satnav is dead

[snaphappy]

Had the same with a new phone and puppy, not funny at the time but I forgave him....just



As for car/bike satnavs I'm in the league of normal mounted in a waterproof bag, as you say you have a Givi bag already I'd save the extra dosh for petrol and a ferry

"OK love I've saved a fortune by buying this cheap satnav so I'm going to test it, see you next week"

I have the Garmin 756t and it ticked all my boxes for then 200bucks
42 countries
bluetooth x2
music

[jarvis]

I have the Tom Tom rider, had it for about 6 years, cost about £450 hmy: and the only time it let me down was when the connectors to charge it worn down down due to vibration ( mounted on a KTM 640 adv )sent it back to Tom Tom and they fixed it for free. I presume the difference between car and bike ones is that the componets are more ' protected ' to cope with vibration while on a bike, plus to make it 100% waterproof. It has never let me down yet, been dropped,booted,dropped in mud and i also use it in the car with a car specific cradle. It doesn't talk to you, bit of a god send in my opinion. I bought a anti vibration cradle from Touratech which was quite a few pennies, but worth it. When/if it packs up i will be buying the Rider one again. Cheers, Matt

[IainD]

I had a Navman, but some pondlife nicked it out the car. Pondlife smashed the passenger window in broad daylight and took the satnav, ignored the cash in the centre consol and all the CD's. The really stupid thing is that the maps were so out of date that it was almost useless at navigating, however it paired with my phone so I used it as a handsfree.

Anyway back to the subject....

Bite the bullet and get a bike specific and a locking mount, I have my Phone in a micro Pelicase with a Ram Mount, it works great till the sun comes out behind you or you want to press a button.

As I said it does work and paired to a headset gives directions, however IF I could spare the cash I would get a Zumo and Touratech mount

[Jelly]

I had a Navman, The really stupid thing is that the maps were so out of date that it was almost useless at navigating, however it paired with my phone so I used it as a handsfree.

Disagree.

I've not updated mine for about 4 years and it works fine, apart from riding across rivers and fields when you are on a new road.

[redbikejohn]

A proper outdoors gps like the garmin map 60csx has a screen that you can read in direct sunlight, how many car or smartphone gps units can do that? I struggle to even make a call on my phone in direct sunlight as the screen blanks out.

[knobbly]

I use a normal car garmin that has UK and europe loaded in it. Cost me about £100. mounted it on the bike with a bracket I made at work and a clear peli case that I bought for £15 from peli direct and peli's are water proof.
No way was I gonna pay 4x the price for something that does the same for £100.

[Road2Manchester]

I had a TT500 (daughter got it now) and I found it better than the modern Tom Tom I got to replace it. Other than the mounting brackets that were crap on both tom toms. I bought a Garmin for my bike, its a BMW branded one and I bought it off e-bay. There are two issues with the Garmin. 1) It has no internal speaker and though this can be overcome whist riding with earplugs, I will have to add other expensive gismos for ipod/intercom/phone connection. When I used the Tom Tom 500 on my bike, even though I couldn't hear it at speed, it was fine in towns and lower speeds where it was more inportant.

The other gripe with the Garmin is a simple one. The screen does not give 'miles left to destination' but time to destination' on the 'main display'.
To me time is determined by how fast I go, distance is relevant to how fast I need to go to get there on time. To get miles to reading, you have to fiddle with the buttons and go to map and it tells you there. Not easy on the move.

The one advanage of G against T is the large font option which you can just about use with gloves on. And its waterproof...... the picture is not as good as the tom tom, but instructions are good.

The Tom Tom holder and connection to the frame etc is poor. and a pain in the car. I did put my old TT500 on its sucker to the bike screen, with a cord tied on in case it came loose.
Over 3000+ through France it never came off on its own, until 3 miles from home as we returned. The cord saved it.

[lardshop]

Hi,

I have the Garmin Zumo 550 which is a bike specific unit but also comes with a car mount.

It's the business and I can't recommend it more highly. The supplied Mapsource PC software has its quirks but overall it's a great piece of kit. With a free download of GPSBabel the world of .gpx and .mmo is your oyster.

I have it mounted to Touratech's MVG mount as I get a LOT of vibes from the Alp (200cc single and rim locks in both rims) - it's put up with being covered in all sorts of crap and comes through shining, after a wash.

Even has dual bluetooth connections so you can connect your Scala Rider (or the like) and phone.

Jeez, I should be on commission...

[redbikejohn]

The screen does not give 'miles left to destination' but time to destination' on the 'main display'. .

is it not selectable? On my garmin I can change the info display to almost anything I want and also add or reduce the fields that display

[East Coast]

Garmin every time, rock solid software that is very locical to use, even when it comes to planning your own routes, just input your destination then repeat navigate to process to add as many different roads or via points as you wish. Great and easy for tuneing its calculated route to include or avoid certain roads!

From what i can tell, the car and bike one have same software, we use the car one in a Map / tank bag and boy has it suffered some abuse over the years, don't want to tempt fate and say it's still working fine, so i won't