European GPS test - comparison ... can you help?
 

Another thread asked about the best GPS for Europe - http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...gps-system.cfm I think the consensus is that TomTom beats Garmin but I'd like to run a short test to see by how much, if you have a TT and a few minutes to check something for me.

I have an aging Garmin Nuvi that we bought for a trip to France 8 years ago and I recently updated it for another trip to Provence. We've been to Europe many times in the ensuing years but I just realized we always used public transport. Now in Provence I need the Nuvi again for driving.

I've downloaded the latest maps for France (now the maps are so big I could only get one country in, while in 2006 I could load all of Europe + USA).

When I enter places we are planning on visiting most of them get picked up easily enough, but there were three that I had problems with. So I'm curious to see if a TomTom (or a newer Garmin) might pick these up.

Here are the problem addresses. Can you enter them and see if they are valid?

150 route de Maillane
13210 Saint-Rémy de Provence (this is a newish restaurant, opened in February but the building is probably old ... the Nuvi sees the street but suggests 103, 98, 96 etc so maybe it's too new or maybe 150 is just outside the 'city' that the Nuvi has mapped?)

800 Cours Fernande Peyre
84800 L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, France (another restaurant ... sees the street but offers 785, 762, 751 etc)

For both of these I can just mark the closest address and still find the building, so it's not a show-stopper. But the next one doesn't show anything.

Chemin departemental 27
13520 Les Baux de Provence, France (this is a famous resort in Les Baux ... I get nothing from this address.)

The names of the places are Maison Drouot restaurant, Le Vivier restaurant, and L'Oustau de Baumaniere in case you want to try entering the names or want to check the net to see if I copied the addresses correctly.

Anyway, looking forward to hearing back from others ... if the TT sees all these then I'll keep that in mind the next time we buy a GPS. Though this one has had its charming moments ... as we approached the town of Apt once the nice lady announced "Now approaching Apartment" ... and the town of Nice was pronounced to rhyme with 'mice' instead of 'niece' :)

Not sure that it's so charming to hear mis-pronunciations on the GPS. Ours was on English when we first got it, and we were so stunned to be told to turn off for 'Lion' that we missed the 'Lyon' exit, and had to get off the autoroute and turn around. Quickly went back to French.

Ours is TomTOm, and works well, although it does want to take us the most complicated ways around cities. We know Toulouse fairly well, but thought we'd let her take us to our restaurant as there has been a fair amount of construction there recently. We got there, but with lots more twists and turns than our regular route.

Our previous on car GPS (Toyota) would use a local for towns and road signs. So the directions were in English but a Dutch, or French voice would say the name.
Don't know about the one in the Ford, though it is TomTom based I believe.
I will try your addresses in the morning. It is late here now.
I'll also try them in Here on my phone .

We also have an old Garmin, which we did not update for our recent trip but decided to buy a Tom Tom. Our kids used the Nuvi, and the Tom Tom seemed to be better for rural roads in Languedoc-Roussillon. Just our experience!

>> <b>"I will try your addresses in the morning."</b>

Thanks hetismij2 ... a test on real data could be very telling.

Last year in Provence we had three, count 'em, three GPSs. A new TT, a nuvi about a year old and our old nuvi which Garmin declared dead but we wanted to check it out. In Provence the TT worked best and was the most consistently useful. None were perfect. We stayed in St. Remy. One caveat with the TT. Ours came with the voice level geared to the speed of the car. The slower the speed the lower the sound. After a lot of cursing at it, we figured out how to disable that "feature." If you get a TT, I suggest you do the same.

Bill

I have newer TomTom GPS. Model z1230??? Bought in the last 6 months.

The first address is: House numbers not found. Nearest is 271.
The 2nd: is the same @ 785 but the restaurant is in the POIs.
The 3rd: uses D27 as a street name. House numbers not available but the restaurant is in the POIs.

Ian

Ian,

Many thanks for running those. Sounds like the TT has similar problems picking up these street addresses for some reason. Not clear to me why these first two addresses are more problematic than others. I probably have 20 or so entries and these are the only ones with issues.

For the third one, AH, OF COURSE! ((Y)) D27 is the name of the road, not a street address. That makes sense now. I wasn't worried about finding this place because Les Baux is so small, but I was just curious as to why it wasn't found and it's partly because I was entering '27' as the street address instead of as a highway.

Curious to see if these addresses are picked up by other GPS's but so far it seems the TT has similar issues with ones like these. Though probably a better POI table.

Thanks again, I really appreciate you running the addresses.

I haven't tried in the car yet - way too hot to be sitting in the car right now, sorry.

On Here Drive, which I use on my phone it found the first address without a problem, including house number, same with the second one. Also found D27 in Les Baux no problem.

hetismij2, thanks for running these on your phone app.

<b>"On Here Drive, which I use on my phone it found the first address without a problem, including house number"</b>

OK, something's fishy here ... I looked this up on the Here Drive site and it does pick up the address BUT it places the restaurant another mile or so out of town. I saw the same thing with Bing, so I think it's dependent on their choice of on-line maps.

But if I use Google Maps online it shows the address much closer to town, basically just north of D99 where Chemin Monplaisir splits from route de Maillane. This is where I *think* the restaurant is, also close to where the Nuvi maps the next closest address it found, # 103.

So one of these is wrong by about a mile and I'm pretty sure it's the Here Drive link because of their choice of maps.

I'll find out for sure which one is accurate in 10 days when we are there and post again.

Thanks again for checking this, it's a big help because it opens other possibilities. Not sure of my wife's data plan on her iPhone but maybe using Google Maps as a backup is the smart way to go.

Sorry I never got around to checking on the car. Life suddenly got vary hectic when a lorry crashed onto the railway lines by Schiphol meaning I had to get to Schiphol to pick up DH, and fight the traffic jams caused by the accident plus the normal Friday afternoon foul ups. What should have been an easy drive lasting 45 minutes each way turned into a 3 hour marathon, and a rush to my sons to babysit this evening.

Just a note on this one:
150 route de Maillane
13210 Saint-Rémy de Provence

If I go to Google Maps and enter this address + 'France' it shows a hit where I expect it to be. If I then click on "Street View" and pan I can see signs for a restaurant called "Le Moulin Saint Bernard" nearby and also see that this was mapped in July 2012.

I searched for this restaurant name and the address came up as 150 route de Maillane, and since the new restaurant didn't open until February 2014 it's pretty clear the new restaurant just took over the same building but the mapping software hasn't caught up yet.

The phone app locates this in a rural area outside of town another mile or so beside a field but this is no doubt just a bad guess.