Even the best satnav doesn’t quite get it right

Stuart Wright

I use Waze as my satnav as I’ve found it to be the best from the ones I’ve used.
Driving today and the default route set takes exactly the same amount of time but is 30 miles further.
Waze isn’t quite there, yet in terms of choosing the optimal route.
The default:
                                                                               
The obvious choice:                                                                       

IronGiant

Presumably the default route is the one deemed to be the best balance of distance vs speed/comfort?  The purple route you'll only be averaging 41 mph which suggests that you'll be going through lots of villages and/or country lanes.

IronGiant

Interestingly Google seems to favour the shortest route:

                                                                       

AMc

I used to use Waze a lot but they dropped their App support for my Pioneer head unit so I switched to NavMii.
It works OK but a major irritation is it offers you a choice of routes - you pick your favourite, not necessarily it's first choice - then after a bit it decides it's "found a faster route" and decides to change back. You then have to ignore it for miles before it latches back on.
I like being re-routed to avoid delays but this has caused me a couple of issues, most recently when floods closed the A47 near me in two places - in both places NavMii tried to send me off down tiny backroads, which I'd have followed if it didn't try and do that for the reasons above. I wish it had said "Road ahead closed" rather than "found a better route".

My least favourite bug is just after you join the M11 from the A11 it cheerfully suggests you make a U turn when safe several times - not what you need when merging at 70mph!

mikeysthoughts

I used to use google maps on the motorbike and it was utterly infuriating to set a nice twisty route only for a faster route suggestion to override it. No way of cancelling the suggestion with leather gloves on!

Even worse, with older versions of Maps you could turn this off!

Abacus

No Substitute for Tom Tom, but like all good things yu have to pay for it.

Bill

494930

That's cheating! You dont need maps when out for a fun ride, just take whichever turn off looks like the most fun. I've found some of my favourite roads like this which I never would have found had i been following a map.

mikeysthoughts

True, but there were times when I needed to get to a destination for a purpose, and wanted the most fun route. Otherwise, the best times were the unplanned times!