my Garmins.