Switch to TomTom

I've had my TomTom for 4.5 years and I like it a lot. It has taken me on the occasional "scenic route", but that's just part of the adventure....

However, Garmin makes good units too, so I find it hard to believe that yours is giving you "wrong directions" most (70%) of the time. Can you give us an example of what you mean by "wrong directions"?

I have to ask what do you mean when you say "wrong directions?" Do you mean the unit is directing you to some other location, is it directing you on streets you normally wouldn't take or it just can't find the destination?

All units have quirks in their routing. Some of the online services do give "better" directions as it is a function of both the underlying map data and the power of the processing unit. One of the most common complaints regarding routing is the unit will have you get off a freeway or Interstate only to get back on it a short distance later. Sometimes the unit will tell you the address is on the other side of the street from its correct location. So what do you mean by "wrong directions?"

I just moved to Florida, so I don't know where anything is.

I was trying to go to a dry cleaning place down the street. Instead of just turning right and head directly to the store on the left hand side, It made me turn left and make a huge loop to the store.

Also, I was picking up a friend at the airport, the GPS points me to the inside road to the airport instead of the highway. I knew the way to the airport, so that was fine, but on the way back, i didnt know how to get back to the highway, so I relied on the GPS which made me take the inside road. I still got home, but I had to go through a million lights.

And finally, I used my GPS to search for a Walmart. It took me to a destination, but there was no walmart there. I had to use my phone to find the correct Walmart, which was 10 minutes away from that destination.

There are more, but i can't remember them right now.

re: dry cleaners

If you look closely at the map on your Garmin near that location does it look like the road is divided? Some of the roads on my TomTom's map are divided but it doesn't always know when there are breaks in the median where you can turn left, so in that case it will take you the long way around so you can turn right into the parking lot. Conversely, some roads are divided in real life but not on the map, so the route will sometimes tell you to turn left when that is impossible. It all boils down to limitations of the map data, and I don't have a strong sense that either TomTom or Garmin is a clear winner in that regard.

I've also seen some discussion here about routing algorithms that give a strong preference to right turns. I don't know if Garmin units tend to do that, but my TomTom doesn't seem to implicitly avoid left turns, except in the cases cited above.

re: airport

There have been a few threads about Garmins taking routes along surface streets instead of highways, almost as if it was using "shortest route" instead of "fastest route". If you search the forums here you should be able to find those discussions. Certainly you'd want to double-check to make sure that your Garmin is not set to "avoid highways" by default. FWIW, my TomTom has always struck me as being almost inordinately fond of highways; when offering the "fastest route" it will often suggest a considerably longer-distance route on the highway if there is one in the vicinity.

Also, if your unit has traffic enabled then it may have avoided the highway either because it thought there was a slowdown at that particular moment (what TomTom calls "live traffic"), or because of the time and day-of-the-week (what TomTom calls "IQ Routes").

re: Walmart

Did you use the built-in POIs provided by Garmin? If so, they could be quite out-of-date. The built-in POIs on TomTom units have the same limitations - it has to do with the lag time in getting POI updates from their map data providers. You'd likely have much better luck using one of donaldb530's Walmart files.

TomTom and Garmin are both good choices you really can't go wrong with either. If you feel you get more benefit from using additional apps being offered go for it. If you buy from a reputable store you can always return it or exchange it. Go ahead and test it out. See how it works for you. I also have had wrong directions from time to time. It happens.

I too have found that the POI's in my Pioneer head unit and my Garmin can be way out of date. I usually look up the POI's on the smartphone and then enter that address or map intersection manually into either the Pioneer or Garmin and have it navigate. The online data is usually more up to date then the preloaded maps. As for the navigation algorithm, well that's another story and I have been subjected to all situations mentioned above. I was navigated to a Target by Garmin which turned out to be a dead end road at a lake. That's when I gave up on the built in POI's!

If you are thinking of going with a TomTom be careful of the model you select. The higher end models don't allow for customization. They are a closed system

What do you mean when you say that they "don't allow for customization"?

I don't mean to doubt you but Its hard to believe that ANY GPS brand especially Garmin would give you wrong directions 70% of the time. Even when I was a GPS tester for a brand new company at the time, DASH, their units were pretty good with directions. They never got me lost.

Please check your settings to see if you are avoiding u-turns, traffic, etc.

All brands have their PRO's and CON's but if you read all the expert reviews you will see that Garmin dominates the PND market.
Put both models on your dash and take it for a test drive and you might agree with the experts on directions and accuracy.

Best of luck with your TomTom

Not being critical ... but wouldn't it make more sense for you to post your question in the TomTom forum ... since you're are looking to switch to TomTom?

I mean, stands to reason that there would be many more TomTom users in the TomTom forum. Here in the Garmin forum there would be a bunch of Garmin fans.

Having said that ... I hated ... absolutely hated my Garmin 1450 ... so I sold it and upgraded to a 2460 ... and fell in love with Garmin all over again.

So, instead of jumping to TomTom ... you might consider upgrading to a higher level, newer Garmin or as others have already said, make sure you look to the higher level TomTom's.

But I sympathize with you ... the 14XX series were lemons in my opinion.

I had a Garmin for about a month, but it wasn't meeting my expectations, especially in voice mode and blue-tooth hands free phone quality. I bought a TomTom and tested them side-by-side for a couple weeks. While they both were weak in Blue-tooth speaker phone quality, I liked the way the TomTom detailed (in voice and on-screen) approaching turn distance/directions better. I ended up taking the Garmin back.

Here's a link to a recent PC Mag comparison...

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2409093,00.asp

Have you tried updating your Garmin? My unit works flawlessly and re-routes me to avoid traffic the quickest way possible.

Here's must-read for anybody thinking of Tomtom:

http://discussions.tomtom.com/t5/GO-800-1000-2000-Via-Start-...

I personally switched from Tomtom to Garmin (after having switched to Tomtom from Navigon, after switched to Navigon from Garmin), and I think it was right move.

Thanks Everyone for all the input.

I just updated the maps to Garmin and turned ecoRoute off. Hopefully, I'll see positive results.