Medion gopal sat nav. Aldi £199

[chris]

Have this unopened product in my hand but afraid to go for it as I rarely buy on impulse. Can anyone give me any advice on the Medion MD 96240 Medion p4210 (WHATEVER THAT ALL MEANS?)

This is the link to the info. Is it worth the money or am I buying a pig in a poke.

 

Aldi will refund

http://www.medion.de/md96240/uk/flash.html

 

 

I can take it back. I am a complete novice on satnavs. We want to use it in Europe.

 

Advice and observations greatly received.

Chris

[net-traveller]

The disclaimer - I don't know this brand but ...

 

The map software is NAVTEQ which is used in many sat navs and also in PC mapping software.

 

The company Medion has a website - http://www.medion.co.uk/

Have a look at this and see what you think.

 

If ALDI are willing to refund even if you open the box then I would suggest that you open the box and see what manuals etc are there. AT the price it is possible that the unit has a slower processor than the premier name sat navs but all that means is that it takes a little longer to find satellites and start the route but would not be any slower after that.

 

;-)

[derek500]

I would try and find out what format the POIs are in, so that it would be easy to 'add' your own e.g. campsites, aires etc.

 

I have read that with some, like the pre-installed satnav in the Swift MHs, you are unable to do this, which in my opinion makes them pretty useless for a MHer.

[Way2Go]

It seems a pretty good deal and I notice it also includes an SD card for storage.  This will probably be where the maps are stored.  There appears to be a USB connection to your PC so you can add/subtract additional maps, which also would suggest that you can add your own POIs (Points Of Interest) on any subject you like.  Although it doesn't say how many of your own you can add.

As you appear to have bought it and you seem to be saying that Aldi will refund you if you change your mind, it doesn't look as though you have anything to lose?

[Way2Go]

derek500 - 2007-05-30 3:12 PM I would try and find out what format the POIs are in, so that it would be easy to 'add' your own e.g. campsites, aires etc. I have read that with some, like the pre-installed satnav in the Swift MHs, you are unable to do this, which in my opinion makes them pretty useless for a MHer.

Quite right Derek.  The one you are referring to even has the out of date restrictive 5 digit post code facility.

[chris]

Can't really open box as it has 2 seals on it.

 

Haven't got a clue what to look for the POI format..

 

Does any of this mean anything to you

internal SIRF III receiver

SVOX talks to you

Traffic master TMC

63 POINTS OF INTEREST CATEGORIES

go pal navigator AE 3.0A

 

Navteq on board

 

Just been on this website and found it is POIWarner. Does that make sense. The comments on this site seem a bit complex? Also had my copy of Windows XP from work so will I have to enter a license number even though it is legitiment version?

http://www.pocketgpsworld.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=55810&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=15

 

 

[Way2Go]

Chris, please don't take this the wrong way but why have you bought it?  You don't appear to need it and the thought of gadgets appear to concern you.

There seems lots of "no idea", "what does this mean", "dont understand" etc . . . I'm wondering why you shelled out £200 on something you appear to not want or understand?

As I say, please don't take it the wrong way but I'm curious as to why you bought something you know nothing about and don't understand what you've bought.

There should be enough expertise on this list to get you going but it looks like a bumpy trip?

[Guest 656]

The POIWarner for converting POI's to a format suitable for that unit is the same one as used on the Garmin nuvi series of SatNavs. If that is the case, the unit is good value for money as I paid onver £300 last year for my 300D with Europeam maps. The TMC function is spot on and allows you to route around traffic hold ups.

 

 

[chris]

No offence taken.

 

It is something that we know we will eventually get and as we have the camperstop book with coordinates listed for satnav we thought this would help us.

Aires in France can almost be impossible to find sometimes and we have missed quite a few over the years.

 

Once in operation I assume we will be ok its just the hastle of setting it up and downloading the information. Its an early birthday present at an affordable price but not affordable if it drives me round the bend setting it up.

 

Usually I investigate for weeks but this was as I said spur of the moment.

Dont know how long I have but will return it if in doubt anyway. Halfords will fit any bought from them and install it for you which might be a better idea but Aldi are pretty good on their offers so that's why it was bought for me.

No offence taken whatsoever. That is why I asked the questions as better to be safe than sorry. I am always on a lurning curvew with this hobby anyway.

Thanks Chris

[Way2Go]

I don't think there is much in the way of setup Chris. 

There's usually a rubber sucker to attach the holding bracket to the windscreen.  Place the unit in it's holder and connect the power cable from your cigar lighter to the unit.

Then go jump in the car and try it out - try to keep one eye on the road though ;-)

[chris]

Way2go

 

Just letting you know that I am not the person asking questions on www.pocketgpsworld.com

 

I just found this on a google search which made me come to MMM for advice to see what others thought

 

Thanks for your sound information

All help gratefully received

Chris

[Way2Go]

chris - 2007-05-30 4:24 PM Way2go Just letting you know that I am not the person asking questions on www.pocketgpsworld.com

I never though it was Chris.  We'll try and help all we can.

Before you jump in the car it's best to get it out the box and start playing with it.

Firstly BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING - BACKUP the SD card so you can always go back to your 'factory settings' in the future.

Then start forming a list of things you don't understand and post them here.  We'll then try to answer them for you.

I've never seen your device so the routes to do anything may seem strange to you and not available on your device.  But, to try it out, click [Navigate To], [POI], [petrol station] (then pick one close by).  Now jump in the car and go to your selected POI.

Incidentally, you might find setting your device to your home address helpful but please select a 'general' point close by but not outside your front door.  The best bet is to drive to the end of your road and hit [select Home], followed by the actual place where the signal is showing you.

It all sounds a bit vague so your gonna have to help out a bit here by using the instructions and applying them to your actual menus.

Way2Go

[chris]

No going back now then.

 

It's out of the box and charging up.

 

Will sit down quietly later on to work through it all.

 

Thanks everyone. Hope I won't have to be back with any more questions .

 

Chris

[Randonneur]

chris - 2007-05-30 8:08 PM

 

No going back now then.

 

It's out of the box and charging up.

 

Will sit down quietly later on to work through it all.

 

Thanks everyone. Hope I won't have to be back with any more questions .

 

Chris

 

Don't bank on it, I have just printed out the manual for the new software on our Mio so that I can try to understand it better. 84 Pages, but luckily I found the button on the printer that puts 2 pages on one A4 sheet. Just got to read through at my leisure!!!!!!!!!

 

Good luck.

 

Sylvia

[davenewellhome]

Don't panic about having taken it out of the box. Aldi will give a full refund (as long as you have the receipt and return the goods with all packaging and as supplied originally) with no reason required for return for 30 days. They also give a three year warranty on almost all of their electrical goods.

 

D.

[carebear]

Chris your letting the side down , What no research before buying i cant believe it. :-)

We have the Tomtom, what about your Goggog suppose your to have made him redundant.

So we wont see you this weekend then, lots of pages for you to read. (lol)

[chris]

Hiya Ceri

Too busy with my head in the instructions. Just gone through the practice run on the machine. So far so good. Will be trying it out tomorrow now.

Thanks everyone

Chris

[Slim]

Hi all,

I purchased one of these Medion sat-navs on Sunday last.

It does everything it should. The maps are stored on the 1gb internal memory. There was a copy of the maps on the removeable SD card. It will still work with seamless European street maps without the card. There is a thread about it all on Pocketgpsworld.com forum, you can read it all there.

There is nothing to compare with it at the price. It even plays MP3's and there is a photo viewer for jpg. files which you can copy to the SD card from your computer.

Instructions are a little thin.

Good luck

Bob :-D

[Mel E]

Can I make a couple of points about these cheaper satnavs?

 

1. A 1GB memory is not sufficient to store the whole of Western Europe including street level in towns. That takes at least 3GB and that's with very outline maps of some countries, such as Ireland. So what you're getting is a cut-down version of the maps, which will not include detailed street maps throughout.

 

2. Whilst there are only two major providers of the maps, they both supply them in varying levels of detail. And neither is perfect, hence the tales of people being routed via cart tracks and what happened to me last week: at an overhead roundabout with a dual carriageway onto which I needed to go right, I was routed left down the slip road, sent for 2 miles along the DC until I reached a point where I could turn round and get back to the original roundabout - all an error in the map rather than the routing software.

 

3. And the software that is used to build the routes from the maps varies in quality quite enormously. Some is very good and some is pretty awful.

 

Sorry, that's three points!

 

Mel E

====

[Way2Go]

Can I just clarify a couple of things here?

The new Western Europe map (v6.75) sold by TomTom has been 'tweaked' so that it will fit on to a 1GB SD card and has therefore lost some of the finer detail and is therefore inferior to the previous version.

However, the new Western and Central Europe map (v6.75) sold by TomTom is 1.67GB and has better detail than the Western Europe map above so is a better choice.

The Great Britain and NI map (v6.75) has GB and NI as you'd expect but also appears to have good coverage of Southern Ireland.  The map only takes up 246MB.

[Slim]

Hi Mel E

I have just checked and find as you say, that not all Europe is on the internal memory. GB, Northern and Southern Ireland, France Belgium, Holland and Germany are internal. The rest of Europe is loaded seamlessly from the data card.

I have been using Autoroute 2006 on a small PC with a GPS receiver for2 years now. The detail is equal to Autoroute. I have just checked a tiny hamlet we visit (La Sauvetee, Near Saintes, France.) It has the same detail with exactlly the same side roads, only visible on large scale local maps.

Venice looks the same too.

We are about to embark on a tour of Europe. I will report back.

Bob

[David Dwight]

Hi Chris.

 

I use Autoroute for sat nav on my laptop.

 

The boss said when she saw the Medion one in Aldi Ohh thats good £200 thats the equvilant to 4 speeding fines (she has just been caught after 40 odd years of driving) lets get one. It gives Camera warnings and tells you when you exceed the speed limit, which is not on Autoroute. It seems to work very well we have used it a few times. I have also planned several routes in Europe to street level and it came up with the goods. It did give me a rather funny shortcut from Berkshire to the East coast, but knowing the road very well ignored it.

We are happy with it.

 

David

[derek500]

Way2Go - 2007-05-31 7:37 PM

 

Can I just clarify a couple of things here? The new Western Europe map (v6.75) sold by TomTom has been 'tweaked' so that it will fit on to a 1GB SD card and has therefore lost some of the finer detail and is therefore inferior to the previous version.

 

The first 1gb Tomtom 'Western Europe' map was version 6.52, which was based on Navteq maps. They have now released 6.75 which has Tele Atlas like the individual country maps.

 

As a test go to N39.59508, W 0.51271, on Navteq maps it will be named as Calle Bonaire on Tele Atlas as unnamed road.

[mom]

I have been waiting for 2 months now, to buy the GoPal 465 (the one up from the Aldi one).  It has been sold out from the medionshop ever since the first batch hit the UK.  I finally gave up waiting and bought a Nuvi 250 for our trip to Bordeaux last week.  It is a no-frills satnav, on a par with the TomTom One Europe, except that it has road level eastern europe maps also.  The only time it got confused was when we turned it on one morning from our parking space in a Bordeaux vineyard.  Poor Matilda (our satnav), she took a few moments to figure things out!

 

On paper, after the research I did into the GoPal 465, the one mentioned in this thread from Aldi (the 460) sounds like a great deal.  Personally, I wouldn't hesitate, unless you want the 465 with 2 gig memory, seemless full east and west european mapping, free traffic update license for life. 

 

[chris]

Well everyone it's out of the box and we have just covered over 400 miles from South Wales, Stratford (for a solar panel fitting), Machynlleth to Newquay (West Wales) and back to South Wales.

 

Best thing is it does warn you about fixed speedcameras and when we were over the limit a voice told us to "pleae keep to the speed limit" which was really good.

 

Some of the routes it sent us on we declined as we thought they were not suitable for the van but we could have used them after all. When in mid Wales there was no way we would use some of the roads it was sending us on in our van so as with all Satnavs you have to use your discretion. Would have been great in a car. Voice was clear and easy to listen to and amazing to hear the street names called out. Petrol stations all indicated. Not used the traffic management yet so will look into that and need to look into POIs (which I have now found out means places of interest for all the other novices like me)

 

It can be used as soon as you have charged it up so that was what we did. I will now study the disc that came with it for more information.

 

We survived and it also corrected the route if we went wrong so not a bad first test run.

Thanks for the info and will get back to you when getting more advanced

Chris