Hi All,

Went on a reasonably sizeable journey into the back of beyond over the weekend and used the SatNav for the first time in anger other than just playing with it to see how it works. A few thoughts:

- You don't seem to get much warning of upcoming turns once you're into to the immediate locality - she tells you to "turn left soon" and then you need to look at the display to see how far off you are.

- At a large percentage of mini-roundabouts encountered... no indication at all of which exit to take - had to look to the display to see where the green line was taking me

- Should you go the wrong way due to your SatNav bint not telling you which way to go, route recalculation seems to take an age - as does calculating the route from the start in fact. It seems the "calculating route" progress bar sits at about 95% for around 45 secs before I get the planned route on screen.

I did take some time to read through the SatNav guide but there doesn't seem to be much tuning I can do to make these things work. I suppose I can't fault the GUI side of the SatNav, but it's the audio side that should be important when you're actually meant to be watching the road and not the screen. I know a lot of you have been really impressed with this system, but there seem to be a few things that don't work as I think they should - is that just me or are other people finding niggles?

Cheers
Steve 

2009 Outstanding Contribution Award - Joint Runner Up
2009 'Tech-Head Of The Year' Award - Runner Up

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Last edited by tasmod on Tue Jan 14 2014 12:48pm. Edited 1 time in total

As a general rule with sat nav systems, only a roundabout with a raised curb is a roundabout on the sat nav. Therefore, mini roundabouts (which is just a painted road marking) is not entered and often considered as a junction.

I too found that the Land Rover sat nav doesn't give you a verbal (or bong) warning of a turn if it is a forked road or the like and it was too easy to miss a junction if you weren't looking at the screen. It's not as good as TrafficMaster's SmartNav that I'm used too. Matt
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RRS ownership for 1 yr, then D3 for 2 yrs. Then cut back to old bangers and working my way back up through two Peugeots in 6 months. Now got Saab 9-5 2.3t and enjoying the performance!

Hmm - the system in my previous BMW with SatNav handled mini roundabouts perfectly well and gave me advance warning both verbally and on the screen of which exit to take. Even if they are considered a junction, they should still advise you which way to go, surely?

It also seems to get confused between sharp bends in the road and actual turnings... it will advise of a "left turn soon" and you find that all you're doing is following the road round to the left. The BMW system did sometimes get caught out by this too, but the LR system seems to have very low "bend threshold" before it makes a turning out of it.

All stuff I need to get used to I suppose - call me inflexible!

Cheers
Steve 

2009 Outstanding Contribution Award - Joint Runner Up
2009 'Tech-Head Of The Year' Award - Runner Up

Like it here? Then Donate to RRSPORT!!

It also depends on how up to date the info on the map CD is. I don't have the LR system but use my Ipaq PDA with Navman software (it was about £1200 cheaper and can be a GPS guidance, I have the entire UKs OS maps, which can be GPS stabilised with the car in the centre of the screen and a red line showing where I have been,, on a 4gB card and I can use it for wifi web surfing, telephone, games, as an MP3 player (a 2nd 4gb card stores more music than I need too), run MS Word and Excel and more all in addition to guidance. It will also synchronise with my PC and lap top for tranferring large amounts of data. From a professional navigator's point of view I have also been able to ditch my old navigation cpalmtop computer as all the navigation programmes that were on it can be run on the Ipaq.
Even better is that I have a completely portable system that I can swop from RRS to Defender when I want or take in a rucksack when I go walking or mountainbiking.
Drawbacks are few - the GPS sleeve is bulky, battery life is not great and unlike the LR system which has a built in electronic compass and pickup from the speedo to give it dead reckoning tracking when there is no signal, mine gets lost when you go through a tunnel and takes about 30 secs to catch up again. But then you cannot have everything for a couple of hundred quid!
I can update the map info from the Navman website - in fact the last update I got in June was so upto date that there was a new roundabout still under construction in the local town that was already on it! The makers of the digital maps rely on users to feed them updating info as well as sending out their own drivers to find the changes. 2020 Pangea Green 1st Edition D240 New Defender 110 is here and loving it
2018 Melting Silver Mini Countryman PHEV - soon to be replaced
2015MY Corris Grey SDv6 HSE Dynamic, the best car I have ever owned, totally reliable only a cou0le of rattles in 3 years, now no longer in my care
Also in my garage is a 1996 TDi300 Defender 90 County HT made into a fake CSW

Playing with the guidance system when new.
Mine would have me driving through the wall of a supermarket in my home town. Its been there for four years now so the disc really could do with an update. This was also the case in my previous X5 so the BMW disc can only be counted in the same light.
Tim, as you know we are off upto Scotland this weekend when I had some time the other day I added the address of the hotel we are staying to the nav and it chooses to guide me round the top side of Glasgow and back down country. My personnal choice would have been to cut across the A71 and turn North again at Killwinning, any thoughts. Its out there somewhere. Second V10 Treg on the drive at the moment.

I don't know how the LR system works but can you select/ tell it to prefer motorways over A roads or tell it to avoid urban areas? With my system I have found also that it "learns" when you deviate from the route it has picked - ege when I first had it, whenever I did a trip south on the motorway it would instruct me to leave the motorway at every junction, and then go round the roundabout over the top of the motorway and take the sliproad back down onto the motorway agian. Not very useful! This was either because of a glitch in the programming where the system could not cope with motorway flyovers or because it was still learning, now when I take the M6 south it has learned that I don't come off at every junction just to drive back down the on ramp back onto the motorway. My father has recently bought a more up to date system from navman and it has 3D display of the road ahead and has no problem with motorway junctions. I had the LR/ Philips carin system fitted into my Freelander, it was very simple but was exceptionally good as it could cope with postcodes which saved a lot of keying in of addresses. When I do long motorway hauls I also have a small Trafficmaster gadget that warns of slow moving traffic(doing less than 15mph) on A roads and motorways - it cost me £30 about 8 years ago and has more than paid for itself in fuel saved by giving me advanced warning of problems on the motorway and giving me plenty of opportunity to get off the m'way on an alternative route or to phone the dedicated control centre and get full directions. Combined with the in-car GPS nav it is great! I managed to avoid 25miles of stationary traffic on the M6 just north of Cannock this time last year when there was a jackknifed lorry rolled across all 3 carriageways of the southbound motorway. I was able to avoid being stuck in the tailback which took 6 hours to clear, I although I was by myself and had no map reader to do that job for me, I was able to negotiate my way round Cannock and Stafford with voice instructions. The RDS radio also helps.

I would also recomend coming off the A74 and going via the A71! I think the computer is probably set up for the fastest time to do the journey rather than the shortest distance. Also the M77 has the UK's first "average speed" speed camera system. Computer reads your numberplate and notes the time you passed, all along the road are overhead detectors that register when you have passed and note the time take to go between them, if you have done more than the speed limit you get a ticket, no flashing cmaeras, no police cars in evidence etc! Sneaky.......... It is shorter but not necessarily quicker to go the A71 route. Sometimes your own best judgement will be better than a satnav system because the satnav setup is not as good as the human brain! 2020 Pangea Green 1st Edition D240 New Defender 110 is here and loving it
2018 Melting Silver Mini Countryman PHEV - soon to be replaced
2015MY Corris Grey SDv6 HSE Dynamic, the best car I have ever owned, totally reliable only a cou0le of rattles in 3 years, now no longer in my care
Also in my garage is a 1996 TDi300 Defender 90 County HT made into a fake CSW