should I get a TomTom Nav?

[Im2c0oL]

Navigon/Google Map for iPhone or Navigator came with latest android smart phone works best!

[scorrpio]

Ever since I got the Droid, our Garmin was gathering dust. The full power of Google maps is tough to beat. The FM traffic on the Garmin was abysmal - only showed major highway traffic, and often with a significant delay. Also, I did not try the new capacitive screen Garmins, but the touch screen on our old 765 is horrible.

[mmm666]

same. I tried goggle map on the iphone 5. It works great.

[EmptyTank]

Just watch out for overages on your data plan, if using a smart phone as a GPS. Especially if you ever drive internationally.

[bcicio]

Interesting that so many people like Garmin. I have a Garmin with lifetime traffic and find it useless. It will tell me to detour around an area of highway when I can see way up ahead that their is no back down at all. There are other times I'll be sitting in bumper to bumper traffic that is barely moving and my Garmin thinks that all is fine with the world. And it will insist that I take a certain route home, even though I know it will take me longer and tries to convince me to make a u-turn and backtrack miles to that same exit for quite some time - even though I have the unit set for "quickest route" not shortest route. Does anyone know if Tom Tom, Magellan, and Garmin all use the same FM traffic service? I live in the NY Metro area, so it shouldn't be that difficult for the Garmin to stay up to date on the latest traffic.

[EmptyTank]

Chances are pretty good you'll see the same incident lag with any make or model of GPS, but if you wanna try TomTom, you'll be reliant on ClearChannel

And you know, you are still the driver -- if it wants to re-route you around a traffic jam that you can visually see is not there, then barrel on ahead and let it Recalculate.

Traffic message channel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[JDKRXW]

TomTom for me, and I've had both.
More intuitive.

[bcicio]

Originally Posted by EmptyTank

And you know, you are still the driver -- if it wants to re-route you around a traffic jam that you can visually see is not there, then barrel on ahead and let it Recalculate.

Well, yeah, that's what I always wind up doing. It's too bad I can never count on the traffic advisory. I had been under the impression that these GPS traffic systems read the GPS signals and travel progress from other same brand units on the road to determine traffic on any given route, but I guess it doesn't do that? Maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part. Probably would need a dish on top of each car to send a signal back to the satellite. LOL

[EmptyTank]

My understanding, which might not be 100% correct, is that most if not all GPS systems with Traffic, are receiving an FM radio signal, which in turn is fed either by a 411 -style service, or a provider like Clear Channel. (Clear Channel is by far the largest owner of radio stations in the USA, and since many of their stations do traffic reports, they can also make profit by reselling their data.)

Whether 411 or radio station, I suspect that in both cases, they are ultimately relying on phone calls and scanner chatter from witnesses and/or DOT and/or EMS reporting the traffic incidents. That means that there will be a time lag, between either the onset or the clearing of an accident, and when the news makes it out onto the FM signal that the GPS units are listening to.

No GPS of which I am aware has a transmit capability, that would allow it to report back to some mother ship, or network of same-brand units , anything like "Hey I am in a 65 MPH zone and we're only going 27 MPH" or some such. Things simply aren't that sophisticated, yet.

[Johnjk]

I've owned both and like things on each. The Tom Tom lets you customize voices, and gives you more detail on the trip as in time to destination, miles traveled. The one thing I absolutely disliked on the Tom Tom was that the maps were never up to date. The Garmin maps are updated quite frequently. With my Tom Tom, Ohio had the US35 bypass in for 3yrs and still no Tom Tom update. The other thing with my Tom Tom was that it took forever to locate the satellites especially if the battery died or you turned it on in a different location that you last used it. A real pain if you fly somewhere and expect to use it.

I liked the traffic better with the Garmin when it was MSN. You could overlay live radar on your trip and see where the storms were heading. I have multiple Garmins now and all have LTM (lifetime traffic /maps). The couple times I've ignored the traffic alerts, I've ended up sitting in traffic. My bad.

If I had to buy another GPS today, I would get a Garmin, hands down.

Check out Newegg. They have a good selection of both and often have refurbs at a significant discount.

[scorrpio]

I can say for certain that on smartphones, which get their traffic via Internet, it is dead-on accurate.
Data usage is also pretty tame. If you don't go for satellite maps and StreetView, maps are very light on data, actually. When last time in London, I bought a 3G SIM card with 1GB of data for £20. Been using it for over a week extensively for maps, skype calls and general browsing (but no Pandora or Youtube), used up less than 250MB.