soapyfrog blog

A sat nav comparison – New Kate is a TomTom 950 Live (old Kate was a 520) and Rosie refers to her built-in RNS-E device (Rosie being an Audi RS4).

Background

Old Kate was very good and served me well for the last (nearly) two years, but  shit software from TomTom meant that syncing and updating a device with an SD card installed was just too much grief and finally the whole thing became too much so I bought New Kate that had all the maps on the internal ‘drive.’ Much better and also had the cool LIVE services.

Rosie’s RNS-E is built in, but has maps circa 2006 and lacks a few features.

So, here’s a feature comparison:

Viewing experience

New Kate’s screen is smaller than Rosie’s but is higher resolution and brighter. Also, New Kate, being stuck to the windscreen, is more in line of site, so you get to keep your eyes on the road more. On the other hand, Rosie also puts turn information on the instrument cluster right in front of you.

Having driven a few hundred miles now with Rosie’s sat nav, I’d say there’s not really much in it.

Route accuracy

New Kate wins hands down here. Not only does she know the roads better (up todate maps), but knows about crap roads (and to avoid them) and can do eco routes and – here’s the winner – has live services so can route based on actual traffic conditions.

Rosie has TMC, but not very often. She doesn’t know about eco routes and is much slower at recalculating a route when you ignore her and go somewhere else.

Ease of programming

New Kate is very easy to program. On screen keyboard means you can type in names and places. Unfortunately, the responsiveness is crap, so you end up retyping and generally taking ages. On the other hand, you can pre-program routes from the comfort of home or hotel room, whereas with Rosie, you need to be in the car.

Rosie is a bit more fiddly to enter destinations (no keyboard) but surprisingly has many special destinations built in, eg, I couldn’t enter the postcode for a place I wanted in Margate, but she did have the place itself.

Ease of use when driving

It is very hard to do anything with New Kate when driving. Mainly because she’s just that much further away (stuck to the screen), and the touch screen requires a bit of accuracy of prodding, taking attention even more from the road. So basically, don’t.

Rosie is a bit easier. All controls are via the MMI interface which can be used without looking and is within reach.

New Kate can be controlled via voice, but only you prod the right places on the screen first. RNS-E also has voice control but not in Rosie (needs some phone preparation hardware).

Sexiness of voice

Rosie. Hands down. Although Kate is quite bossy

Convenience

Well, Rosie is always there, so scores highly with convenience. No need to plug anything in, or stick to the screen. On the other hand, New Kate is convenient in that you can plan before you get in the car.

Miscellaneous

Rosie has a nice feature where on a motorway, she’ll list all the upcoming junctions and service stations. New Kate doesn’t do that.

New Kate knows where the nearest cheapest fuel can be had and can do Google lookups. Rosie cannot. Although I’m not sure it’s that useful in practice. The latter is also an expensive service which I may not want to pay for.

New Kate can show the map whilst Rosie shows info on the music I’m listening too. Rosie can’t do both at the same time… well she can a bit – the info cluster in front of you still shows next turn info.

New Kate can read road names, whereas Rosie can only read road numbers and major town and city names.

Summary

A tricky one. I think for most things, I’d use Rosie for navigation but if going on a longer trip, especially somewhere in Europe, I’d probably use New Kate. If nothing else New Kate would be a backup.

I’d really like to be able to say Rosie is perfect and New Kate is going on eBay, but I can’t. Even if I get the 2010 map updates, I’d still be torn between the two.

I think a revisit is required in six months.

So is this what it feels like to own a used car?

Rosie, for me, is less than a week old, but she’s really almost three years old.

I collected her on Saturday, but on Sunday morning she wouldn’t start. I called the free Roadside Assistance people who said the battery was almost dead. OK, so twenty minutes later, the battery was recharged and Rosie and I went for a little blast, and all was well.

Well, almost.

Rosie’s boot was full of water. No, not the boot space, but the boot lid. The space where the light cluster lives. Not a good place for water.

I managed to drain it out, and called the dealer and said “Oi!” and Rosie is now going back in to have the seals checked and the battery looked at.

I don’t know, maybe I’m unlucky, but Herman was completely flawless for the almost two years we were together, and now I’m having my first issues.

On a positive note, any work done/parts supplied will be free, and if things do go really pear-shaped, I have a 30-day, no quibble replacement policy, but it’s still a bit disappointing.

I am happy, however, that the pre-sale checks yielded a slightly worn tyre, so Rosie was given four new boots. And a free service.

So things are maybe not so bad.

And like her siblings from last year, she puts a big smile on my face when I push the loud pedal

2009 sees another winter where the UK seemingly can’t cope.

For us, it started with an aborted attempt to spend the weekend in Brussels before Christmas. We were to take Herman on Le Shuttle and across through France and Belgium.

We got as far as Junction 8 on the M20 before Operation Stack kicked in and kept us there for several hours.

In this case, the snow had closed the ferry port in Dover (M20 feeds this) and in addition, the French weren’t letting trucks off the boats/shuttles onto their motorway system out of Calais.

Further, Eurostar’s trains encountered the wrong kind of snow and so Eurotunnel had to use Les Shuttles to rescue passengers.

The prospect of waiting up to a day to get to Brussels (which was in a blizzard) just for two nights stay was looking grim, so we bailed out and went back home.

My next journey was a few days later, driving up to Aberdeen.

This was surprisingly easy. M11, M25, M1, A50, M6 – completely fine. Stopped overnight in Preston, then onward the next day to Aberdeen.

This started out OK, but due to black ice and trucks jack knifing on the motorways, I was diverted across country (B roads then A71) and this was a bit hairy, with about 40 miles of untreated twisty country roads. Herman became a snow plough in places and nearly ended up in a ditch a couple of times – very slippery – but got through OK.

Aberdeenshire was supposed to be under 3 miles of snow, but the last leg up the east coast was actually fine, only thwarted by the last 100 metres by the slippery and steep untreated road up to my dad’s house.

Compared to a friend’s attempt to fly up to Edinburgh from Luton, my journey was really easy.

On the way home now. Last night I drove down from Aberdeen to South York, via Newcastle. Again, mostly easy, with only one scary high speed black ice bit on the A697 where Herman fortunately kept going in the same direction

Side note – Coldstream is a very nice little town to stop for a break, as the parking was free and the toilets immaculately kept.

Just had breakfast and waiting for the sun to come up a bit for heading off for the final 3.5 hours.

Finger crossed it doesn’t all end in doom!

Update: arrived safely, and typically, it was just raining heavily for the last 20 miles to London.

I had a sudden urge to re-theme the blog.

Nothing else to say at the moment.