There is that argument - that sat navs themselves are out of date tech, and just use your phone. Personally I do not give a crap - if the thing I am using is not up to my liking it goes in the bin (or sold cheaply to get rid). If what I had was not good enough it would go in the bin - make no mistake about that. If I didn't like it it would no be on my bike - If I did not like my bike that would go as well. Personally the relatively low tech of a sat nav is easy to use, it tells me where I am and the route to where I want to go. I can put in routes, or let the Nav do it. I can put in places of interest, hotels, event locations - and off we go. It can sit there in the sun / rain warns me of mobile radars, speed zones - all that stuff. I have used Waze on my pushbike actually. All good by my iPhone 16 Pro Max is not going to be spending any time on any handlebars ! I am quite happy with Sat Navs for navigation purposes.
I’m old fashioned enough not to rely on just sticking a postcode into a SatNav if I’m going anywhere, I always have a look on Google maps or similar first and get an impression of where I’m going and how I’m going to get there. My youngest son particularly annoys me in this respect as he just follows the Satnav blindly and can’t get himself home from anywhere without using the SatNav again as he’s not a clue about how he got where he is. Because of that I’ve decided that the TomTom that came to me with my Enduro does everything I want a SatNav to do on a bike. I get an arrow telling me what I need to do next in plenty of time, and don’t really want anything else. I might even decide to ignore it and go the way I’ve already decided on anyway. I would like to hear the instructions too, which is why I’m looking at Bluetooth systems for my Helmet, but am aware I might find that annoying and turn it off. I treat the SatNav in my 10yr old Discovery exactly the same, and feel no need to use the more detailed functions or my phone as well. The Raymarine GPS/Multifunction display in my boat however gets used in far more detail, but that’s a completely different story/usage. .
Update this - although everyone has probably moved even further away from Sat Navs in the meantime. I just bought another Tomtom. During summer / autumn 2025 the charging cradle on the Garmin XT went - intermittent ! Had to carry a power bank in my jacket pocket to run it. So just bought another Tomtom 550 - just got to wire it to the battery. Now have 2 of these and a Garmin XT. The cunning plan is to take both Tomtom sat navs on trips away. Keep one as a spare all nice and dry, and fully charged - in case the one on the bike goes "technical" again - Fantastic ! New Tomotom 550
Not sure when you bought the Garmin but they will replace a faulty mount. They replaced my entire XT when I had an issue with it. There was also an updated mount they produced which you could request
I thought I heard TomTom were no longer going to launch new bike sat nav’s, meaning the backup will be decreased too?
Yours was all original out of the box by the sounds of it as so fully guaranteed.My position was a little different. I bought the Garmin XT and mounted it on my KTM 1290 - properly wired in to the wiring loom socket. A pain in the backside to do, some fairings had to come off, but it was done, all good. Sold the KTM and left the original Garmin wiring and the mount on the bike - figured someone would find it useful as it was all set up for a new owner. I kept the unit itself, of course. Then for the new Triumph I had to start again with a separate stand alone purchases of a new mount and separately the wire/cable to connect it to the power. Joined it all up ( just like I had done with the original) but it was never 100% reliable. Rather it was grief as I would be wondering whether it would work, mostly would not charge. Fiddled with it all, proper connectors onto the battery. Sometimes it would charge for a bit, but mostly not. I thought to run 2 sat navs as there is ample space on the bars of an adventure bike - as I still have a Tomtom in the cupboard (that had worked fine on my Monster 821). So to here. The Tomotom was relatively cheap, I actually prefer them and I have a spare from my old Ducati that can be used if the new one goes "technical" and all on a brand new mount out of the box. So that is the thinking. I have heard this as well, but I don't really care. It does link to my phone for traffic updates and the unit is not that expensive in the scheme of things. If it was £500 - £1,000 I would think again. I will get my money's worth out of it - if it just works correctly it will be money well spent.
