'Rench

A few years back, there was discussion about GPS and it seems to me that Garmin was the unit of preference. It's been 5 years. Is that still the case? Has anyone upgraded? I have been using my Android phone to find my way and I find it somewhat lacking. 

Personally, I think that still holds true - Garmin is the king.

Billy Way

2004 BMW R1150RT

I continue to choose Garmin for my automotive driving.  Yes, I have my cell phone and sometimes use it as a back-up confirmation or when I don't have my Garmin with me.  I am a shuttle driver for Hertz Car Rental in Athens and travel quite far sometimes when we are dispatched to locate and swap-out cars across multi-state areas.

On my '17 RT is the BMW Nav VI and I like it a lot even though I don't do route planning via BaseCamp.  Call this underutilization of an expensive resource, but there are several features which I really like (e.g., avoidances, curvy roads, zoom + and - , "Cities", and others.)  as I tend to roam around a lot and I find it exceptionally reliable.  

Since I've never owned anything but Garmin I cannot say if another brand is better.  Perhaps just different.

Don Flowers
Athens, GA
donflow337@aol.com
2017 R1200RT

A few years ago at the GMR -was it 2015?- there was a vendor who was making deals on the TomTom Rider GPS.  My Zumo 550 was getting pretty decrepit by then and the 'lifetime' map updates had stopped coming, so in light of a lot of griping I'd read about Garmin's interface and after seeing the exorbitant prices of the contemporary Garmin units, I decided to try the TomTom.  The nav-system built into my car was made by TomTom and I liked it, so the Rider unit had to be good, right?

Wrong.  I have several gripes about the TomTom unit, one of the biggest of which is that there is no category-search function, as in Food, Fuel, Lodging, etc.  Just a search field, and hope that whatever you enter produces results.
I also find the display to be less than ideally bright for sunny days, and none of the selectable colour-schemes have particularly great contrast.  I think the one I found easiest to see was a grey/purple scheme, and even it leaves something to be desired.
Loading routes into the unit was a bit confusing, and then when I try to select from the routes in the unit, their file names are not displayed- what is displayed is the first couple of lines of directions for each route, so the routes all look the same on the menu since they all start from my house.

I may have to give Garmin another look, since I'm ready to move on from the TomTom unit and want to keep my phone in my pocket rather than on the handlebar so I'll be able to reach it should I need to call an ambulance after a get-off.