Hello All,
I’m looking at getting one of these truck sat navs, but am unsure whether to go for a Snooper or a TomTom ?
Not sure of which will be the best and most reliable…?
Thanks
i will give first vote to snooper.
i use the db8500 and works good i have found but with all sat navs a bit of cop on gows a long way.
had a good car tomtom could not fault it
I’m going for TomTom 5150
this is what I can contribute to this thread:
I wanted first to buy myself a simple , proper truckers sat nav, I didn’t want any of those TVs, or radios included, just a simple truckers sat nav.
I’ve done as much research as I possibly could, and decided to buy Snooper S2500.
Took it for my multidrop job around London, driving 7.5 tonne vehicle, wider and longer than your regular 7.5t, I’ve typed all of those measurements, such as height, weight and width, and while doing my multidrops I was put against roads with those barriers on both sides of the road installed that allow only passenger vehicles through.
When delivering around EC1,2,3, which central London, the sat nav was stalling, freezing, and constatly had to be restarted.
It might be OK when you are driving somewhere else but not in central Lonmdon, you can’t stop anywhere without getting a ticket, cameras spying on your every move on every street corner, red lines and double yellow lines everywhere, and to be safe you simply needd to be moving all the time.
I called the shop that sold me this sat nav, they didn’t want to accept it back and send me a refund, but then I decided to send them an official email pointing to all those faults and that I was misled by the Snooper advertisements.
After a bit of wrangling they decided to send me a refund and now I bought a TomTom 5150.
haven’t had time to test it yet, but from what I’ve noticed so far is that it is much smoother sat nav to operate, shows clearly separate lanes that you should be taking, has got a larger 5" screen, but doesn’t have that very usefull multiroute planning that snooper had.
other snooper versions those 5" or 7" might be better that S2500 4.3" as they have better processors, and I would love to test them all at the same time for a week or two, but unfortunately such an option doesn’t exist, once you unpack it and start using it, it very hard to return it to the seller, even during the first 14 days of owning them.
I have had a time to check the TomTom5150 against weight, height, width restrictions yet, but I have a feeling it is going to be a better, more user friendly sat nav than that small Snooper S2500.
Would love hear others experiences with their sat navs
I have a quite old TomTom go 7000 Truck, absolutely fine. Works well in central London. Recommended. As with all satnavs though watch the road signs, widths/weights change over time.
If you are confident doing it and know where to look (and how) you can obtain an up to date truck map and the navcore software free, which will turn almost any tomtom into a truck edition. Here At your own risk
I have the Snooper S 7000 and it has about 100 tv channels on it and you can enter 16 multidrops for Adr routes or normal routes.It has a live traffic managment to warn of incidents and road closures so you can by pass it.The blue tooth phone is handy as you speak in to the sat nav by pairing up your phone to it.
When delivering around EC1,2,3, which central London, the sat nav was stalling, freezing, and constatly had to be restarted.
My tom tom didn’t like the City in London, too many tall buildings 
Maybe an external aerial would help.
i use a pronav pnn300 just as good as the big names but not as pricey and the customer support is really good too
I’ve got an old TomTom 520 and bought the truck SD card for it - works well but I still prefer to check the route with a map
ive got a tomtom910,(nowhere to put an sd card) no setting for lorries, its a car one, ive had it since 2007, ive never updated the maps since i bought it, its got me everywhere between Norway and Turkey and Portugal, using that and common sense and a Europe map(or UK) ive never had a problem getting anywhere.
I still use it now on UK work, mostly just to see what time i am going to arrive at my destination.
In the last year i have also been using google earth streetview the night before when home to ‘have a look about’ if going to a new place.
TomTom 5150 use it on multidrop, most of the time very good but we don’t always agree. It seems to have more confidence than me…
kindle530:
ive got a tomtom910,(nowhere to put an sd card) no setting for lorries, its a car one, ive had it since 2007, ive never updated the maps since i bought it, its got me everywhere between Norway and Turkey and Portugal, using that and common sense and a Europe map(or UK) ive never had a problem getting anywhere.
I still use it now on UK work, mostly just to see what time i am going to arrive at my destination.
In the last year i have also been using google earth streetview the night before when home to ‘have a look about’ if going to a new place.
^^^^what he said but I use a TomTom Go 700 
Ive got the Snooper DB8500 and can’t really fault it. It works well all over Europe and the extra’s like the TV, DAB radio, blootooth, SD card to play movies or music on and the FM transmitter work well and have saved me having to buy those as seperate items.
Snooper s7000 pro does the trick for me, coupled with a strret level map book, and google maps. And if all else fails, get out and have a walk down the road!
I’ve got the Garmin dezl 560, used it in UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Belgium & Netherlands so far and hasn’t let me down.
TomTom5150 is my first truck sat nav, apart from the £50 jap crap I brought from ebay, but this TomTom has never let me down when I was near Smithfield Market and in the middle of London. I just love the live search and the traffic updates on it. Not once been stuck in a jam since I have been using it.
worth the £300
hkloss1:
I’ve done as much research as I possibly could, and decided to buy Snooper S2500. When delivering around EC1,2,3, which central London, the sat nav was stalling, freezing, and constatly had to be restarted.
Bought this a S2000N when it first came out and still using it but as said above I have experienced these problems. I also use it in my full time job, which isn’t driving, but we do a lot of driving between sites in the course of our work! Then use it for my part time agency work multi-drop Class 2 work.
You do have a bit of stalling and freezing in the proper City of London with a S2000N, but as I do a lot of GPS work down to cm in accuracy in my full time work (relying on a minimum of 4 satellites visibility and a constant data streaming link on our RTK link with the OS) and then apply this to what sat navs use to only got down to the 1/5 even upto 10m accuracy, they do remarkable well to tell you where you actually are!
Like all tools and equipment there are limitations with whatever GPS or Sat Nav system you use regardless of manufacturer. Bearing in mind the GPS kit I use for work is worth just under £20,000 and that still has a lot of problems with positioning both under trees in the countryside/adjacent tall buildings in the city and even next to 2 storey houses/buildings if I am too close to them!
I understand that with tall buildings the loss of lock and sat nav getting confused, is going to happen very easily in these places due to “shadowing” from the tall buildings and tight street positions. And when I mean tall buildings I mean those over 4-5 storeys high when it comes to sat nav accuracy, so you can quickly loss lock and get “multi-pathing” signals that can get your position confused and even put you in the next street for example. This all depends on a number of factors including your orientation, how many satellities are visible in the sky to your position at the current time you are using your sat navs and even how clear the horizon is from obstructions to your actual position up to 45 degrees in relation to your current orientation too!
Granted that my actual experience with the S2000N is as described by hkloss1 in some situations, it does usually cope very well even in these locations to a certain point, so I can’t knock something too hard. Knowing its physical system limitations and the laws of physics it has to adhere to regardless of the type of Sat Nav system.
hkloss1:
Took it for my multidrop job around London, driving 7.5 tonne vehicle, wider and longer than your regular 7.5t, I’ve typed all of those measurements, such as height, weight and width, and while doing my multidrops I was put against roads with those barriers on both sides of the road installed that allow only passenger vehicles through.
Again when I work part time on the agency this happens as our depot covers most of West/North/East London then East Anglia etc multi-drop home delivery, but this is purely down to map updates, that I have never updated. We drive anything from 7.5 tonnes all the way upto 26 tonners I’ve had the misfortune to take one into East London for 3 drops before heading out to East Anglia to do the rest of the drops. 
Unfortunately road designs change over time and depending on who monitors and maintains the road map network for said sat nav manufacturer, things will change inbetween map updates and no sat nav can prevent that either!
As HGVHGV said:
hgvhgv:
Snooper s7000 pro does the trick for me, coupled with a strret level map book, and google maps. And if all else fails, get out and have a walk down the road!
You’ve got to read the road signs too before you commit in areas like this.
Sat Nav’s are only tools and good for a variety of situations and they are not the be all and end all.
Use all the tools you have, AA Trucker’s Atlas, Street Level maps and even google maps street views. Then the Mark 1 eyeball for the signs before you commit, all of that plus your sat nav should stop you from getting into serious trouble.
Would like to see the other Sat Navs and how good they are but like previously said you can’t get trials of them. So I’m sticking with Snooper and upgrading to a DB8500 hopefully by next year 
Best of luck trying to find the right one for you.
Hope some of that helped if you read this far 
Take care out there.
C
OWLDRIVER:
I’m going for TomTom 5150
I weighed up all the posts made on here and that’s what I bought.
I will be getting mine at the beginning of August, so keep us informed how it does… ta
Snooper s5000 is great and well capable for the job