Experiences with a Garmin GPS in Europe
Oct 16th, 2011, 05:17 PM
#21
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Very much agree that a GPS is great in Europe--but that it works best when it's combined with a navigator using an old-fashioned map who is not afraid to overrule the GPS. We were using the built-in Tom Tom in our van while driving through southern France, and while I wouldn't have wanted to attemp the trip without a GPS, if we'd blindly followed its suggestions, we'd have made a number of wrong moves.
I don't leave my planning up to the GPS. I know the route I want to go before getting in the car. If the GPS suggests a different route, you have to think quickly and decide which way to go.
What all the GPS critics are ovlerlooking is that maps are great for planning, but piss poor at telling you where you are at any given moment--the one thing that a GPS can do without fail. Combine the strengths of the two and it makes for a much more enjoyable trip.
I don't leave my planning up to the GPS. I know the route I want to go before getting in the car. If the GPS suggests a different route, you have to think quickly and decide which way to go.
What all the GPS critics are ovlerlooking is that maps are great for planning, but piss poor at telling you where you are at any given moment--the one thing that a GPS can do without fail. Combine the strengths of the two and it makes for a much more enjoyable trip.
Oct 17th, 2011, 04:27 AM
#22
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justretired. I use my GPS a lot in Europe. My old Garmin 670 gave out and I replaced it with the 1370T. In fact, I have two of the same model. I had purchased my second Garmin a 1370T for the city map applications that can be downloaded into it. And my second Garmin 1370T replaced my original 670 when it was malfunctioning and for $89 Garmin swapped it out.
The thing I really was disappointed with this August in Italy was the POI function. I am not talking about locating let me say FCO with this function. But I was never able to locate sucessfully a close supermarket. I could be sitting in front of one and it would indicate the closest market was 42km.
I never did figure out why. I did a lot of driving alone and I felt more confident with the Garmin.
The thing I really was disappointed with this August in Italy was the POI function. I am not talking about locating let me say FCO with this function. But I was never able to locate sucessfully a close supermarket. I could be sitting in front of one and it would indicate the closest market was 42km.
I never did figure out why. I did a lot of driving alone and I felt more confident with the Garmin.
Oct 17th, 2011, 08:43 AM
#23
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Sher, driving alone is not something I ever do on vacation, but it's certainly a good reason to have a GPS. My daughter drives alone a lot (she does balloon twisting gigs at parties), and a GPS is far easier and safer than a paper map.
I need to experiment more with the Point of Interest function on my new Garmin. On the other hand, my problem might have been specific to using it in Europe. Or maybe it needed to initialize something in the database.
I need to experiment more with the Point of Interest function on my new Garmin. On the other hand, my problem might have been specific to using it in Europe. Or maybe it needed to initialize something in the database.
Oct 17th, 2011, 09:05 AM
#24
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I've used Garmins several times in Europe. Yes, it will route you to some narrow winding roads especially in the Maritime Alpes, usually very deserted and when there's a car from the opposite direction, it's not always clear both cars can pass each other without one going onto the shoulder, which may be next to a steep drop.
Very hair-raising.
I've never packed maps. I would print out Google maps zoomed in near a destination but so far have been okay with using Favorites set to the hotel and the places I want to visit.
One thing Garmins let you do is to pre-program it with routes or especially points of interests that I plan to visit so I set them as Favorites. I can do a Google map search and then export the coordinates to the Garmin, which helps in the planning.
Very hair-raising.
I've never packed maps. I would print out Google maps zoomed in near a destination but so far have been okay with using Favorites set to the hotel and the places I want to visit.
One thing Garmins let you do is to pre-program it with routes or especially points of interests that I plan to visit so I set them as Favorites. I can do a Google map search and then export the coordinates to the Garmin, which helps in the planning.
Oct 29th, 2011, 03:39 PM
#25
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Hi justretired,
As a veteran Garmin nuvi user, I hear your pain.
"Suddenly, the road would tip down in a 25 percent grade, turn to dirt, and narrow to a couple of inches wider than the car. After a few hairy turns, we'd pop back out onto the main road at the bottom of the village."
In getting to understand how the units plot their way from point "A" to point "B", it became clear to me that as far as the Garmin is concerned, the shortest route is by necessity the fastest route. Our focus is tours out of Niagara on the Lake and I live in Port Credit (a suburb of Toronto). Whenever I would navigate to a route start point, the nuvi would want us to turn off the Queen Elizabeth Way in St. Catherines, take some back streets and transit the Welland Canal at Canal-level.
Possibly just possibly this might save us the minute in driving time. But if even one light went against us (Heaven forfend that a freighter be transitting the Canal and the bridges be up), the time saving would have been completely eliminated. The alternative is to cross the Canal on the Garden City Skyway and incur a "recalculating" that in Garmin world has you arriving one minute later. Now this is with a nuvi 750 and mayhap as Garmin has seen the error of it's algorhythm ways on that front. I'll leave it to those using newer devices to chime in.
"On our recent French trip, while driving north from Sarlat on the D704, when the road main road wiggled to the left, the GPS told us to keep right at the intersection."
Ran into this one at the intersection of Niagara Stone Road and East & West Line. I think the answer is that the map components haven't been precisely aligned and your unit is seeing a slight jog in the road and interpretting that as a turn. For my example, that has been addressed with more recent mapsets but it is still annoying.
"The Garmin GPS in Europe had a general tendency to take us on very small roads, if they were direct and cut off some distance. It took us over some roads that were so narrow, that they had stretches in which I couldn't imagine what I would do if a car appeared in the opposite direction. But in general, these small roads had very little traffic on them."
In the Niagara area, I've also found Garmin's maps include directions to drive down roads that could most generously be described as cattle paths (in fair weather only). A good example in Niagara is Concession 3 Road. We have a tour that originally routed from Caroline Cellars here ( N43.21850 W79.09729 ) to Ravine Vineyard Estate here ( N43.15918 W79.10154 ). The Garmin would try to cut the corner and route along Concession 3 Road rather than the Four Mile Creek Road. The problem with that routing is that there's nothing that I would qualify as a road between the points. When we first tried it, it was fair weather and my wife and I amused ourselves with recreating a Model T-era overland trek. If it had have been raining anytime recently, a tow truck would have been necessary to extricate us. I think that whoever provides Garmin with their mapsets has taken shortcuts and not every road has been travelled to ensure its passability (or existence even). Whether the same applies to TomTom, I wouldn't venture to say.
All in all, I've found GPSs to be a Godsend but like all other such Godsends, common sense must be applied to their use
HTH
u
As a veteran Garmin nuvi user, I hear your pain.
"Suddenly, the road would tip down in a 25 percent grade, turn to dirt, and narrow to a couple of inches wider than the car. After a few hairy turns, we'd pop back out onto the main road at the bottom of the village."
In getting to understand how the units plot their way from point "A" to point "B", it became clear to me that as far as the Garmin is concerned, the shortest route is by necessity the fastest route. Our focus is tours out of Niagara on the Lake and I live in Port Credit (a suburb of Toronto). Whenever I would navigate to a route start point, the nuvi would want us to turn off the Queen Elizabeth Way in St. Catherines, take some back streets and transit the Welland Canal at Canal-level.
Possibly just possibly this might save us the minute in driving time. But if even one light went against us (Heaven forfend that a freighter be transitting the Canal and the bridges be up), the time saving would have been completely eliminated. The alternative is to cross the Canal on the Garden City Skyway and incur a "recalculating" that in Garmin world has you arriving one minute later. Now this is with a nuvi 750 and mayhap as Garmin has seen the error of it's algorhythm ways on that front. I'll leave it to those using newer devices to chime in.
"On our recent French trip, while driving north from Sarlat on the D704, when the road main road wiggled to the left, the GPS told us to keep right at the intersection."
Ran into this one at the intersection of Niagara Stone Road and East & West Line. I think the answer is that the map components haven't been precisely aligned and your unit is seeing a slight jog in the road and interpretting that as a turn. For my example, that has been addressed with more recent mapsets but it is still annoying.
"The Garmin GPS in Europe had a general tendency to take us on very small roads, if they were direct and cut off some distance. It took us over some roads that were so narrow, that they had stretches in which I couldn't imagine what I would do if a car appeared in the opposite direction. But in general, these small roads had very little traffic on them."
In the Niagara area, I've also found Garmin's maps include directions to drive down roads that could most generously be described as cattle paths (in fair weather only). A good example in Niagara is Concession 3 Road. We have a tour that originally routed from Caroline Cellars here ( N43.21850 W79.09729 ) to Ravine Vineyard Estate here ( N43.15918 W79.10154 ). The Garmin would try to cut the corner and route along Concession 3 Road rather than the Four Mile Creek Road. The problem with that routing is that there's nothing that I would qualify as a road between the points. When we first tried it, it was fair weather and my wife and I amused ourselves with recreating a Model T-era overland trek. If it had have been raining anytime recently, a tow truck would have been necessary to extricate us. I think that whoever provides Garmin with their mapsets has taken shortcuts and not every road has been travelled to ensure its passability (or existence even). Whether the same applies to TomTom, I wouldn't venture to say.
All in all, I've found GPSs to be a Godsend but like all other such Godsends, common sense must be applied to their use
HTH
u
Nov 4th, 2011, 01:41 PM
#26
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Thanks for your comments, UTour.
I had thought that the feel of the Garmin in Europe being different from here at home was due to a difference in the European map set. But since you're in Canada, you made me think that perhaps the reason is in the roads, not the maps.
I live in a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts (USA). There really aren't any truly tiny roads here. Almost every road on the map is paved and at least two lanes wide. The many one-lane roads (and I mean one lane serving both directions) we traveled in the Dordogne generally don't exist here at all. So anything the Garmin turns us off onto here is going to be a decent road with at least two lanes, each of which will be substantially wider than the car. The GPS can do whatever it wants - we simply won't end up on the hairy one-lane roads it put us on in France.
By the way, UTour, as a (retired) computer professional, I also enjoyed your creative spelling of "algorhythm". It has a certain - <i>musicality</i> - to it.
- Larry
I had thought that the feel of the Garmin in Europe being different from here at home was due to a difference in the European map set. But since you're in Canada, you made me think that perhaps the reason is in the roads, not the maps.
I live in a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts (USA). There really aren't any truly tiny roads here. Almost every road on the map is paved and at least two lanes wide. The many one-lane roads (and I mean one lane serving both directions) we traveled in the Dordogne generally don't exist here at all. So anything the Garmin turns us off onto here is going to be a decent road with at least two lanes, each of which will be substantially wider than the car. The GPS can do whatever it wants - we simply won't end up on the hairy one-lane roads it put us on in France.
By the way, UTour, as a (retired) computer professional, I also enjoyed your creative spelling of "algorhythm". It has a certain - <i>musicality</i> - to it.
- Larry
Nov 8th, 2011, 12:40 PM
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We still remember our trip through Switzerland using the GPS that came with our lease car. It was the weekend so a few cars were on the roads. You could tell who had GPS and who were locals and knew what they were doing. (Or ignored their GPS)
As we approached a small town our 'lady in the box' directed us to turn off the main road. We did as we were told, not knowing the area. Several cars followed us. As we all climbed higher and higher through the town we could see several of the cars we had been following, driving a different route through town. We continued on, through hairpin turns and all sorts of nonsense until we finally came back out on the main road, right behind the car we had been following previously.
I'm sure the guy we were following got quite a chuckle as we and three other cars fell back into line on the main road. We must have looked so silly, taking the 'scenic' route.
Additionally, this happened in a very small town in Italy. We were directed to make a left at an intersection and we did. We then proceeded to wind our way through this teeny tiny town with even teenier tinier roads until we finally emerged out the other side, exactly 20 ft past where we were instructed to make a left originally. Ahhh, gotta love GPS.
As we approached a small town our 'lady in the box' directed us to turn off the main road. We did as we were told, not knowing the area. Several cars followed us. As we all climbed higher and higher through the town we could see several of the cars we had been following, driving a different route through town. We continued on, through hairpin turns and all sorts of nonsense until we finally came back out on the main road, right behind the car we had been following previously.
I'm sure the guy we were following got quite a chuckle as we and three other cars fell back into line on the main road. We must have looked so silly, taking the 'scenic' route.
Additionally, this happened in a very small town in Italy. We were directed to make a left at an intersection and we did. We then proceeded to wind our way through this teeny tiny town with even teenier tinier roads until we finally emerged out the other side, exactly 20 ft past where we were instructed to make a left originally. Ahhh, gotta love GPS.
Nov 8th, 2011, 01:51 PM
#29
I think that much of the bad you hear about these things is because the majority of people don't know how to use them properly. There are all kinds of functions and options and you'll never know how to use them without a bit of effort.>>
well summarised. we just took our new tom-tom to germany and in a way I was nostalgic for our old Garmin.
i find that the restrictions of the GPS is that you need to know where you want to go. with a map you can just pootle about, which is something I love to do. on point A-B trips the GPS is usually fine, but for exploring, you can't beat a good map.
well summarised. we just took our new tom-tom to germany and in a way I was nostalgic for our old Garmin.
i find that the restrictions of the GPS is that you need to know where you want to go. with a map you can just pootle about, which is something I love to do. on point A-B trips the GPS is usually fine, but for exploring, you can't beat a good map.
Nov 9th, 2011, 12:27 AM
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I used a TomTom (don't remember the exact model but it was purchased in early 2011) for Brittany, the Loire valley and Dordogne. I had no problem with it except on 2 occassions. One oft hese occassions was when it took me on what i think is a longer route from Rocamadour to Sarlat (butI can't verify this one because I didn't have a printed map at all for my 2 weeks in Dordogne). The 2nd occassion was partly my own fault when I put in a junction based on google map when I should have used the longtitude/latitude function for a rural address. This led me down a tractor trail that was horrifyingly narrow (with a straight plunge down a cliff to a cemetary on one side!)
the TomTom worked flawlessly other times. It didn't take me down impossibly narrow streets or other issues you mentioned above. I suspect that the TomTom perhaps does function better in Europe than the Garmin?
If I wanted to pass through a particular town en route to my destination, I would use the "waypoint" function on the TomTom so that it passes through the "waypoint" (but doesn't announce it as a destination). This also allows ou to choose a specific route (if you know there are more than one way to get to your destinaion) or if you want to just drive by a place.
I couldn't imagine driving in a foreign place without a GPS!!
Just my 2 cents...
the TomTom worked flawlessly other times. It didn't take me down impossibly narrow streets or other issues you mentioned above. I suspect that the TomTom perhaps does function better in Europe than the Garmin?
If I wanted to pass through a particular town en route to my destination, I would use the "waypoint" function on the TomTom so that it passes through the "waypoint" (but doesn't announce it as a destination). This also allows ou to choose a specific route (if you know there are more than one way to get to your destinaion) or if you want to just drive by a place.
I couldn't imagine driving in a foreign place without a GPS!!
Just my 2 cents...
Nov 10th, 2011, 06:40 AM
#31
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"I suspect that the TomTom perhaps does function better in Europe than the Garmin?"
That seems to be the conventional experience. FWIW, I didn't have any issues with my Garmin. But then again, we weren't driving and never left Paris and environs. So that's hardly what you could call a challenging navigation environment. I notice that using Google Maps either online or on my wife's Android phone, routing between the same two points in Niagara avoids the previously-mentioned cow path.
"I couldn't imagine driving in a foreign place without a GPS!!"
Seconded. I'm in bad shape just out of my neighbourhood let alone elsewhere.
"straight plunge down a cliff to a cemetary on one side!"
Nice of them to take out the middleman and get you to your final destination (even if it might be happening just a tad sooner than intended).
u
That seems to be the conventional experience. FWIW, I didn't have any issues with my Garmin. But then again, we weren't driving and never left Paris and environs. So that's hardly what you could call a challenging navigation environment. I notice that using Google Maps either online or on my wife's Android phone, routing between the same two points in Niagara avoids the previously-mentioned cow path.
"I couldn't imagine driving in a foreign place without a GPS!!"
Seconded. I'm in bad shape just out of my neighbourhood let alone elsewhere.
"straight plunge down a cliff to a cemetary on one side!"
Nice of them to take out the middleman and get you to your final destination (even if it might be happening just a tad sooner than intended).
u
Nov 9th, 2012, 11:57 AM
#32
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I too have been disappointed by my Garmin Nuvi. Perhaps I was lulled into a false sense of security in Australia. The Garmin lead us from Brisbane to Canberra, with stops in between. Even told us about Radar Traps. Didn't buy a single map. Brought it to France, downloaded the Europe Maps, but every reasonable journey (Veigy, near Geneva to Pannissiere, west of Lyon), the Garmin took us on the long, scenic, dangerous route. Also from Veigy to Rust, Germany), the Garmin wanted us to turn off the Autoroute almost every chance, after Bern. We ignored it, and lost a bit of confidence in our friend. Reading the wisdom here, it appears a GPS is at best, a supplementary tool, rather than the sole tool. But for getting to an actual address in an new town, it is invaluable. Guess I'm back to planning my journeys a little better. Silly me, thought that I could be more laid back and rely on my navigator friend. Or perhaps I need to read the Manual, and train him better! Thanks folks for you sage advice.
Nov 9th, 2012, 12:20 PM
#33
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We have satnav built into our cars, mine (in a Ford)is a version of Tomtom, his is Toyota's whatever. The Toyota one is so much better than mine, but I haven't tested mine in anger yet.
I like satnav when I am on my own, going to somewhere new, and used to borrow his car for that reason. My car is too new to have gone anywhere different with it yet.
We
use his satnav throughout Europe to get us to a hotel or holiday cottage, and more importantly to find said hotel/holiday cottage again in the dark!
It is also very useful when you need to find a petrol station in an unfamiliar area.
We have a map with us too, for pottering and exploring.
I haven't tried a satnav in the US, we've only used maps there and never had a problem. Not sure I would hire one in the US.
I like satnav when I am on my own, going to somewhere new, and used to borrow his car for that reason. My car is too new to have gone anywhere different with it yet.
We
use his satnav throughout Europe to get us to a hotel or holiday cottage, and more importantly to find said hotel/holiday cottage again in the dark!
It is also very useful when you need to find a petrol station in an unfamiliar area.
We have a map with us too, for pottering and exploring.
I haven't tried a satnav in the US, we've only used maps there and never had a problem. Not sure I would hire one in the US.
Nov 9th, 2012, 12:26 PM
#34
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Took our Garmin 50LM to France with us last month. Bought the micro SD map car for $45.
We used it driving from Nice to Apt. Had trouble with it. Realized that the cigarette lighter was not charging it. Had no other way to charge it. Turned the car in for a different one that had a functioning lighter. The GPS worked some, the maps helped. Then the whole thing quit working. Couldn't even get it to turn on. Left it in the glove box and forgot about it. Used iPad or paper maps.
Long story short - car got broken into in Bonnieux. There was nothing visible in the car. There was however, a big Europcar sticker and the infamous rental plates on the care. They took the GPS. Wasn't all that upset, since it seemed dead, but wish I had the micro SD card as I planned to sell it on EBay when I got home. Oh well...
We used it driving from Nice to Apt. Had trouble with it. Realized that the cigarette lighter was not charging it. Had no other way to charge it. Turned the car in for a different one that had a functioning lighter. The GPS worked some, the maps helped. Then the whole thing quit working. Couldn't even get it to turn on. Left it in the glove box and forgot about it. Used iPad or paper maps.
Long story short - car got broken into in Bonnieux. There was nothing visible in the car. There was however, a big Europcar sticker and the infamous rental plates on the care. They took the GPS. Wasn't all that upset, since it seemed dead, but wish I had the micro SD card as I planned to sell it on EBay when I got home. Oh well...
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