TomTom or Garmin GPS for a car?

My sister-in-law came to stay the other day and dragged my wife off junketing. There was some debate as to finding their intended destination. My sister-in-law is a midwife and, even though she came by train, arrived with her TomTom in her reticule. "No worries" she said, "got a fag lighter in your car?" and off they sped with TomTom doing its stuff.

Wife much impressed!

Wife has 60th birthday looming.

Personally I have always been, still am and doubtless will remain puzzled by people's inability to use and remember maps. Probably a cajones thing. Anyway, what the wife of 37 years duration wants the wife gets. Question is which one?

Having done a bit of browsing on the subject the general view SEEMS to be that Garmin is better than TomTom. What do you MajorGeek loungers feel?

The desiderata are:

1. Absolutely NO adverts. If adverts are unavoidable the deal is off and the wife gets a new set of saucepans (or something).

2. It will almost certainly ONLY get used in the UK.

3. 4½" or 5" screen.

4. Free maps for life would be handy if such a deal exists.

5. It does not need to do anything else! such as dock with iphone, emit cricket scores, make coffee...

From the plethora of makes and models which would you recommend? It would be of further interest if you could state the basis of any suggestion - i.e. do you own the one recommended? have you used it? have you seen it in use? do you sell it? or make it?

Thanks!

 

Thanks for the post. I may have got the wrong of the stick with adverts. In trawling the web I thought I'd seen a reference somewhere to 'irritating adverts' or having to pay extra to avoid them.

Somewhat 'off-message' a year or so ago I bought a Panasonic tv and later a Panasonic DVD recorder. Both have program guides; the TV's is 'clean' whereas the DVD's has unwanted and unavoidable adverts! which, apart from everything else, waste about a third of the screen. In spite of remonstrating with Pan'sic the ads remain. Fortunately I can ignore the DVD's guide and just use the TV's. But BEWARE! If you are ad-averse check whether your property will be tainted by unsolicited marketing - known in other contexts as spam! Rant over!

 

I take it you're not in the U.S., since we are talking about using a GPS your country or continent is relevant. All of the GPS units with lifetime map upgrades (Garmin Nuvi) have all been local to me but would likely not do you much good, unless you visit the U.S.

Two things to consider with a GPS (there's probably more but these are important in my opinion).
1) How much to updates cost? My Garmin Nuvi has started going a bit nuts lately since the map is far out of date. It tries to take me down one way roads the wrong way, in areas it's navigated me around before without issue. Maybe it's a glitch in my unit but I suspect it's by design.
2) How is the interface. This is a personal preference type thing. Does the menu make sense to you? If not, then the darned thing is going to frustrate you to no end. I'd suggest finding a store with both Tom Tom and Garmin units and compare the menus. They don't have to be particularly comparable, but if you could find pairs that are within the same price range that would be good.

Also from what I've read Garmin is a U.S. based company, Tom Tom is European based. It shouldn't matter but it might.

Side notes, when updating a map for my Garmin unit I really didn't like the EULA. Rather disturbing to read. When you plug the GPS into the computer it knows your IP address, your address, your driving habits, etc... I'm not saying that it does weird stuff but it kind of creeps me out.

On my GPS (Nuvi 205) to get "traffic updates" you'll need to buy a cord with a special antenna ($75 US, the GPS unit was around $125 US if I remember correctly), and even then the traffic info is only available in certain markets and likely only lets you avoid the biggest of incidents. i.e. just turn on your radio if you somewhat know the area and you'll likely know just as much.

 

Thanks Cabbiinc - yes, in the UK. And I guess you're right, I shall have to hie me to the shops and finger the goods. As for traffic updates, whatever I end up buying will not be heavily relied upon in the sense that the driver (my wife) will only be trying to get from A to B for leisure purposes. She is quite content to sit in traffic jams and speed is never of the essence! 5th gear is NEVER engaged except on motorways and then only sometimes. Precise rules of engagement are as yet unclear to me but then I've only had 37 years experience so far. Thanks for the advice!

 

This review of the TomTom Go Live 825 Europe makes an interesting point... this model is one of the more budget ones, but does have the bigger 5 inch screen, and it's resistive.... not capacitive like some of the others.

Normally that would be a bad thing, certainly with smartphones or tablets, but as the reviewer points out multi-touch is rather gimmicky on these sat-nav devices - and with resistive you can use it with gloves or any "object that comes to hand"!

Not that your better half is likely to wear driving gloves, just maybe mittens in the winter

Anyhow it's a point I hadn't thought of before. Of course these days it's arguable whether just to get a cheap smartphone and use a free sat-nav app, but I guess the quality, map updates etc is what you pay for with TomTom and suchlike.

 

I would prefer to use a Mio or Navman in the UK. Their support is based in the UK, the units are now very good and offer most of the features as Garmin and Tomtom.