Routing on TomTom Sat Navs vs. Garmin

birdmaniw · Occasional Visitor Joined: Dec 17, 2009 Posts: 1

I am thinking about buying a TomTom XL IQR sat nav but am a bit wary after the stupidities of my current Garmin Nuvi 660 sat nav.

For example, I recently made a trip from the Isle of wight to Manchester via Bristol and Gloucester. From Gloucester the nuvi correctly took me onto the M5/M6 where I met a tailbacl where the M5 approaches the M6.
The Nuvi told me to exit left at the next exit and as I presumed it knew I was in a tailback and was re-routing me round it I followed it. It then told me to go round the roundabout at the junction and take the slip road leading back to the M5 and the tailback. It did it again twice but then I was wise to it and ignored it.

On another occasion I told it to take me the shortest route between Salisbury and Porthmadog in North Wales, expecting it to take me throgh Marlborogh, Swindon, Cirencester etc to the M5. No, it took me all the way down the A36 to Bath then to the M4 and then wanted me to use the Severn Bridge, whereupon I refused and used the M5. At Gloucester it told me to leave the M5 and As I had come back from North Wales that way before I followed it and it then appeared to do what I wanted.

The other thing I would like to be able to do is to plan my route on paper (Atlass) as that is all part of the fun of planning a trip and then feedi it in to the satnav via my PC so that in other words the sat nav is just reading my map for me ( I have to wear glasses to read these days so cant read my road atlss when driving anymore).
What opinions has anyone got about this tomtom XL IQR. Does it fall into any of the traps mentioned before.
If I got the live model, can you sigh up to the live subscrition service for a month, cancel and sign up again for a future trip?

dhn · Posted: Thu Dec 17, 2009 2:47 pm Post subject:

If you have the time, you may want to read this thread regarding strange routings using a Garmin. It is VERY long and it comes from a US based gps site but the actual discussion relates to your observations, I think.
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Andy_P

Antoeknee · Lifetime Member Joined: Jul 29, 2005 Posts: 267

Don' t know if this was the issue but using 'shortest route' can give problems.

There were cases in the past of a TT routing that produced a route that took you off a motorway and back on immediately, usually where the motorway curved and using the exit/entry of the junction was a shorter distance. Can't say I recall any posts on forums about this issue for some considerable time though.

Personally speaking I've only ever seen this once but haven't driven this route for a long time so can't say if this is still a problem.

gatorguy6996 · Posted: Thu Dec 17, 2009 7:10 pm Post subject:

I was about to mention the same thing. "Shortest" routing is not the same as "Fastest" and often gives odd routes using local roads adding significant travel time.
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