TomTom Rider 2

Hi Guys,

TomTom Rider 2........................


...........................In a nutshell, Are they any good?

Chris.

Went to New Milton, 'tween Southampton and Bournemouth, riding pillion on a mate's Pan to buy me GS. Brought us from Pembroke right to the seller's front door without a hitch.

i have one, really like it.

the ram mount they supply in this version is proper, doesn't look to me like it will fly off.

it is my second tomtom, bought my wife the car one a few years ago - she now insists we drive with it, saves many an argument. the tomtom software is very good, easy to use, with the latest versions that handle a full postcode gets you just about everywhere.

tiny niggles for me -

- when you break the speed limit, the colour changes to red and its very difficult to read with the default amount of vibration on a GS

- i didn't love the scala bluetooth thing that comes with it. fouled my left shoulder when doing lifesavers. battery life, voice quality, pairing all working well though. i also found answering the phone whilst riding along impossibly distracting.

i use it now without the headset! much prefer earplugs anyway.

I replaced my Zumo with a Rider 2nd edition, the routing is much better suited to the likes of me who just wants to get from A to B in the fastest possible time with the least amount of fuss. I've made a couple of comparison trips just to see where the Rider would take me and the routes were straightforward and direct without the secret shortcuts the Zumo would try to take me.
POI's are much of a muchness, the Zumo might have a bit of an edge not certain though.
The Tom Tom edges it when it comes to user friendlyness, it has a tour feature which shows you how to use certain aspects of the unit which I found helpful.
The Zumo appears to be more robustly made than the Tom Tom, and I never felt I was going to lose the Zumo, the Tom Tom does have a RAM mount now but Tom Tom provide and advise that the unit have a lanyard fixing as well just in case the unit should come adrift which hardly inspires confidence.
They both have bluetooth but the Tom Tom comes with a Cardo scala rider (single ear piece so not stereo) and your ready to go with it.
The Zumo has a jack plug for a wired connection which Is head and shoulders better than bluetooth, but you don't get a bluetooth head set anyway.
The telephony package on the Tom Tom is better than the Zumo in as much as you get most if not all of your phones features transferred to the unit, with the Zumo it is not even compatable with some phones.
The Garmin support line is freephone and the Garmin people are very helpful.
Customer service and Tom Tom are strangers to each other but I was aware from previous posts that this might be the case. I haven't found a land line number as of yet but the replies to 2 email enquiries confirmed what I'd already read.
I think it's a case of swings and roundabouts both have their good points and both have drawbacks, but for the less adventurous rider like me who would prefer the unit to do the thinking for me I think the Rider will suffice.

TomTom Rider V2

Chris,

You may benefit from reading my post regarding the Cardo Systems Scala Rider ear piece....

http://www.ukgser.com/forums/showthread.php?t=121802

The TomTom Rider V2 is excellent, I've used it 4 or 5 times since receiving it and the calculation, and recalculation, speed is second to none. The problems with my earpiece are something to be aware of.

Gerry

Zumo.. stupid short cuts

I just used Garmins Zumo for a trip to France.. For the most part it was OK. Except when we were taken down a farm track that was shown as a road.. Garmins routing for me is not very good..

The track we ended up on was a tractor track, very deep in mud, and extremely hard to ride at night! The track was completely no need.. and an extremely stupid diversion

I think if you want accurate and sensible routing, then Tom Tom may be better. I can't fault the Tom Tom that I use in my van at work. On the other hand, if you want to use your own waypoints such as in Morocco, then I think Garmin would be better.

I am now looking at getting a Tom Tom 2

Chris

Ive done 6300 miles through Europe in all weather conditions and around another 1000 miles since returning on my Rider 2.

What a BRILLIANT peice of kit. I was so chuffed when it arrived and still love it to bits.

Phone calls are great too!!!

I hate the way people call it "just A to B". TomToms Itinerary planning on the device is amazing and I programmed 45 itinerary locations on the unit. Garmin needs a PC to make any decent journey programmable. Although if you do want to program on a PC, TomTom has plugins so you can pull down google maps and other format itinerarys.

There are loads of additional software parts available for Rider 2 that would allow you to do waypoints and navigation where you have no maps like in Morocco for example. TomTom do have some maps for south Africa and there eastern europe maps are getting better all the time.

HUGE thumbs up for Rider 2!!!

My TomTom Rider 2 got really confused twice while I was away in France, Spain and Andorra recently.

Firstly I had planned an itinerary from Pau to Caceres (using road junctions as way points, plotted really accurately). I was planning to go through the Valle de Hecho but the road was closed. So I used the neighbouring Valle de Roncal.

So I was 'off' the itiniary but still heading in the right direction. I thought that by the time I got onto the N330 towards Pamplona (part of the planned itinerary) that the device would catch up and map from there.

It didn't.

Secondly, and this did make me laugh, I had an itinerary planned from Lleida to Andorra. This time new road building scuppered the device ... so badly that when I arrived in Andorra la Vella for lunch (like you do) TomTom was (still) indicating that I should turn about and had 243km to go.

But it had its uses.

I used it to find petrol twice (once on foot after running out of fuel in Marbella leaving my chum's garage - actually I had a litre or so left, but the bike cut out down hill ... how crap is that?)

And I used it to find a hotel once (in Lleida).

It's great for finding your way in and out of urban areas. The road speed limit/speed display is useful (the km figures on the V-Strom's dial are a bit hard to read).

But it did plot an absolutely blinding cross-country route from the autoroute to St Chinian (SE France) sometimes through villages where the streets were only just wider than the laden bike, that I don't think I would have found using the maps that I had with me (1:800,000).

But ... maps and 210mm x 75mm paper strips (with decsion points marked ... a little teeny-weeny-bit like a Dakar road book) work best for me.

So ... is it a substitute for knowing where you are going? Definitely not!

Is it better than a map: No

Did I use it all the time: No

Would I leave without it: Definitely not.

Cheers
V61

Anyhow ... what I'm now after is a mount for the TomTom Rider 2 for the bars behind the windscreen on my new R1200GS Adv ... here:



since I have the Touratech console with electrical socket fitted.

Any suggestions?

Cheers

V61

Voyager61 said:

Anyhow ... what I'm now after is a mount for the TomTom Rider 2 for the bars behind the windscreen on my new R1200GS Adv ... here:

Click to expand...

I have the GSA screen on my GS. the standard RAM mount that comes with the Rider V2 fits just fine onto that bar bit - it mounts the GPS a bit up and away from the rest of the clocks, no problems at all.

Cool!

I'll have alook at that when the bike arrives ... 13 days to go!

Voyager61 said:

My TomTom Rider 2 got really confused twice while I was away in France, Spain and Andorra recently.

Firstly I had planned an itinerary from Pau to Caceres (using road junctions as way points, plotted really accurately). I was planning to go through the Valle de Hecho but the road was closed. So I used the neighbouring Valle de Roncal.

So I was 'off' the itiniary but still heading in the right direction. I thought that by the time I got onto the N330 towards Pamplona (part of the planned itinerary) that the device would catch up and map from there.

It didn't.

Secondly, and this did make me laugh, I had an itinerary planned from Lleida to Andorra. This time new road building scuppered the device ... so badly that when I arrived in Andorra la Vella for lunch (like you do) TomTom was (still) indicating that I should turn about and had 243km to go.

But it had its uses.

I used it to find petrol twice (once on foot after running out of fuel in Marbella leaving my chum's garage - actually I had a litre or so left, but the bike cut out down hill ... how crap is that?)

And I used it to find a hotel once (in Lleida).

It's great for finding your way in and out of urban areas. The road speed limit/speed display is useful (the km figures on the V-Strom's dial are a bit hard to read).

But it did plot an absolutely blinding cross-country route from the autoroute to St Chinian (SE France) sometimes through villages where the streets were only just wider than the laden bike, that I don't think I would have found using the maps that I had with me (1:800,000).

But ... maps and 210mm x 75mm paper strips (with decsion points marked ... a little teeny-weeny-bit like a Dakar road book) work best for me.

So ... is it a substitute for knowing where you are going? Definitely not!

Is it better than a map: No

Did I use it all the time: No

Would I leave without it: Definitely not.

Cheers
V61

Click to expand...

Please excuse my reply as I dont know your level of knowledge on using a TomTom.

When you use itinerary planning you remove some of the flexibility of the dynamic rerouting made possible with TomTom software.

If for any reason you do not hit the waypoint as part of your itinerary perfectly it will keep redirecting you indefinetly until you go on top of it. It will dynamically reroute you so far as to take you to the waypoint but never beyond that waypoint until you pass it. You could carry straight to your final waypoint/destination and it will still ask you to travel the un"visited" position. You can always go to the itinerary planning screen and click the waypoint/destination and "mark as visited" and it will sort itself out.

If you find you are not going to hit a waypoint and you want the TomTom to skip the next destination in the itinerary without stopping to reprogram it, then just click the screen whilst riding, select navigate and then click itinerary. This then reloads the itinerary and navigates but with the current destination now marked as visited. The only limitation I can see with this feature is that it seems to jump to the next destination marking all waypoint as visited before the destination.

When I did our "Honeymoon to Hell" trip this year I had around 45 locations in my itinerary planning and used this shortcut quite a few times.

I doubt your TomTom is faulty as it sounds like what I have just described.

I've had this problem when using the itinery planning as well, as I usually set villages or towns as waypoints, and the selected point is often slightly off the road through the village. Not tried it yet but found this the other day, which should allow you to skip the next waypoint without skipping all the remaining waypoints before your destination.