Which is the best sat nav for under £200 on high street stores?
(A.a.K) asked:
I am looking to buy a sat nav from a high street store like currys, halfords etc but need to know which sat nav offers great specs and good value for money,
I am looking to buy a sat nav from a high street store like currys, halfords etc but need to know which sat nav offers great specs and good value for money,
Tom Tom 1 XL
tom tom xl, i paid 140.00 from halfords
I had a Tom tom for £149 and it was great, but then I bought an RAC sat nav for £80 and its nearly as good,
buy a map they are cheaper and will not take you on some wild goose chase to beat traffic plus your car will be more vunerable to break ins if they see a sucker mark on your windscreen!
TomTom 530 go halfords reserve on line for best price. Always gets me there.
for under £200 you have a lot of choice.
I don’t think theres a huge difference between the GP systems.
for features to look for
see if it has traffic alerts built in… some garmin Nuvi’ shave it it. its not as useful as you first think. its difficult to prove if its ever truly worked (as by definition if you follow the directions it will divert you away from jam and its difficult to prove its saved you time).
1) make sure the mapset is as uptodate as possible
2) make sure it can make use of the UK postcode.. that means all 7 digits
3) make sure the maps cover the area/countires you need, thers no point paying for say European or US maps if ‘all’ you want is UK
4) look for a an FM transmitter.. that means the GPS will transmit over FM to your car radio without any other devices
5) look for a GPS which has a MP3 player, and if it does look to see if the GPS will accept additional memory cards so you can load your music onto the SD card and play it over the GPS
6) look for a GPS which has bluetooth which measn you can use the GPS as a handsfree kit
7) check the battery capacity, some GPS only wokr of 12v car power or have a limited battery life, some have a battery life in excess of 4..8 hours. the battery capacity means that you can remove the GPS romt he car and walk to the address if need be.. usefull for pedestrianised areas
9) see if the GPS has text to speech capability.. that means the GPS can read out the instructions phonetically.. its no quite as good as a human voice but its pretty usefull when it says turn right onto whatdoyermacallit drive, rather than turn right
there are some other frills which I’d classify as that’d be nice is of you can change the voice for directions, I think some of the tom toms allow you to download personality vcies such as John Cleese, Tom Baker and others
as to specific brands, personally I’d go with Garmin, used them for years so to me the Garmin 760 is the top end GPS for you. I would have a serious look at the other GPS both from garmin and others