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Pete-B

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Pete-B - 2018-10-31 3:43 PM

 

 

Thanks for that, a company called CEL Stores were selling them at the NEC for £199.

 

£199 seems remarkably cheap, as the RRP stated on the TomTom wesite is £379.99 and that’s the price shown on CEL Stores own website.

 

https://www.celstores.com/product/15730.html

 

Are you sure that the ones being sold at the NEC at £199 weren’t ‘refurbished’?

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Yes I bought one this summer to updating my ageing TomTom. I was rather annoyed to see the offer price at the NEC having paid full price in the summer but that's when I wanted it.

 

One thing which I was disappointed with was the speed limits on the continent, as i had input my size and weight I expected the unit to advise me of the relevant speed limits for my vehicle and I'm not sure it always did.

 

My journey through France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Slovenia, Italy, Austria, Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium and France wasn't in a rush and we didn't use a lot of motorways and avoided toll routes and vignettes and Go Boxes. So correct speed limits were an issue. Yes they were looked up each morning, but it would have been nice to have the TomTom monitoring the correct limits.

 

It also had a problem finding a toll free route from near Munich to Slovenia. Via Michelin gave me the answer and splitting the route up allowed the tomtom to guide us through.

 

The traffic stuff is great and overall the unit is pretty good but I wish they had tweeked the routing to stop the mile down the leafy lane tocut the corner and save 10 secs on the timing

 

cheers alan

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On speed limits, it is unwise to rely on sat nav information, as the speed limit data is contained within the mapping, and the mapping is a lagging indicator. The limit first has to be changed (and many are!), then recorded, then mapped, and the map finally published through updates, before your device can show the correct information. By then, another limit will have been changed somewhere else, and so on.

 

Regarding vehicle size vs road width, be aware that actual road widths are not presently mapped. All that is mapped is legal width restrictions (in the same way weight and height restrictions are mapped). The usual workaround is to alter the routing logic to reject minor roads, which can mean more circuitous routes that avoiding perfectly viable, direct, roads that happen to have been mapped as minor.

 

Yer pays yer money etc.!

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We stopped motorhoming abroad so a Camper satnav is a waste of money when UK touring - can't speak for the Continent but we did survive in the 90s and noughties on just Michelin maps of Europe.

 

My British road atlas shows minor roads as either 4m wide (we'll use these) or less than 4m wide (to be avoided if possible) based, I think, on Ordnance Survey maps. The road atlas, which also has a good route planner, is invaluable when the satnav tries to send us up the creek. The downsides of using road atlases are that I have nowhere to put my paper instructions within my line of sight, Local Authorities are not so good at maintaining road signs, and atlases don't provide relatively up to date speed limits.

 

I looked in on the TomTom stand. It had a very good offer on their Camping satnav but wouldn't give me the same discount on a Truck SatNav which I prefer. I had the same problem on other satnav stands. I liked the look and feel of the Tom Tom, I've used their personalised route mapping and found it better than Garmin's Base Camp which I've also tested.

 

I doubt there is any significant difference between Garmin and TomTom products so recommend Pete works out exactly what he wants from his satnav and buys the cheapest best fit. A bargain may not prove to be a bargain if it doesn't meet all needs.

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