I do a bit of riding for work purposes every now and then and I’m thinking about getting one of those little SatNav units for the bike, but I thought I’d find out first whether any of you guys have got one / used one, and whether anyone could recommend a particular model.
I know that TomTom now make their Rider unit, which appears to be the only bike-specific unit on the market at the moment. Presumably, the main benefits are a better touchscreen for use with gloves, and a waterproof casing. However, it’s £350 and, frankly, that’s a bit steep considering the frequency with which I’d use it.
Has anyone come across anything that does the same job just as well, but for less money? I thought about getting one of the cheaper units that’s made for cars, and just sticking it in a waterproof pouch and strapping it to the top yoke, but not sure if that’d work as well.
The big advantage of the Rider over almost all other Satnavs is they work with a bluetooth headset so you can hear instructions and speed trap warnings whilst looking at the road. Most car systems will only use BT for downloading info like traffic updates. Also, many of the cheaper car systems do not even have a socket you can plug an earpiece into. Personally I use the TT One Classic from the car with an earphone and just listen to the instructions whilst the device sits safe, dry and warm in a jacket pocket. It is not as good a proper Rider setup, but hasn’t cost me £350 either. Note that the One TT currently sell has no audio socket.
Garmin have a waterproof system BTW, but I don’t think it is much cheaper than the Rider.
Kept cutting off when docked on bike - TomTom say a common fault, please return it to us. They had it for 3 weeks and then I get it back, works for about 2 days, and starts again…!Poor Quality Bike Brackets - They are cheap and brake very easily!Best bet, depending on your bike etc, is to get a PDA and upload some SatNav software onto it, then pop it in a tank bag with a headphone and your away!
can’t say my tomtom does that. velcro’d to the yoke tho and not using the pap cradle thing. just making arrangements for power options as the battery will just about do a day out on the roads but has been known to fall short…
Keep getting reports of them jumping out of cradles and then doing silly things while dangling on that silly check strap, having said that mate of mine has done “silly” speeds with no issue, although I have heard there has been a revision.
Personally I can’t be bothered with twatnavs as I have a pretty good sense of direction where London & the UK in general is concerned and I have a photgraphic memory for maps… So I just google map where I have to go before I leave.
The only time I find them handy is in France for finding petrol, so I save my money and go to France with someone who has one of the infernal things…
So far as I can tell the itinerary thing on the Tom Tom Rider is cack, what we’d all like to be able to do is make sure it does use particular bits of road on our routes… however this doesn’t seem to work according to the peeps I know with the TTR.
I think you are talking about the old Rider which has not been available for months. The Rider 2 launched about a month back has a completly different mount etc and I have not heard of the same problems.
It is worth checking out the satnav forums for reviews and feedback to see if there have been similar difficulties with the Rider 2 before shelling out on one.
i use a tomtom 910 i have a mount which gose in the head stock of my zx10 just charge it before i go out and it works a treat . if you go to www.ram-mount.com you can make any bracket to fit any thing from i pod to laptop . and i orderd the bits individally to suit from www.expressmounts.com the best way is to get the part numbers from the ram site then put them in the express site .
