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Are TomTom/Garmin still the best VFM for these things?
Don't want to rely on phones or Google Maps as often in areas without decent coverage.
Google maps will do offline route saving now so once it's planned it's in there, if your leaving from somewhere with no signal I've found there are normally not many choices of direction. Few ones that work on your phone with downloaded maps too. If you have even some signal Google seems to do very well at planning and getting you going - I did Vancouver airport to Whistler with no signal at all
Our garmin in the car is pretty poor. Better than nothing but nowhere near as good as a phone. Not had an issue using Google maps but I also keep a copy of maps.me on there which has full offline mapping.
never had an issue with my garmin car ones.
and didn't want cables all over my dash to keep it charged and naff mounts stuck into vents/windows
have got the garmin hardwired into the dash and it stays attached to the A pillar so it always where it needs to be and never flat.
much like when i started to drive(in 2004) i used a 1989 road atlas of great britain to get to places the fact my garmins at least 10 years out of date has never been an issue for me having driven all over europe with it.
CoPilot has full offline maps and is considerably cheaper than a dedicated unit.
In South Africa at the moment using here WeGo off line with maps downloaded before we left home and a belkin windscreen mount. Free and works perfectly, not even sure where my garmin is anymore.
CoPilot on the phone - fully offline maps and only uses data if you won't to know live traffic ahead (option).
Have used throughout UK, USA, Canada and bits of Europe
Don't know about vfm as it was a pressie but my TomTom is excellent, really clear and easy to use, big improvement on it's predecessor, the.make.of which I can't recall.
Used google maps for the last 4 years doing 65,000 miles+ each year. And it’s Brilliant. Uses very little data
If you really are convinced you need to be able to function offline. The CoPilot on the Phone with offline maps and a Brodit active mount is by far the best option.
Don’t want to rely on phones
This comes up so often it ought to have sticky! If you install an app like Here, CoPilot or TomTom on a phone, all maps are native to the device, you select which country/countries you want, download them and then you’re independent of phone coverage. Having the satnav app on the phone means you get regular updates of firmware and maps, plus most give the option of live traffic updates. I’ve used all those mentioned, plus Google Maps and Apple Maps, TomTom is the one I’ve been using for my job as a Logistics car collection/delivery driver, and I’ve done must be 100,000 miles with it, although mine is a paid-for version.
Here and CoPilot both work well for most purposes, just make sure you dig into the settings and set up road and speed preferences, instead of just sticking with the default settings, it’s often much better to select fastest routes rather than shortest, for example. Also, on TomTom if you choose miles and yards, I think it is, then you get the choice of a really nice soft female Irish voice for guidance!
I use a BP fuel app for finding filling stations, as I have their fuel card when working, and that gives the option of both Google and Apple maps, and I have to say the Apple maps are clearer for driving with, but you do need to have a network connection to use them, and pre-install the route.
If you’re using satnav on holiday and there’s no network, then that’s where having dedicated apps really prove themselves.
Unless your phone is a wintech sl15
In which case it's no where near the best option 😉
I run Google maps and CoPilot at the same time and let them fight it out over the directions. Thinking of running one more then I can use voting on the right route to take.