Navman or TomTom

Have you seen this one?
http://www.hemanavigator.com.au/

This unit has a lot going for it and great back up service too. The guys at Toyota Landcruiser Club - NSW give it a good review.

Hi Gary

Have you also considered the Garmin range of Nuvi units ?. They are very user friendly and I think a better unit.

Just my thoughts.


Seasons Greetings



Stephen

They're getting cheaper all the time....buy both. Handball the one you like least to someone as a Christmas present!

I had a TomTom 710, which was good. My only criticism was the design of the windscreen mount.

I recently updated to a Garmin 1490T and couldn't be happier.

Neither of these is a "top of the line" model as the only thing that the 'top' models do the that mine doesn't is store & play mp3's and I have better ways to play music.

Cheers Neil

No experience with a Navman, but I have had a TomTom Go 720 for about 5 years or so now. An excellent unit for voice controlled city navigation and easy updated via TomTom Home, which is a free application for a Laptop or PC. If all you require is city navigation, the TomTom is hard to beat.
I also have a Hema Navigator for use off-road/country driving and will state that no one device is likely to give you an all encompassing solution.

I don't know of any of the current devices that will allow concurrent applications to run side by side, using the input from a GPS chip.
If you wish to run one application, the other will be disabled or must be closed first.
Thus I use two devices.
I have the Navigator running all the time to track my route and if I need guidance through, or around a major town or city, I use TomTom.

I used to use a device that gave the best of both worlds, concurrently.
I have a Dell PDA running OziExplorer and CoPilot Live. You could run both applications concurrently and flip between the two. (or more if you wish)
This was achieved by an ingenious application called GPSGate which allowed multiple virtual input ports from the GPS.
The only hassles I had was that the PDA did not have a built-in GPS and I needed to use a bluetooth connected GPS. This worked OK but required an additional 12 volt feed to run both devices for prolonged periods.
Secondly, the PDA gave only a small screen display and my eyes were not as good as they once was.

In my opinion, nothing beats the Hema Navigator (or cheap chinese knockoff) running OziExplorer and using the Hema range of maps, for a reasonable and convenient size solution. The Hema also has voice guided city navigation.
My Hema (one of the original models) came with Route 66 for city navigation and basically, it sucked. The current Hema now comes with iGo street navigation which may be better, (I haven't experienced it) but as mentioned above, you can only run one application at a time and this is still the downfall of virtually all GPS devices.

PS. Just to complicate things a little, if you have an iPhone, or Android enabled smart phone, you can buy an app that will give very good voice guided city navigation. I have CoPilot Premium running on my iPhone and it is quite good. It can be purchased from the Apple Store for $29.95 (at least that is what I paid) and it is comparable to the older CoPilot Live 7 I used on the PDA.
CoPilot is the best alternative I have experienced to TomTom.

I still tend to use TomTom, with the iPhone enabled CoPilot Premium as a worthy "backup", or on occasions when I have not got TomTom with me.

Thinking about buying some new Nav equipment myself.
We are off down the coast from Cairns to hopefully as far as the West Coast of SA, leaving in January for 3 months. Wanna take in the Alps as well. We haven't been down the NSW, Vic or SA coasts for well over 25 years. We've never been to the Alps though.
I was thinking of buying one of those Hema Eastern Australia maps. You know, the fancy new waterproof one.
They are about $12 I think.
Camps 6 has got enough detail on its maps to get us around with no worries. It's just that I like to see the big picture laid out on one page. Puts things into perspective.

I have one of these.

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/130554618343#ht_7556wt_1187

I first bought the 5 inch one then upgraded to the 7 inch one. $83.00 posted to my door. It has Igo road mapping on it which is great.
I run 2 SD cards.
One with the Igo streets on it and when I go bush I put an 8gb SD card in it that has Aussie Explorer CE and all my NSW and VIC LPI topo maps and hema maps loaded on it.
The 5 inch worked well but the 7 inch screen is even better and for the price you can't beat it.

Scott

Am not a GPS expert, but understand the CMCA's Point of Interest POI, ie Dump points, Rests areas, etc etc can only be downloaded to Tom Tom and Garmin not sure about Camps 6 Rest areas etc.

If these are important to you, You need to do some further research to confirm the above.

We personally use the Camps book and the Hardcopy CMCA Camps/Dump points Book and do not use POI's on our TT and other GPS's.

Peter

I can only speak for Tomtom, but we've had 5 in the family now and all have worked well. We've paid between $99 and $150 for them - usually get them at Dick Smiths on special. Main downside is they usually do not include map updates and then try to slug you $50-80 for an updated map. Their recent offers may be different.

You can download a freeware program called TTMAPs which allows the Tomtom to read .ecw maps. So I use it as a backup for my computer mapping and it works great. I use it for the Natmap 250k, Flinders Ranges 50k and some older Hema maps I have.TTMAPs link

I have had 2 x Garmin Nuvi's...very good units, easy operation and excellent online updates and support

Hired a car a few months back and they gave me a Navman to to get around the joint. I found the unit was difficult to navigate compared to the Nuvi amongst other stuff.

I haven't ever tried a TomTom.

Niether, don't waste your money, Garmin is far better and the Nuvi range will have one to suit your needs, secondly don't get it from the big stores, go to a specialist and get the free lifetime map updates and the latest POI warnings, ie redlights Cams, Schools etc.

For example try this LINK

And for the Map updates, if your careful and read things properly you can have the Mapsource installed to the PC at the same time the GPS gets the update.

.

Hi Gary.

I have a garmin nuvi 1490 with OZ and NZ topo map. Easy to use in the city or in the bush it worked well all over Aust with the topo maps ,BUT it has been replaced under warranty twice in 2 years, first time it kept turning off and rebooting itself.Second time it was doing it worse.Seems to be a common problem with the Nuvi model,how common I don't know.The current one I have had for 6 mths and had no problems.

Maybe a good idea to Google dfferent units and see what turns up. I have seen some web sites on the Garmin reboot problem.

Regards Peter

Thank you to all who contributed.
Even more information to evaluate.

Happy Christmas to all.

If you want to have the ability to load Waypoints, download and upload Tracks and Routes to a GPS with OziExplorer one of the few units that will is the Garmin Nuvi 1450T.
https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?cID=134&pID=63932
or the
Garmin Nuvi 1490T
https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?cID=134&pID=36082
Other units may do one or the other or none, but the 1450T and 1490T do all.

Both available on the Garmin Lifetime Free Map Updates if purchased until 31 January 2012. Final claims close 15 February 2012
http://www.garminredemption.com/