Aguiira Sat Nav -v- Snooper

[Frank McAuley]

Re above any views please?

[Keithl]

Frank McAuley - 2017-07-31 9:00 PM

 

Re above any views please?

 

Neither!

 

Garmin any day!!!

 

Keith.

 

PS Have you read the recent thread on Snooper Sat Navs?

 

http://forums.outandaboutlive.co.uk/forums/Motorhomes/Motorhome-Matters/snooper-s2700-ventura-problems/47521/

[Frank McAuley]

Hi Keth

Yes I've read it but I have also read others with an entirely different point of view hence my resort to you knowledgeable folk.My S7000 Snooper broke my heart with probs for a couple of years but then for the last couple of years it has behaved until this year: the screen going grey and then freezing in the middle of a major French city! It's now 5+ years old and I 'be lost confidence in it but unfortunately I have also heard tales of woe about others - including Garmin!

I'm going to purchase a new sat nav but I don't want a pig in a poke so I'm hoping others give me some advice from an informed opinion preferably with some working knowledge! 

[Derek Uzzell]

I’ve not heard of “Aguiira” sat-navs, but I note that you asked about “AGURI” products in late-2016

 

http://forums.outandaboutlive.co.uk/forums/Motorhomes/Motorhome-Matters/Snooper-And-Aguire-Sat-Navs-/45771/

 

and said you would be buying one.

 

What changed your mind?

 

(My advice would be to go for a TomTom or Garmin device, simply because those two brands are the market leaders.)

[Will86]

I don't know either Satnav that you mention.

 

I use a Tom Tom, but only in the UK., and its the cheapest of their range I could find.

 

It works perfectly.

[Frank McAuley]

Hi Derek, AGURI is correct.My Enqs with AGURI revealed that the Traffic Management Info is supplied by a Smart tphone and not by radio as the Snooper is and at that time Data Roaming charges pertained so 'Enqs continue'! I also ascertained that in an A Class Mhome the typical Sat Nav's speaker is less efficient and Aguri overcome this with a Bluetooth speaker; Snooper doesn't facilitate this. Nevertheless I have found that the sound reproduction is fine without the speaker!

There are so many different and varying tales re sat navs and as prices/functionality differ so much I'm trying to reach a decision based on experience from users or from others who have gone through 'the which one' scenario!

[Will86]

I don't understand why people go for these weird names when a well known everyday make such as Derek suggests work very well.

[Randonneur]

We have just looked into buying an Aguri, the reviews were very mixed. These are made, I believe, by 2 people who used to work for Snooper. We finished up buying a TomTom Truck Professional on offer at Currys. Looked at a friends Garmin but wasn't impressed. Our previous TomTom 1005 Camper served us well for 5 years until it was stolen last week (our fault).

[Brian Kirby]

Frank McAuley - 2017-07-31 9:40 PM....................I'm going to purchase a new sat nav but I don't want a pig in a poke so I'm hoping others give me some advice from an informed opinion preferably with some working knowledge!

Much depends on a) how familiar folk have really become with their sat-nav, b) where they tend to go with their vans, and c) whether they want to add POIs or waypoints to their routes.

I can't comment on anything other than Garmin, of which I have had two since 2009. The current one dates from 2012.

 

As with almost all technology, a little manual reading and experimentation with settings pays off. The technology is clever, but the machines are still pretty dumb.

 

Central to their routing logic is a very simple, rather binary, choice as to whether you want to take the quickest route (which seems to be calculated in seconds, based on a presumed average speed for a particular type of road), or the shortest route (which is definitely to avoid in a motorhome, since it will utilise whatever is the literal shortest route without regard to vehicle type, based purely on what has been mapped as a road (some of which are clearly erroneous!). These choices can be modified by indicating one's preferences for using Toll roads, Ferries, U-turns, Unpaved roads, Car share lanes, Motorways, Traffic etc. etc.

 

How these work in practise is something of a matter of trial and error, until you arrive at the best combination to suit your own preferences. The machine depends on its installed mapping to calculate its routes. Where the mapping is inaccurate, the sat nav will deliver defective route guidance. It is in the nature of maps that they are out of date. The map will tend to follow events on the ground and if, as both mine have been, the maps are for the whole of Europe, there will inevitably be instances where one is apparently driving through fields, whereas one is actually driving along a new by-pass. Also, mapped speed limits will almost invariably be wrong somewhere as local changes are made. Foolproof, they are not!

 

But, despite the odd glitch, both mine have reliably delivered generally good routing, including to some quite out-of-the-way places.

 

However, Garmin's greatest advantage, IMO, is that they publish two free, downloadable, programs, that allow the mapping to be installed to a PC or Mac (only one will run on Mac). Of these I much prefer the older one, called MapSource, which is still available, but no longer supported, and runs on PC. The other, called BaseCamp is fully supported, but I find it useless!

 

Both allow POI's to be viewed in Google Earth by merely navigating on the map to the point one wishes to see, and then using a pull down to select "View in Google Earth", at which point Google Earth is started and centres on the same location as is visible on the map. If one has one's own POIs stored on one's computer, one can then see these in Google Earth, which is invaluable for verifying their accuracy. Moving the POI on the map results in the same move being reflected in Google Earth, so that great precision can be achieved when required.

 

One can create and save one's own POIs on the map, but one can also find libraries of POIs (pre-formatted for Garmin and other sat navs) on the internet (Archies is a great source), covering campsites, aires and stellplatze, supermarkets, filling stations, parking places, etc. etc. My current Nuvi has a database of about 63,000 installed. So, if you want to visit a remote village and want to be confident (within reason! :-)) of finding a parking spot, or just checking that the road through is navigable, you locate the village in MapSource, pull up Google Earth, look for a parking spot and translate that into a POI on the map, or switch to Street View (not Germany!), and "drive" the road to see if it presents obvious hazards.

 

It pays to keep these data sets in individual directories on the computer. First because they then retain this organisation when transferred to the sat-nav, and second because it avoids needless clutter on the map that is not relevant to what you are looking for.

 

When happy with these, another free, downloadable, Garmin program, called POI Loader, will transfer them to the sat-nav where they appear as "Custom POIs", still arranged in their directories, to be pulled up and used as destination points for a trip.

 

I believe that the facility to install and use the maps on a PC/Mac does not exist for TomTom sat-navs, and that the facility to do this, or to freely install and create POIs, does not exist for Snooper sat-navs. As far as I am aware, no other devices have either facility. So, despite its (I am told) somewhat less user friendly graphical interface compared to TomTom, I prefer to stick with Garmin.

 

I should add that this does not relate to the "truck" type sat-navs, of which I have no experience.

 

I should also add two further things. First, that there is no substitute for looking at a proposed route on a decent map, and correcting the sat-nav by adding waypoints where its choices look dubious. Second, most of the above is irrelevant to merely swanning down motorways, for which, IMO, a sat-nav will generally work satisfactorily "straight from the box".

[Frank McAuley]

Thanks Brian.I would not have expected anything else from you- your advice has been most helpful in the past! My experience with Garmin stretches back many years and I reluctantly purchased tha Snooper a few years ago because I was attracted by its routing related to size,weight and road classification relevant to the motorhome; I have since found that it is far from perfect and reliance on up to date maps has increased- strange! Nevertheless I am curious as to the reason you have not gone down the way of the 'truck mate' type of gps - have you looked at the Garmin version?

[MagHal]

I've used both. I'm with Brian, both makes require some degree of craft on behalf of the user. Garmin has a better screen display and reports nearby facilities like shops and petrol stations whereas I haven't got the Aguri to do this todate. The Garmin boots faster and recalculates new routes must faster than the Aguri but is always more likely to send you down a farm track. The Garmin switches on and off with the ignition and the Aguri doesn't. If you forget to switch it off it discharges. All much of a muchness really and both are only as good as the maps. I've had the Aguri take me off a route over a roundabout and then direct me back onto the same route that it directed me off only 2 minutes earlier. Stick with one get to use it really well and as Brian says plan with a map and set a journey with way points. Happy travels.