Carolmonkey Posted June 12, 2013 Share Posted June 12, 2013 We think we are off to France next week (still thinking about it) and are seriously considering buying a sat nav where you can input the size and weight etc of your motorhome. Does anyone have any suggestions. We have been looking at the snooper all singing and dancing its about £350. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gwyn Posted June 12, 2013 Share Posted June 12, 2013 If I was buying new I would seriously look at the Caravan club one it seems to tick all the boxes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lennyhb Posted June 12, 2013 Share Posted June 12, 2013 Any satnav is only as good as the mapping data,, the road width and bridge heights are only available for major roads, not ideal if you like amber-ling through France. We prefer to use Autoroute on a netbook with a GPS receiver for France, gives a better idea of the size of the roads and very easy to plan the route you want to take. We usually run the satnav as well but only use if negotiating a busy town. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Caroline Posted June 13, 2013 Share Posted June 13, 2013 Hi I had the Snooper, was not happy at all with it althought others have written glowing reports, now have the Garmin Dezl and have been very impressed with it. Plus it is a better known brand and the downloads for it are more available. (lol) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retread24800 Posted June 13, 2013 Share Posted June 13, 2013 Happy to use my standard Garmin here in France plus a healthy dose of Common sense when pulling off a main road, as already said mapping data is the key and the majority of roads do not have height/width data :-( so my advice is save your money! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Easyliving Posted June 13, 2013 Share Posted June 13, 2013 We have just a bog-standard TomTom in our van and totally relied on it while touring in Europe for 4 months last year. A few times we ended up on some very narrow roads but generally we had no problem. I imagine you would still have to keep your eyes open for signs whatever type of satnav you use. They do make driving abroad much easier I found, 99% of the time our satnav guided us precisely to our destination without any problem. Paul Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Kirby Posted June 13, 2013 Share Posted June 13, 2013 Carolmonkey - 2013-06-12 8:35 PM We think we are off to France next week (still thinking about it) and are seriously considering buying a sat nav where you can input the size and weight etc of your motorhome. Does anyone have any suggestions. We have been looking at the snooper all singing and dancing its about £350. How big is your van? What are your main concerns? We have used sat nav in a 6.0 metre coachbuilt to travel Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Greece, Slovenia, Austria, Portugal, Croatia and UK since 2008. We tend to avoid main roads and motorways. I tend to check routes on maps, and then tell the sat nav where to go if I don't like its proposed route. They are machines, and very clever technology, but inevitably give odd directions at times. You can't safely follow them "blind" in any vehicle. As stated above, it is the quality of the mapping that underlies how well they can guide you. Navteq (Nokia) and Tele Atlas (TomTom) provide the great majority, if not all, of the underlying electronic mapping. I would add that you have to "tune" them to get the best from them for your needs/preferences, and a first (?) trip abroad is probably not the best time to experiment. Try in UK, on familiar roads, first and watch what it does. Then you can tweak the preferences until it does about what you want. But, that said, they are a great aid to travel. To answer your question, I would not, at present, pay for the extra bells and whistles of the "truck" variants for any vehicle significantly smaller than a coach or a 40 tonne truck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John swift Posted June 15, 2013 Share Posted June 15, 2013 Be carefull if your sat nav has the speed camera on it you won,t be allowed to use it in france even if that part is turned off ;-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retread24800 Posted June 15, 2013 Share Posted June 15, 2013 Those of you with Garmin ( and I suspect Tomtom as well) Sat navs who have recently revised their software via their Garmin/Tomtom sites will have had the speed camera warnings changed to 'Safety zones' warnings which are perfectly legal. No need to change your trusty valve operated, steam powered Sat nav :-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hallii Posted June 15, 2013 Share Posted June 15, 2013 Before I went abroad earlier this year I did the update via TomeTom's website. It all worked as it should. In France the speed camera alerts operated just like they always had. Some cameras had gone and there were some that were not on my Tom Tom, danger zones or cameras, they were not there. I still don't know if I have cameras or danger zones on mine, I am not worried, I will claim insanity, all French Police know that "les Anglais" are slighly mad. As to whether I would buy a motorhome or commercial sat nav my answer is no, I need to update but I will hang on for a year or so, I think the extra money is just not worth it at the moment. If you choose your route from a map, break it down into reasonable chunks and just go town to town there are no problems. I have found the problems start when you just let the sat nav choose the entire route and follow it blindly, it will take you some funny routes then! I well remember blindly following the sat nav in France, we went through the middle of Paris, that was a shock. Luckily it was a Sunday and we actual;ly made good progress, but it could have been a Friday at about 6 p.m. 8-) H Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retread24800 Posted June 15, 2013 Share Posted June 15, 2013 John swift - 2013-06-15 11:03 AMBe carefull if your sat nav has the speed camera on it you won,t be allowed to use it in france even if that part is turned off ;-) Point is how will they know? not as if you would be using a radar detector now that is a non non. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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