Map udates - are they worth it ..?

[jeta1]

Are map updates an overrated (money spinning) exercise?

I travel all over the UK for my work. I have used a TT Go300 and 720 over the years. I have never downloaded a map update.

There are times when the TT is a nice to have and times when I completely rely on it (always have paper maps with me). Most recently (last week) I relied on the Go300 with its 4+ year old maps to navigate 20 miles across West London during a Friday afternoon rush hour. The Go300 performed faultlessly and got me to my destination without a hitch.

Given that there seems to be such regular reporting of problems from folks trying to update maps I can’t help but wonder if updating maps is rather more trouble that it is worth?

TomTom are using the map update as a marketing tool, I’m really not sure that map updates are such a big deal.

[Border_Collie]

[253]

I'm with you guys. Subscribed to the 1/4 updates last year, and saw no difference to be honest.
Mind you, due to personal circumstances, last year I did fewer 'stranger miles' than usual, so mostly up and down the M4 between South Wales and London.
Previously we used to do bike trips almost everywhere, and my old TT710 maps and the newer 720 maps didn't show much if any differences to be honest.

I'm not doing the new map upgrades this year and probably not next either - unless posts on here dictate otherwise.
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Triumph Tbird 1700. And now a Bonnie T100.

[DennisN]

Good question. They certainly are a money spinner for TomTom. Like my £40 printer which costs £50 to reload with ink and paper!!

I imagine your Go300 map is older than the latest Congestion Zone for London - I also imagine you don't care!

My Go700 has map 675 with new Con Zone. My Go520 has latest map 845. (I also run two other devices each with map 675 and 845 respectively). I have found all four remarkably similar in routing and not necessarily better with the latest map - things like one way systems and blocked road junctions are a bit of a lottery and one or other sends me along the wrong route. Latest maps and Navcores come with the much hyped MapShare and from that, TomTom Home tells me there are 400+ corrections available for my map of UK and Eire. 400 over the whole of these islands? Like Lost_Property, even my 50K miles a year are not going to come across many of those! New traffic management scheme in Edinburgh may cause 10 changes to one way streets? - I haven't been to Edinburgh since two years ago! Same for Newcastle, London, Leeds and Birmingham, all of which I have visted very recently but without noticing anything.

Without doubt, the latest map has some new roads which are not included on the old ones. But if you're doing OK right now, I don't know how much benefit you'd get from them - generally, the only significant concern would be new build areas/estates etc which are completely blank on old maps. Newer maps (coupled with newer Navcores) have bells and whistles - go for them if you like jingles and Pedro the Fisherman, but you may find them more of a marketing feature than a must-have bell or whistle.

Edit to add... I buy the annual quarterly map update service for my two more modern devices (520 and XL Live) BUT ONLY BECAUSE the four updates cost less than a single new map which I know I'd buy at some time during the forthcoming year!
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Dennis

If it tastes good - it's fattening.

Two of them are obesiting!!

[technik]

The routing seems to change slightly, but the actual maps I have not seen any change on very obvious main road updates that were built several years ago.

If it's wrong on Google Maps then TomTom will also have it wrong, so I am not sure if I should renew map updates next time.
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GO 620, Tomtom Android EU,
Garmin 2548LMT-D; 2599LMT-D

[Trevor1234]

Hi Jatta 1
You ask ‘Are map updates an overrated (money spinning) exercise?
Well, yes I suppose it is. To be able to update ones maps is a great idea, but not quarterly. Once a year or every eighteen months is quite adequate.

I even know someone who still uses Tomtom Navigator 3 on his PDA and thinks it is brilliant. As he says “Falmouth Avenue in Bradford will still be in the same place as it was 100 years ago, so why update” .
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Tomtom Go 720.
Navcore 9.510
Central and Western Europe v855.2884
GPS World Traffic cameras
Home 2.7
iPhone 3G

[falkirk81]

The latest update from v8.40 to v8.45 removed the Toll Road classification from the Forth road bridge in Edinburgh and Tay bridge in Dundee. And thats ALL I have noticed so far!

A few new bits of road have appeared in the Newcastle area in the last year of map updates, but nothing woth shouting about.

Like Dennis says, a couple of years old map should be good enough to get you from A to B without any issues.

Steven
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Tomtom GO 1005 LIVE

iPhone 12

[AliOnHols]

If I do not buy new maps for a couple of years I can afford to buy a new SatNav which shall come with the latest maps anyway. This way provides latest maps and a back-up SatNav. I'd hate to invest in several years worth of map updates just for my TomTom to fail and then have to start all over again, especially as it often reported that there is no real discernable difference between map revisions anyway.

DennisN. Buy a new printer everytime your ink runs out and save yourself a tenner! Sell the old one on e-bay for a tenner and you are quids in!
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Garmin Nuvi 2599
Android with CamerAlert, OsmAnd+, Waze & TT Europe.
TomTom GO 730, GO 930, GO 940 & Rider2.
SatMap Active 10 & 20.

[M8TJT]

[PaulB2005]

Same here (51.34533049323352,-0.2751302719116211) The satellite view is correct but this was done 5 years ago. Lost count of the number of times it's been submitted as wrong...

I'm torn. One the one hand it does seem like a total waste of time, not to mention the time it take to re-enter the MapShare corrections after each "update" (except this last one it seems....) but then if maps aren't kept up to date then how do you know you really have the fastest route? My step daughter and her husband still use my old i3, which as far as i remember doesn't have the new A1 layout, the M6 Toll and certainly won't have the new A3 layout either. They still got from London to The Lake District and back in a similar time to me.

We travel to Sunderland 2-3 times a year. 5 years ago the A1 was a roundabout nightmare so I've always used the M1. Last year they were in the process of removing the last few roundabouts from the A1. TomTom HD Traffic diverted me off the M1 and on to the A1 due to an accident. Had i had old maps and IQ Routes data it might have made me stay on the M1 when i didn't have to.

For local travel the updates probably aren't so important but for (inter)national it probably is...

[tkerby]

I refused to continue my map update subscription this time round having had 6 maps on the 940 so far and submitting corrections every time from the first one and never seeing them enter the maps.

That said, many are roundabouts that have been replaced with traffic lights, some of which happened 10 years ago when I was a student so if its taking that long I doubt my 18 months made it any more likely.

Worse still, there are still support tickets in for some major routing areas in Edinburgh like completely avoiding one end of the West Approach Rd which are also unresolved.

I like the Tomtom for the live traffic (when it works) but the old maps seem just as good as newer ones and I'm fed up submitting my mapshare 4 times a year to keep them up to date on the device.

I think there should be a rule, that if an update a user submits doesn't get included within 6 months then their maps are free until it does

[Daggers]

[Border_Collie]

[PaulB2005]

[theripper]

They have not just left the old slip roads in, they have put them back in, one of the old maps that I have seen(possibly 605) the slip roads were not there. I have reported this with every new map, have even sent them OS maps. The trouble is, if you are driving down from London and want to come off at that exit, by the time it tells you to turn off its too late and you then have to go to Jcn 3

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