Although I often rely on my pal Martin whose brain is full of all the roads in the UK and beyond, the time has come when dragging out crumpled maps and big road atlases from my back pack has got to stop!!
Am planning a charity ride around the UK in April, followed by another Scotland tour in the summer and need the following:
A Sat Nav that is very easy to use
That is compatible with a F650 GS BMW and a Triumph Street Triple R 675 (the bikes)
That is 100 percent reliable
That you can programme things such as ‘best twisty roads’ and ‘scenic routes’ and it is not going to direct you across a fast flowing 10 foot deep river or around the M25.
For reliability go for the tried and tested mo’cycle brands TomTom or Garmin.
4a) My TomTom One rolled back to v7 software does all that you ask with a little help from ITNConverter. Although its not so elegant as the latest Garmins that can struggle to find Pooh Car Park or other TomToms that can only get to Rykas via the M25 :Whistling:
4b) Pretty sure all the modern Sat Navs have a ‘Tourist Route’ feature. Looks like its a choice between the TomTom Rider’s ‘winding roads’ vs the Garmin Zumo’s ‘curvy roads’.
Halfords stock both the TomTom Rider and the Garmin Zumo, pop in your local store for a demonstration/comparison session, just don’t expect the staff to be too knowledgeable on the finer points of each model.
They’re all a bit crap in their own ways and aren’t functionally much different than they were a decade ago. I tried really hard to justify a Zumo660 to replace an old 550 but it’s a lot of money for no great benefit. Basically, a ‘motorbike satnav’ seems to be that brand’s budget satnav in a £200 waterproof box…
Copilot on my android phone cost about £30 for a years worth of traffic and all the UK in maps and, apart from crashing every so often by dint of being on Android (though my Tom Tom used to crash if you took it through Harrow) I’ve not found the thing I’m missing by not having a Zumo or Rider
Bought mine second hand at a good price and when it broke 3 years later Garmin gave me a refurbished one FOC which I’ve had for close to a year now. I can only say it’s been excellent value for money.
TomTom and Garmin have their fans so it is a matter of choice. Whichever you get look at Tyre as a planning tool if you have a PC. TomToms are pretty well integrated to it and the latest TomTom bike satnavs come with Tyre Pro so you get all the paid for features as well as the free ones.
This is really great advice and some good tips. Just looked up the Tyre link also. So Tom Tom, Garmin, or the Copilot app? I am veering towards the Tom Tom… but Eezie has had good experiences with the Garmin (unlike Num Num) so…
I’ve had a Garmin 550, 660 and now I have a 590LM. Initially I chose Garmin over Tomtom because the 550 had an MP3 player. Brand choice seems to be more down to personal preference than anything else.
In terms of my Garmin experience I’ve been very pleased with all the devices, when 2 mounts failed on the 550 (probably due to my vibey bike) they were replaced under warranty. The latest model, the 590LM, is something to behold though. The iPhone and ipod integration is seamless. You can play music and podcasts directly from your iPhone once paired over Bluetooth so you don’t have to spend time copying music to the device. If you were overseas for example you could download the latest podcasts using your hotel Wifi and then you are good to go the following day.
Another highlight when using the 590LM is the quality of instructions. With this model it’s much closer to a human voice and she speaks like a person would, saying things like, “in one and a half miles turn right at the traffic light next to the tall glass building.” I’ve found the quality of voice reduces your fatigue when navigating as the instructions are more detailed so it’s harder to make mistakes.
Another positive thing I’ve found is when riding even if a route is not set it tells you at the top of the screen which road (or junction on an A road or motorway) you are approaching next. This is really useful in London where the signs are all over the place. The screen quality is also a big improvement over the 660.
If you get a Garmin you can also ask me about it. I have a series of videos on youtube at www.youtube.com/jobybyrne that explain how to plot routes and so on. I intend to add more to that this Christmas.
I should really get a Tomtom also so I can do some comparisons. Maybe in the new year.
Can you programme it to follow twisty roads from A to B or particular scenic routes without knowing all the roads yourself beforehand, Joby ? Sorry if this sounds an obvious question !
Wise, could you tell me more about the twisty ride mount?
I don’t like having a screen on the bike so I use an iPhone with bluetooth to the helmet.
That way I can concentrate on the road, rather than looking at down at the GPS.
The Garmin Zumo devices are what I would get if I wanted something with a screen.
I have a spare twisty ride mount for the iPhone 5s if you need it- I used it for a week before deciding I prefer the phone in my jacket pocket, rather than on the bike.
This is all excellent stuff, thank you! I notice the new Garmin 590 is very expensive - nearly 500 pounds, whereas the new Tom Tom is more like 350 - interesting to compare the difference in performance.
I’m in the what do I get for the extra outlay camp
My less than elegant TomTom One set up cost about £70.00 and over half of that was repairs from water boarding before I installed the 20p sandwich bag style water proof jacket. It comes with less whistles and bells and as far as route planning is concerned it is to a certain extent reliant on the very excellent freeware programme ITN Converter which is not too different to TYRE but I find the user interface more comfortable. On the plus side it gets me where I want to go via the route I want to get there by
If anyone knows of a Sat Nav with an advanced warning feature for ‘novice driver pulling out ahead’ …
Yeah, which ones are best is hugely dependent on what you expect the thing to do, and there’s several features that are often assumed to be things that everyone wants.
It’s really important for me that I be able to plan a route on the device itself, for example, but I never use the voice feature so I don’t care how crap that is. I don’t have any need for it to talk to a laptop, but for a long time that was one of the big things about Garmin and a reason for their being recommended. Like Art I’m quite happy with a car satnav bodged into something waterproof, but for some people that’s enough faff (and it’s on every ride) that it’s worth paying the extra £200 or so to get one that just clips on. And so on - there’s loads of personal preference involved and I do find computers rather more infuriating than most people seem to.
If you’ve not used a bike satnav before I’d just get a cheapo car one and a sandwich bag and try that. Or if you’ve already got a phone holder for the bike just try that and a free satnav app for a bit. You’ll find out what you wish it did differently and what you really don’t care about and can then buy the expensive one with some confidence that it’ll do what you actually want it to do. Though I don’t think you’ll find a ‘twisty roads’ auto-route-planner thingy on any non-bike satnav.
