Garmin vs Iphone maps vs waze???

[kurt535]

Hi all,

I cant decide whether to stay steam age and buy a separate garmin sat nav or just buy an apple car play and use my iPhone maps. I keep hearing about waze too? i have no doubt the march towards integration will continue but wondered what you are up to? two key features i do like are speed camera alerts and general speed alerts - the iPhone maps i have obviously dont have that so, I am sure people on here will have overcome these barriers long ago with apps so your help is needed!

ty

[Disco_Biscuit]

I find Waze the best, just install it and try it, doesn't cost you anything.

You can use Waze with carplay on iOS 12 soon.

[littleredrooster]

I rely on a satnav for my job of delivering demonstrator cars, and have recently stopped using my live-traffic Garmin in favour of Waze. One less thing to carry around and lose, and, TBH, Waze does everything that the Garmin did and more - it is much quicker to react to serious problems and re-route to an alternative than the Garmin ever was, for example.

Being on a limited data-plan I was slightly worried at first that it may eat all my allowance but it seems to be very economical with it. I would certainly recommend it.

[MagicChimp]

I have been using Waze for around 3 years. It has never been more than 5mins out on its arrival time estimate unless something significant has changed after I set off. I have used it for long and short journeys all over the country.

[kurt535]

Waze it is; do you just use your mobile or can the app show up on something like a CarPlay screen? - just seen it can in an earlier post!

Ty!

[okgo]

Apple maps is dogst.

Google own Waze, so google maps has a fair bit of the good stuff of waze built into it, and I also far prefer its interface. Waze although better overall for traffic etc is an annoyingly busy interface, and also IMO struggles to update as quickly on small rbts etc as google, I've certainly taken a couple of wrong turns because of waze and its stty/busy interface that looks more like a kids game than a sat nav app.

[cologne2792]

Stupid question time: Does Waze need a GPS and 4g/3g signal all the time?
What happens when the 4g / 3g signal is lost?
Does it extrapolate the route from what it already knows?

[okgo]

cologne2792 said:

Stupid question time: Does Waze need a GPS and 4g/3g signal all the time?
What happens when the 4g / 3g signal is lost?
Does it extrapolate the route from what it already knows?

It wouldn't update, but it would still have the route from when you did have signal.

[giantdefy]

cologne2792 said:

Stupid question time: Does Waze need a GPS and 4g/3g signal all the time?
What happens when the 4g / 3g signal is lost?
Does it extrapolate the route from what it already knows?

Another good reason to use Google Maps rather than Waze (other than the kiddy game interface) is you can download offline maps, for free, and it then works with no connectivity albeit without traffic info.

[NickGRhodes]

Worth taking a look at TomTom Go, good with camera alerts (can be set to only alert if speeding), even measures your average speed through average speed zones it knows about.
Its got decent traffic detection and rerouting (can be set to reroute automatically), works offline well (obviously needs to be online to get live traffic updates), seems to set sensible routes, very realistic ETA estimations. Its routing and traffic I would say is comparable to Google Maps.

[NickGRhodes]

giantdefy said:

Another good reason to use Google Maps rather than Waze (other than the kiddy game interface) is you can download offline maps, for free, and it then works with no connectivity albeit without traffic info.

I've not found offline maps to be 100% reliable (failure to download - getting stuck, requiring deletion and recreation of the offline area) and a pain marking areas offline when your doing something like a 10 day road trip around Western Europe, especially when you want to do some exploration, so need to keep the areas generous, much prefer the bulk download country by country approach of other apps.

[Big E 118]

Waze is owned by Google so the traffic data is from the same source.

Waze and Google maps have slightly different functionality so try both and see which one works for you. Personally I prefer Google Maps and use the waypoint planning quite a lot for foreign jaunts. I have the free Tom Tom Speed Cameras app as well which you can overlay over Google Maps for "Waze like" mobile and fixed speed camera alerts which work well on the Continent as well.

If using Google maps you can download offline maps so data is only used for live traffic. Worth while downloading you home area.

[okgo]

Big E 118 said:

Waze is owned by Google so the traffic data is from the same source.

Waze and Google maps have slightly different functionality so try both and see which one works for you. Personally I prefer Google Maps and use the waypoint planning quite a lot for foreign jaunts. I have the free Tom Tom Speed Cameras app as well which you can overlay over Google Maps for "Waze like" mobile and fixed speed camera alerts which work well on the Continent as well.

If using Google maps you can download offline maps so data is only used for live traffic. Worth while downloading you home area.

Well, no. Because Waze USP is that its peer to peer, so it relies on what people report themselves from the app (the more basic stuff like traffic speed etc is the same yes).

[Big E 118]

okgo said:

Well, no. Because Waze USP is that its peer to peer, so it relies on what people report themselves from the app (the more basic stuff like traffic speed etc is the same yes).

I believe since Google Maps rolled out live incident reports this is data from both Google Maps and Waze users.