Hema Navigator

The Hema is great for off road adventures combined with OZ explore mapping software it is hard to beat.

Most people with the Hema are not all that happy with Rout 66 City Maps.

Unless you are going to do some outback adventuring I think the Garmin or some other brand of normal GPS is cheaper and dose a better job in the city's and towns.

Just my view.

Cheers
Wayne B

If you want to use your gps for street nav at all, do NOT buy a Hema. I took mine back and swapped for a VMS best move ever!!

I tend to agree, Route 66 is a joke and Hema is over priced for what it is, I am sorry I paid $1000 for the system.

Rather by a $200 GPS and load the software you need.

Totally agree with the above comments. Great for offroad maps which I now use for onroad mapping now as well. Route 66 is a waste of memory on the GPS and I am forever having to second guess it and go in the correct direction. I will be pulling my old TomTom out of retirement for street use when I finish my travels.

Hi Jackson
You will find that most people that but the HN5 buy it for its off road ability and in Ozi mode, you can not beat it for out of the way navigation. I am very impressed when I use Ozi on it, the same features as when using a laptop, but in a smaller unit that fits nicely on the front windscreen. If you are driving in cities and built up areas all the time, then your Nuvi is all you need.

Sure you can buy cheaper units and buy the add ons, but the Hema has it out of the box, ready to power up and away you go.

Cheers

Stephen

Hi Jacko,
Hema is great in the bush but not so flash in the city, I found that Route66 has problems with street numbers and not really up to date with road closures etc, but it will get you close.
It threw a wobbly once and the tech support was first class.

Hi Jackson
You could look at a generic Chinese unit, change the menu system and run Ozi Exp CE and Garmin XT. Then you would have the best of both words. XT works the same as your Garmin unit , with vector maps, and you can run Ozi Exp CE with raster maps, just a thought !
Some links that may be of interest:
Chinese GPS
Menu System
Cheers
Neil

thanks to all for the quick and honest feedback!

could anyone elaborate further on why it is no good on-road?
poor navigation, out of date maps, not quick enough etc?

I have also been looking at the options and have focussed on choosing between the Hema HN5 and the VMS 500.

VMS appear to have updated the Touring 500 model and have released [from 10th July] an updated model called the Touring 500S.

Their website is yet to be updated with the details of the new features but based on a full page advert in the latest edition of 4X4 Australia it appears to utilise WhereiS for street nav, together with Itopo maps and now the addition of Gregory 4wd touring maps.

I am leaning towards the VMS as there are many derogatory comments on various sites in relation to the usability of Route 66 as supplied with the Hema unit.

This was previously counter balanced by the fact that the Hema unit had both Oziexplorer and Hema maps. Now that the VMS unit has the Gregory maps in addition to iTopo I think the VMS has the edge for me.

Now, I just need to find a dealer in WA with one of the VMS 500S units so I can fire one up and check it out.

Lance

I paid $1000 for a Hema Navigator, Absolute waste of money, as stated the Rote 66 street navigation is so bad its an embarrasment , the Hema 4x4 package is OK but I would never buy another, Its been back twice for repairs under warranty & now the battery will not hold charge. Its Rubbish.

I now use a Garmin Nuvi with Garmin Australia Topo V2 and it is very impressive and lless than 1/3 of the price, After owning several brands of GPS units I'll now only ever spend my money on Garmin