Garmin City Navigator NT maps - what do they cover?

[slowwww]

Sorry, probably a really silly question, but do these only provide GPS for cities and large towns, or does the UK and Ireland chip provide full country coverage including all the windy local roads that I prefer cycling on?

...and before you say it, I've seen from this forum that maps are free to purchase and download, but I'm a technical doofus and having spent an hour of head-scratching trying to achieve this I can't be bothered any more and the buy option looks favourite as long as it shows what I want!

 

[srw]

Full country coverage. If you can, download the whole lot to a PC and then transfer what you need - it makes route plannig much easier.

 

[GrumpyGregry]

Sorry, probably a really silly question, but do these only provide GPS for cities and large towns, or does the UK and Ireland chip provide full country coverage including all the windy local roads that I prefer cycling on?

...and before you say it, I've seen from this forum that maps are free to purchase and download, but I'm a technical doofus and having spent an hour of head-scratching trying to achieve this I can't be bothered any more and the buy option looks favourite as long as it shows what I want!

You can buy Open Cycle Maps on an SD card ready to plug straight into your compatible GPS from http://shop.opencyclemap.org/

Pretty dofus proof ime and I've yet to cycle on a road that wasn't on ocm.

 

[slowwww]

Thanks very much!

 

[ColinJ]

I asked @Svendo that question on one of my forum rides. I think we were on a tiny lane in the Yorkshire Dales at the time. The map seemed to have all the roads on it. I would still prefer a digital OS map, but they probably cost a lot more.

One thing though - very new roads might not be featured. I found somebody on Amazon complaining that his version of City Navigator was dated 2012 but did not show his new local bypass.

 

[Svendo]

City Nav. Have in my experience here and in California, good road coverage, including non surfaced roads that are marked as such ( dotted line ). I've not used OSM but suspect one advantage of city nav (which you pay for obv) is the poi database ( just like car sat nav) and the searchable postal address database incl. post codes. Although with the 705 you had to know to put a postcode in iirc the city field as there was no post code field. Havent tried it on the 800 yet. But I've never found a road not on the map that'd already been built when it was compiled.

 

[andrew_s]

City Navigator gives you roads, but not (on my oldish version anyway) anything off road such as footpaths or cycle tracks. You also get addresses/postcodes and a reasonably good selection of businesses, ATMs etc for use in "find the nearest XXX".

If you buy it on DVD, it works on any PC, but data you export to μSD card will only work on the GPS you registered the DVD to. If the GPS dies, you'll have to either buy another copy, or try to persuade Garmin to give you another activation code.
If you buy it on μSD, the card will work on any GPS, but you can't copy working data onto a different card (though you can back it up to PC and restore it back to the card if you manage to corrupt it).

 

[andrew_s]

I would still prefer a digital OS map, but they probably cost a lot more.

Not only do they cost more, they don't work so well on the small screen of a GPS.

If you try to look at a larger area, all text gets smaller, small features disappear, and lines start to break up

If you zoom in, you just see bigger pixels rather than any extra information

 

[ColinJ]

Not only do they cost more, they don't work so well on the small screen of a GPS.

If you try to look at a larger area, all text gets smaller, small features disappear, and lines start to break up

If you zoom in, you just see bigger pixels rather than any extra information

Can't you zoom to an intermediate level like this ...?