andyclift
Registered user
Although not related to bike use this may be useful info. for some.
For the last couple of months I have been working as an agency truck driver doing multi-drop deliveries in London and the south east and my experience using both Tomtom Rider and Garmin 2720 for navigation may be useful.
My deliveries are mainly to catering premises, e.g. hotels, restaurants, hospitals and schools. Normally I typed in the full address, i.e. street number and name, but many companies just have a street name and most commercial streets don't show numbers on buildings so post codes were used. Most of the time the navigation was OK
First, why use both? My preference on the GS has always been the 2720 but most trucks have 24 volt electrics and I discovered the 2720 cig lighter adapter only works on 12v. One up to the Tomtom, it will power up from both 12 and 24 volt. Eventually I bought a 24v to 12v converter (most shops wanted about £40 but Maplins had them for £14.00) and now use the Garmin all the time.
Both came up with sensible routes most of the time but I now understand the headlines about satnavs forcing trucks into unsuitable roads. On standard settings both systems would occasionally take me into a very narrow country roads and it was not obvious when entering that I was driving into problems. Here the Garmin was much better as it is possible to define the type of vehicle and changing the setting to "truck" resulted in more major roads being used. It also stopped it suggesting a U turn when facing the wrong way for a route, it would find a "round the block" solution. I could also tweak the type of roads used to force the route onto more major roads. With Tomtom none of this is possible.
One area where the Garmin has been vastly superior in town is that it has never suggested turning on a "no right turn" or going the wrong way down a one way street. This was a frequent problem with the Tomtom and meant driving on and waiting for a recalculation - which was often a suggestion to make a U turn - in central London in the rush hour!!
The Garmin has another edge which is an advantage when the destination is in town or on a dual carriageway, it knows which side of the road the destination is o although sometimes it got it wrong. In town this means it is not necessary to crawl along looking on both sides of the road and on dual carriageways you finish on the correct side. An example was finding a hotel on a by pass in Hampshire, the Tomtom took me to the wrong side resulting in a ten mile trip to turn around, the Garmin got it right. I have also found the accuracy of the Garmin on the exact point of the final destination better - although not always perfect. It is sometimes a bit out with street numbers but postcode destinations are normally spot on.
When entering postcodes the Tomtom just accepts the code as the destination but the Garmin also asks for a street number, if available, and displays the road the code is on - which is a useful double check and has solved a problem when I have been given faulty postcodes. They are easier to enter in the Tomtom though as the screen offers letters and numbers. The Garmin is a nuisance having to enter letters on one screen, change screen for numbers then back again for the final letters. It does not sound a big problem but entering up to 40 a day with codes like SW3X 3TH is much more time consuming.
Its about time I gave Tomtom a point and it is much quicker to turn on and find a sat fix. Both can lose fix in London streets and if stopped under bridges and although the Tomtom loses fix more often it gets it back quicker. It's not normally a problem when the Garmin loses a fix except when stuck under a bridge in a traffic jam. One can sometimes pass a junction with a turn required before the fix comes back.
Something that affects the 2720 and a few other Garmins is the lack of a battery. It's never been a problem on the bike but some of the trucks turn off the cig socket with the ignition which means waiting for the longish boot sequence after a stop or when the plug vibrates out of the socket.
For the job I have been doing traffic info is useful and on the Tomtom I have a few months left on the free traffic subscription they gave me and have the plug in traffic info unit. The Garmin system works in real time from radio transmitted data and has proved really useful. The Tomtom system is next to useless as it involves making a Bluetooth connection to a data enabled mobile phone and making a call to download the latest data. To be of any practical use it would mean making a fresh data call every few minutes so I can't say how good the data is. I beleive Tomtom is adopting the Garmin system now.
Now the big plus for the Garmin with multiple destinations. It is possible to enter many destinations as a route and then tell it to sort them into the best order. In my job the office staff, based on experience, sort the drops. Then the truck is loaded in "drop order" ready for me to drive off in the morning. I did a test of the system by checking the track log for a day (can't do this with Tomtom). My route covered 104 miles. I then told the Garmin to reorder the drops and the result was 64 miles. This would have been a massive saving in time and fuel costs. I can't make maximum use of this feature as the truck is loaded "in order" when I arrive in the morning but on days when I have a number of drops in different towns I have saved a lot of time by doing the first one, then entering all the others as a route and fixing the final destination as the first drop in the next town.
One theoretical advantage with the Tomtom is that it also acts as a hands free for my phone but in practice I found that using it for navigation and hands free was a nuisance. A call would come in when I was just about to go through a complex junction and the damned screen would change to incoming call. Also of course the Tomtom Rider requires a Bluetooth earpiece to get the instructions but the 2720 has a speaker (not a problem with the Rider Mark 2 with a car bracker with built in speaker).
Finally. Both units enabled me to get the job done and most of the differences in use are relatively minor but the frustration of the Tomtom sending me down unsuitable roads and suggesting turns I could not legally make means the Garmin is easily the best system
For the last couple of months I have been working as an agency truck driver doing multi-drop deliveries in London and the south east and my experience using both Tomtom Rider and Garmin 2720 for navigation may be useful.
My deliveries are mainly to catering premises, e.g. hotels, restaurants, hospitals and schools. Normally I typed in the full address, i.e. street number and name, but many companies just have a street name and most commercial streets don't show numbers on buildings so post codes were used. Most of the time the navigation was OK
First, why use both? My preference on the GS has always been the 2720 but most trucks have 24 volt electrics and I discovered the 2720 cig lighter adapter only works on 12v. One up to the Tomtom, it will power up from both 12 and 24 volt. Eventually I bought a 24v to 12v converter (most shops wanted about £40 but Maplins had them for £14.00) and now use the Garmin all the time.
Both came up with sensible routes most of the time but I now understand the headlines about satnavs forcing trucks into unsuitable roads. On standard settings both systems would occasionally take me into a very narrow country roads and it was not obvious when entering that I was driving into problems. Here the Garmin was much better as it is possible to define the type of vehicle and changing the setting to "truck" resulted in more major roads being used. It also stopped it suggesting a U turn when facing the wrong way for a route, it would find a "round the block" solution. I could also tweak the type of roads used to force the route onto more major roads. With Tomtom none of this is possible.
One area where the Garmin has been vastly superior in town is that it has never suggested turning on a "no right turn" or going the wrong way down a one way street. This was a frequent problem with the Tomtom and meant driving on and waiting for a recalculation - which was often a suggestion to make a U turn - in central London in the rush hour!!
The Garmin has another edge which is an advantage when the destination is in town or on a dual carriageway, it knows which side of the road the destination is o although sometimes it got it wrong. In town this means it is not necessary to crawl along looking on both sides of the road and on dual carriageways you finish on the correct side. An example was finding a hotel on a by pass in Hampshire, the Tomtom took me to the wrong side resulting in a ten mile trip to turn around, the Garmin got it right. I have also found the accuracy of the Garmin on the exact point of the final destination better - although not always perfect. It is sometimes a bit out with street numbers but postcode destinations are normally spot on.
When entering postcodes the Tomtom just accepts the code as the destination but the Garmin also asks for a street number, if available, and displays the road the code is on - which is a useful double check and has solved a problem when I have been given faulty postcodes. They are easier to enter in the Tomtom though as the screen offers letters and numbers. The Garmin is a nuisance having to enter letters on one screen, change screen for numbers then back again for the final letters. It does not sound a big problem but entering up to 40 a day with codes like SW3X 3TH is much more time consuming.
Its about time I gave Tomtom a point and it is much quicker to turn on and find a sat fix. Both can lose fix in London streets and if stopped under bridges and although the Tomtom loses fix more often it gets it back quicker. It's not normally a problem when the Garmin loses a fix except when stuck under a bridge in a traffic jam. One can sometimes pass a junction with a turn required before the fix comes back.
Something that affects the 2720 and a few other Garmins is the lack of a battery. It's never been a problem on the bike but some of the trucks turn off the cig socket with the ignition which means waiting for the longish boot sequence after a stop or when the plug vibrates out of the socket.
For the job I have been doing traffic info is useful and on the Tomtom I have a few months left on the free traffic subscription they gave me and have the plug in traffic info unit. The Garmin system works in real time from radio transmitted data and has proved really useful. The Tomtom system is next to useless as it involves making a Bluetooth connection to a data enabled mobile phone and making a call to download the latest data. To be of any practical use it would mean making a fresh data call every few minutes so I can't say how good the data is. I beleive Tomtom is adopting the Garmin system now.
Now the big plus for the Garmin with multiple destinations. It is possible to enter many destinations as a route and then tell it to sort them into the best order. In my job the office staff, based on experience, sort the drops. Then the truck is loaded in "drop order" ready for me to drive off in the morning. I did a test of the system by checking the track log for a day (can't do this with Tomtom). My route covered 104 miles. I then told the Garmin to reorder the drops and the result was 64 miles. This would have been a massive saving in time and fuel costs. I can't make maximum use of this feature as the truck is loaded "in order" when I arrive in the morning but on days when I have a number of drops in different towns I have saved a lot of time by doing the first one, then entering all the others as a route and fixing the final destination as the first drop in the next town.
One theoretical advantage with the Tomtom is that it also acts as a hands free for my phone but in practice I found that using it for navigation and hands free was a nuisance. A call would come in when I was just about to go through a complex junction and the damned screen would change to incoming call. Also of course the Tomtom Rider requires a Bluetooth earpiece to get the instructions but the 2720 has a speaker (not a problem with the Rider Mark 2 with a car bracker with built in speaker).
Finally. Both units enabled me to get the job done and most of the differences in use are relatively minor but the frustration of the Tomtom sending me down unsuitable roads and suggesting turns I could not legally make means the Garmin is easily the best system
