Ive been working on site for the last few years and about to go back on the road and I’m fancying a hgv sat nav has any one got any recommendations the snooper ones seem alot of cash what are you all using advice would be greatly received cheers
I’m just about to buy one of the cheap Chinese ones off ebay…
I have one of the cheapo Chinese ones. They are actually very good. Have a genuine smaller screened TomTom as back up, but never needed to use it.
The truck tables one does the job check out the website
I got me a MIO from Handtec.co.uk in Peterborough
Used the Software from Tom-Tom but you get it for half price
Cheap one of eBay £40 do the job but not very up to date.
Now got a garmin dezlcam and it’s spot on
As a cheaper one, I’d recommend the trucktables one. It’s a bit rough & ready, but of a clunky display but it did an alright job.
I did however treat myself to an early birthday present this week and splashed out in the new tomtom trucker 6000. Will be in its maiden voyage for a week starting tomorrow so I’ll post a review in here if you like after a few days. I’ll keep my trucktable one as a backup, but I quite liked the idea of live traffic, speed cameras and at least 4 map updates a year.
With the trucktables one you’re kinda stuck with the map that’s on it, and while I never found any big problems it got really annoying on motorways where there’d been average speed sections alive when the map was put in it, but they’re gone now. So you get no end of noises telling you you’re going too fast in an average section. Also found that it struggled in built up areas. Was driving through centre of Birmingham at night trying to navigate through all the roadworks and it just couldn’t latch onto me.
got one from ebay (juggling frogs ) his name on there ,been really good any problems you can call him up and he will talk you through it ,it can be updated ,think its free for two years ? i had a problem updating mine after i had it 2 years , i sent it back to him ,his request ,a few days later i got a brand new one delivered with the 2015 maps on ,brilliant service as it was out of warranty not sure if tomtom would be so helpful ,i paid £80 it has 8gb memory ,and works well
I got Chinese one off amazon. Very good and has Bluetooth for phone
Thanks for the advice I looked at snooper but they cost a fortune do they make ya a brew in the morning !? I think I’ll try a cheaper Chinese one as I will still be reading maps I just really want it as a rolling map cheers
sizer247:
Thanks for the advice I looked at snooper but they cost a fortune do they make ya a brew in the morning !? I think I’ll try a cheaper Chinese one as I will still be reading maps I just really want it as a rolling map cheers
My snooper cost £400 ( Mrs went ape/ mental) , but I’ve used it allover including central London and its spot on,if it could just work out which way the crane slinger wants the truck facing ,up or down the road it would be perfect . 
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I was driving high trailers about in London a lot so I forked out for the Snooper DG8500 (or something like that). £400 or near as dammit 
Very good, though it did route me to a low bridge twice in London.
It doesn’t make tea but it does have a DAB radio, it gives all directions through the truck’s stereo speakers, semi-muting the radio first, and has a telly too 
robf1234:
got one from ebay (juggling frogs ) his name on there ,been really good any problems you can call him up and he will talk you through it ,it can be updated ,think its free for two years ? i had a problem updating mine after i had it 2 years , i sent it back to him ,his request ,a few days later i got a brand new one delivered with the 2015 maps on ,brilliant service as it was out of warranty not sure if tomtom would be so helpful ,i paid £80 it has 8gb memory ,and works well
I have one of the juggling frogs Pro Drive nav. It’s been pretty ■■■■ good - definitely better than my Snooper 7000 - and has far more features.
I emailed him though regarding map updates, but no reply. I did buy the unit about 2/3 years ago now though!!
I still recommend it. Never let me down!
I recently ‘upgraded’ from a cheap Chinese one (which finally broke after a couple of years) to a Garmin Dezl and just a few comments about both.
The Chinese one was almost impossible to update. The supplier did try & explain how to do it by using open source maps, but these were never accepted by the device despite following instructions. It was easy to change things like speed limits, types of roads, vehicle sizes etc. Battery life was terrible even from new.
The Garmin has come with lifetime map and traffic updates - makes the £200 cost a little more bearable. However, Garmin have yet to update national speed limits and they cannot be done within the system so it nags if going over 40 on a single carriageway, and assumes that you can do 60 on a motorway, which puts arrival times out. When coming to a diversion there’s no option to say how far ahead the diversion is so you need to be on top of it before it re-routes, and then often simply comes back with the existing one, though it is very fast at realising if you’ve gone a different way. The traffic feature is very good but it does not try and find a quicker route (or it hasn’t yet) so will happily tell you there’s a 40 minute delay ahead 
. So far it has kept me well away from low bridges, though it does seem to err on the side of safety by keeping me away from many minor roads which I know are perfectly passable. Haven’t found a way to decide on road preferences yet.
I even have a Dashboard Camera and Mini Memory Card on it.
Buy a cheap one, and spend the money you saved on Whiskey and whores
tallyman:
I recently ‘upgraded’ from a cheap Chinese one (which finally broke after a couple of years) to a Garmin Dezl and just a few comments about both.The Chinese one was almost impossible to update. The supplier did try & explain how to do it by using open source maps, but these were never accepted by the device despite following instructions. It was easy to change things like speed limits, types of roads, vehicle sizes etc. Battery life was terrible even from new.
The Garmin has come with lifetime map and traffic updates - makes the £200 cost a little more bearable. However, Garmin have yet to update national speed limits and they cannot be done within the system so it nags if going over 40 on a single carriageway, and assumes that you can do 60 on a motorway, which puts arrival times out. When coming to a diversion there’s no option to say how far ahead the diversion is so you need to be on top of it before it re-routes, and then often simply comes back with the existing one, though it is very fast at realising if you’ve gone a different way. The traffic feature is very good but it does not try and find a quicker route (or it hasn’t yet) so will happily tell you there’s a 40 minute delay ahead
On my pro drive nav, you can tell it to avoid the road ahead and stipulate for how many miles you want it to do so. And you can stipulate if there are any other roads it should avoid at the same time… I’ve yet to find a ‘mainstream’ nav that can do this. I haven’t tried the latest TomTom units but if my Garmin Zumo 550 for biking is anything to go by, they won’t have any of these features… It also shows you every motorway junction as you drive, and lists all the facilities and services available within a few miles of the junction… It’s brill!
The main manufacturers seem to charge ridiculous money for the truck specific navs, purely based on the fact their name is on the devices. My Snooper was OK, but no better at navigation than the Pro Drive, and had nowhere near as many features. It also cost three times as much. So I flogged it on eBay bought a Pro Drive and put the £130 quid left over in the beer kitty…
Where do Garmin and TomTom get their units manufactured now incidentally?
China, presumably. I would never get a Garmin again even though mine has the trip/itinerary facility that TomToms once had. Just about everything about it, from the clunky interface to the annoying not saving of the trip properly, is woeful in comparison to a TomTom.
I’ve used a cheap Tom Tom and a nozatec and both of them let me down when going into city centres. They just refused to work once around the concrete jungles.
Treated myself to a dezl 770 and took it into Birmingham last week and it was great. It kept a good signal and even under the Aston expressway tunnels in crawling traffic it worked a treat.
10/10 would sell my other kidney to buy one again.
Personally I’d go with spoons on your phone or tablet up is about 25 quid for the truck map used it for the last year or so with out any problems if if you have a windows tablet mapfactor has tomtom Europe truck maps for 50 quid