Haven't had much opportunity to use it much yet, but I have some early doubts about the sat nav's accuracy.

Driving down the M5 and heading towards Reading, the normal route of choice is to cut across the A419 at junction 11a. This brings you back down to J15 of the M4. However, the Sat Nav insisted on trying to take me all the way down to the point at which the M5 intersects with the M4 - about an additional 40-odd miles! Worse still, on my outbound journey, it also tried to route me to North Wales from Reading by first sending me EAST on the M4 and then up towards the M40 at Maidenhead.

I can't see that there are any peculiar preferences in the set-up. perhaps the systems is just pants?

Discuss...

The sat nav breaks it neck to use motorways as a priority and then A roads next in-line. There is a setting to avoid motorways (completley) but this is often not helpful either - you end up in people's back gardens almost.

Sat navs are fine when you are "away from home", you follow them diligently. But if you have plenty of local knowledge they often to appear 'pants'. It does not 'know' your timely 'cut throughs' to beat local traffic conditions etc.

Other than that, the 2010 FFRR we have here seems to work fine. We just keep it switched off  Currently running FFRR MY10 TDV8 3.6L and a Disco 3 XS Commercial (tank like but very effective as a Company van). Plus one mint condition Track Day Car in the form of an E36 M3 3.2L Evolution circa June 1996 with lots of go faster bits and only 52k miles on the clock! Oh, plus a few bits to make it slow down really quickly as well! Luvverly.

Hmmm... appreciate the point about local knowledge and I don't expect sat nav to choose any clever 'rat-runs' that a user may know, but the A419 is hardly a back road - it's almost entirely dual carriageway and is always selected by any other sat nav that I've used. It's also a shorter route by some 42 miles, so the sat nav was trying to take me on a route that was 66% further than it needed to be!!! As for trying to head me towards North Wales by leaving Reading and heading east on the M4 the mind boggles!!

The trouble is that you only ever know that the sat nav is wrong when you know which way to go.

My money's still on it being pants!

Out of interest, what year is your car? Java with Ivory 2006 4.2 Supercharged. 23.5k miles - NOW SOLD!

It's a '56, with touchscreen system. Haven't checked what disk is in there yet though.

Use it as a guide, but don't rely on it 100% if you know better.

It is worth fiddling with the settings though, I change mine depending on the route I think is best. I love the traffic feature though, if I'm on a long journey up north or to the east coast it will re-route to avoid jams.

I also do a LOT of driving in areas I don't know so it's invaluable to me - saying that I've upgraded to the MK4 which makes a biiiig difference. 

SO i have an 05 prefacelift but with touchscreen nav......will that be cd or dvd based ?

I assume that all touch screen sat nav will be DVD-based. You should find a single DVD-ROM drive inside the rear n/s panel.

Glad to hear you enjoyed your trip. I'm warming a bit to the Sat Nav now, although I still think it tries some interesting route suggestions from time to time. You're right about her the classy voice though - my previous VAG sat-nav was very demanding and teutonic - she would always demand a u-turn!

doublejay wrote:

SO i have an 05 prefacelift but with touchscreen nav......will that be cd or dvd based ?

I leave mine switched off and use a portable stuck to the windscreen. Makes for an interesting comparison if you have them both running at the same time.