Sat nav
Hi.
I am looking to buy a new sat nav for our motor-home as the one i have in the car is no good as it keeps taking us down all weird and wonderful roads.
Could anyone advise me on what is the best one to purchase and what is a reasonable price.Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks. the old rockers
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Have you set your satnav to use the quickest (biggest) roads? If you set it to shortest it can take you across country as you seem to have found.
We have the club's camper edition of the Avtex Garmin Nuvi (because it came with the van) and it does seem superior to our old Garmin. Mighty pricey though.
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agree with TW. first thing check it's not set to shortest route.....it will cut a corner (down a microscopic road) just to save a few metres....
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Hi old rockers,
There is a Member offer in the May Club magazine on page 61 for the Avtex tourer one plus, which may be of interest.
Please click here to view the offer online. The Avtex tourer has free map updates for life, 6" touchscreen and voice control, campsite directory, elevation warnings, fuel, food and Caravan and Motorhome Club places of interest.
It also includes road warnings for bridge heights, weight limits, sharp curves, steep grades and more, so it is tailored for touring.0 -
Hi, OR,
The above is a mighty expensive bit of kit
I have a Garmin nuvi2595, with lifetime maps and traffic, purchased six years ago for just short of £100. I downloaded CC poi from this site plus CCC poi from their site, works a treat for me. No doubt there will be others with better buys who will come along and enlighten you, but with the right settings and common sense, plus an up to date road atlas, we haven't had any problems.
Remember, Sat Nav's aren't always right, and common sense is sometimes needed....
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I agree, Brian. Common sense is essential.
We would never have bought the satnav we have if it hadn’t been included as standard in the MH. Ours doesn’t have the dash cam addition but acts as the screen for the dubious quality reversing camera and is still more money than needs to be spent to get something decent.
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Have you considered abandoning your old style hardware altogether, and switching to your smartphone or pad for navigation mapping? Some Apps provide offline map storage and many are free. Google Maps gets excellent ratings and is free in its basic form. The biggest problem can be finding a stable mount for your dashboard. We use one piece self adhesive rubber mounts where the jaw has groves to adjust the phone’s angle. Naturally you’ll need a cigar lighter power lead for longer journeys. We’ve switched to this style, starting with CoPilot, but switching again when they introduced charges. The flexibility to switch systems at no cost, along with easy upgrades is already making dedicated hardware obsolete.
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I agree with Jenny, I have never had a standalone sat nav and have always just brought the software to run on my own hardware. I currently run Co-Pilot on a Samsung Android tablet. I got the mount for about £15 from Halfords. The caravan version is pretty good and it only cost me just under £30 when it was on offer. Not sure what the current price is.
peedee
p.s. the current price is >£34.99<
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I am purchasing the latest Tomtom Camper (with 25 year mortgage!!!) after returning the latest Garmin 770 identical to the Avtex model. It wanted to take me down the smallest lanes as it seemed to believe you could achieve speeds of 50 MPH in car mode. Time was spent with their tech dept and a satisfactory result could not be obtained. I contacted Avtex to make sure their model wouldn't do the same and they seem to rely on Garmin to give answers. It had all the bells and whistles to impress me but if the unit cannot work as a reliable sat nav then there is no point.
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Don’t all the SatNavs use third party maps and algorithms? We have used our car SatNav and a free standing Garmin for thousands of miles in Europe. Neither are perfect.
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I have an Aguri sat nav for caravans and motorhomes. You can enter the dimensions of your outfit and it choses suitable roads. This device is a hybrid using an android operating system, Here maps and Garmin hardware. I have now used it for long enough to form an opinion, which might apply to other sat navs. It gives good routes with notification of hazzards such as sharp bends etc. The voice directions are very good. However there are problems - the screen is highly reflective so mounting is difficult. It has a dash cam that can only be used when mounted with a view of the road. This would obstruct the windscreen in many cases and be illegal. Warm up times are very long as this is a tablet with a dedicated app. It is expensive and I could not recommend it. I have written this to suggest that before buying you should ensure that you can mount the device where it will work without breaking the law and will be visible without reflections. Before buying I tried Co-Pilot, which produced some curious routes in the Maidstone area and directed me to use a dangerously unsuitable road near Normans Bsy, Eastbourne.
Ray
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