I have recently returned from a 4,500 mile tour of the UK and rather than throw both the Zumo 660 and BaseCamp out of the nearest window I thought perhaps a review would be the better option. This tour was long in the planning and comprised 25 different routes all meticulously created in BaseCamp and saved on an SD card inserted in the Zumo. The routes comprised a 700km run from my home in Germany to the French port of Calais and a mirror image of the same route for the return journey. All other routes were executed in the UK.
It would perhaps have been better had I recorded or noted every error that was thrown up during this tour but that would have meant me stopping every few miles/kilometres or so to make these notes which simply wasn't practical. Listed below, therefore, is a general summary from memory of just some of the errors.
(a) Garmin appear not to be aware of the British road classification system as routes that were planned and being displayed both in BaseCamp and consequently the Zumo as 'A' roads were in fact nothing but single track roads that one would even hesitate to use even when taking one's dog out for an evening stroll. By that I mean, roads that are/were so narrow that one can only negotiate with car side mirrors folded in/collapsed. It became increasingly frustrating when time and time again one met a car coming the opposite way and it was a toss-up who was going to reverse back to a nearest point to pull in which often meant several hundred yards/metres. Garmin or their subsidiary should really start issuing maps using the correct road classification system and it is worth noting that of the cars that I met coming in the opposite direction were all using Garmin devices and were equally annoyed/frustrated.
(b) There is no real reason that I can think of when travelling on the same road for over 30 miles/kilometres that a GPS device has to announce every single curve in the road which was my experience. For example - I was often advised - 'in 200 metres turn left onto the A1234 when I'd already been travelling this road for the past half an hour or so. In my opinion only deviated from a road or a change in road number need to be announced - when continuing on the same road these extra announcements are both unneeded and annoying.
(c) Linked to (b) above is the fact that I would receive instructions - 'in 200 metres turn left on NoSuchStreet (fictitious name). The actual road sign ahead of me shows A1234 to Brighton so why the Zumo/BaseCamp more often than not gives a street name is beyond me as most of the time no street name is actually to be seen on the road especially when it's a major highway. I can understand this situation more when a used enters a specific address to be taken to but not when routes are being travelled.
(d) I lost track of the amount of times that I was instructed to proceed straight ahead into a farm yard/track when the road curved either left or right and was correctly shown as such on the display. OK, I would have been stupid to have obeyed the instruction but list it simply to demonstrate the total lack of QC in the production of Garmin map software.
(e) On other occasions I was instructed to turn right onto road A1234 with the display showing this turn. However, once the turn was executed the route would disappear off the display followed by the warning - 'off route, recalculate?. I've simply lost count of the number of U-turns that I have executed over the past few weeks. Linked to this were numerous announcements stating that a left/right turn should be executed with the display quite clearly showing the opposite way.
(f) The following is a peculiarity that I have only experienced during the UK leg of the journey and that involves the extremely late announcements. On many many occasions I was actually upon the junction when the instruction came to turn either left or right. When in heavy traffic and traversing complicated junctions this can be a hazard as several times I found myself in the wrong lane with no possibility of getting across to the correct lane. As mentioned earlier, I have only experienced this in the UK and am of the mind therefore that this is somehow linked to the UK map set. It would be interesting to hear comments from UK users in this regard.
(g) The final leg of the journey from Calais (France) to my home in Germany was a mirror reversed image of the outbound leg. For reasons known only to Garmin the Zummo 660/BaseCamp decided to disregard this planned route and came up with one of it's own without any warning. The extra distance involved was 13km which over a leg of over 700km is nothing and it also saved me over Euros 60 in road Tolls as well so I'm not complaining too hard. Thinking perhaps that I had somehow created another route and not the mirror reversed route of the outbound leg as first thought I uploaded the track to my PC and compared it to the route saved to the card. The result was that my planned route was correctly saved to the card but the route travelled was completely different. Interesting - I hope this doesn't happen too often in the future as routes that I plan are the ones that I actually want to travel.
In short, I believe this long tour has given the combination of the Zumo 660 and BaseCamp a good workout and shown one or the other (maybe both) to be wanting. If I was living in the UK and reliant on the Z660/BaseCamp to get me from A to B in order to make deliveries (employed as a lorry/truck driver for example) I would have severe reservations in putting my reliance in them. The occasional errors with any modern piece of equipment etc is to be expected and can be forgiven but such basic errors such as single track country roads being displayed as major 'A' roads is really unforgivable and needs some urgent attention by Garmin.
