Which Sat Nav ???

[Rusty]

Chaps ...
I know there are some of you out there with Sat Nav's and of course I want to hear from you with your opinions ... I am going to get one this summer for a trip to France.... every year I rely on everyone to check routes and way points etc so I thought this year I would do my bit and get one ... but WHICH ONE ?? I have read many reviews and of course one or two have a bad experience but on the whole they very much appear to end up as personal choice.
I have had a basic Tom Tom for the car for the last 3/4 years and for a basic model ( about £99 ) it has done really well, never gone wrong and been totally reliable ... a good friend has a Zumo .. old model now .. but swears by it ... so what do you think ?
I simply want European maps easy to follow and operate, not bothered about music / bluetooth etc but I do fancy pre planning routes on the I Mac and then dropping them into the Sat Nav ... ideas and thoughts please.

[Lonewolf]

For what it's worth I have had the Tom Tom Rider 1 and Rider 2. Problems with the first one were specifically the plastic mount which developed stress cracks from the bikes vibration and very quickly too, well within a year of purchase from new. Tom Tom support was poor. They were aware of the design fault but could not replace the mounts as they did not manufacture them and couldn't get sufficient stock in to cover the returns.

The Rider 2 overcame the original fault by being supplied with a better design mount, however it was still the weak link in the product.

Last year I bought a Zumo 550 with European mapping. The unit is well manufactured, the mount system is extremely well made and customer support at Garmin is first class. The unit I bought cost me £250 approximately off EBay as opposed to £500-600 new. I've never had any trouble with it despite it being second hand. The only reason I had to contact Garmin was to switch the software licence for the mapping to my name from the previous owner who had registered the licence when he first bought it. It took about ten minutes to sort and the staff were extremely helpful.

I would personally never buy anything other than Garmin in the future. They are the market leaders in sat navigation.

The 660 & 220 are reliable alternatives to the 550 but all will work adequately.

Hope that's of some help. 

[Winston Smith]

+1  I had the Quest then upgraded to Zumo 660.

Be sure to buy a bike specific unit though, they are more robust for the extra vibration they get as well as water proof.

[Rusty]

Garmin are from The Fatherland are they not ? That would account for the excellent customer care, which as we all know is as important as the unit itself. Thanks for that ... I shall check out E Bay too, may save myself some £.
Anyone else have Sat Nav history ??

[Kawdolph]

Have the tomtom rider v2 excellent only fault from me is have nokia n8 so get the phonecalls alright but cant get the data transfer to work.

[Nygie]

I would never shell out the extortionate amount they charge for bike specific Navs!
I have had alsorts on the Hayabusa as far back as 2003 with a Sony Clie and Mapopolis!
My Qtek 2020i with car kit and Tomtom, and a mini computer and a 7" touchscreen display!  8)
All with home made mounts that survived the high frequency vibes of a Busa.
None of the above suffered from bad weather and we had torrential rain on many occasions.
Just bag it! A freezer bag and a tie is all thats required!
I'm thinking of going down one of the following routes for the GTR......
A. TomTom XXL europe 5" screen approx £150 or £99 recon from TT.
B. 7" Android based tablet PC, all the mutlimedia is there if you need it! Can run Co-pilot and other Nav software. This can be brought in for around the £150 mark.

[Kwikasfuki]

I have a cheap £50 quid one from eBuyer onto which I installed TomTom. Its not waterproof but has lasted three years so far, and that's with tons of abuse

[Rusty]

Interesting comments .. thanks everyone ... I am leaning towards the Zumo .... not sure I am too keen on plastic bags but I get where you are coming from !!! .... they are a lot of £ it has to be said. Thanks again.

[Nygie]

Which one NB, I didn't know you could change the nav system on them.

[Kwikasfuki]

It's a Navigo. They are just windows mobile services at the end of the day.

[Nygie]

ah, nice one
Cheers

[Barry7]

I have been using a Garmin Quest for five years, it has been on three bikes, used in a light aircraft, for walking in all weathers, and I have also got the mapping for the USA and Cyprus so I have used it on several holidays in hire cars. This is a fantastic little unit and they are being sold on E-bay for less than £50. If you want a low cost very good unit to start you off this is the one I would recommend.
You can get a fancy Zumo when you are happy Garmin are as good as I think they are! Having said that I played around with a friends Zumo and found my old Quest easier to use, but I am sure things would get better with more playing.

[pembsgtr]

Zumo 550, had it fitted to a Srint with auto com, now on GTR with Schuberth SRC and still does exactly as I want, mobile bluetoothed to Zumo, SRC bluetoothed to the Zumo, music loaded on a flash card and away to go.
Having ridden in a group with various makes of satnav it seems that the garmin navigates different routes to the Tom Tom but then they do use different map data.
All in all think its down to personal choice. The mapsource route planning software with the garmin is easy to use as well.

[Rusty]

Still checking this thread ... so thanks to you last guys for your input ... seems cheap can also good which is nice to hear, so once again thanks for your time.

[patrick]

I have tom tom for my car and zumo 550 for the bike.

The tom tom is easier to use, but I tend to plan routes in advacne on the zumo on the laptop.

P