Zumo User Forums

Hi everyone,

Having been the (initially) proud owner of an XT, I'm now on the verge of selling it and returning to the Tomtom Rider. I love the unit, screen and general feel (apart from the USB port from 1990) but my main issue is that some British roads seem to be invisible to the unit. I travel a lot through rural areas and the routing algorithm is unbelievably bad at this. Try plotting a route from 'Lymington' to 'Ringwood' and it will give you two absolutely barking routes. Do the same on Google Maps or Tomtom and you get the correct route across the middle of the New Forest in a vaguely straight line - several miles shorter and definitely quicker. Am I the only person experiencing this or have others had the same problem? I've checked all the settings and can't see anything that would cause this (set to fastest route with no avoids, etc). Have I got something wrong? I don't want to have to use Basecamp or have to correct the route, I just want to enter the destination and have this very expensive unit be capable of picking a vaguely sane route like every other satnav app seems to be able to do! I have other examples of madness and am starting to give up on it. Help please!

My Xt does the same, East along the motorway and then south is fastest. South first then east is shortest

I don't have access to Basecamp to verify that there isn't a different shorter or faster route, but Garmin mapping is usually
quite accurate and takes into account speed limits and historic timing at different times.

When the differences are only a couple of minutes it can come up with routes that you don't want. But they are still faster and shorter at the speeds assigned to the selected roads.

However, the XT builds up a profile for you, and if you build up a pattern of riding style, or regularly follow certain roads, it will modify the route it selects accordingly.

If you find a route that is clearly faster or shorter than the one it chooses, then get the satnav to select that route and put in shaping points to force it, and see what time it calculates. You can report the issue to Garmin, who will get the maps corrected.

This sort of thing can happen and is usually down to the maps rather than the satnavs and can affect different devices in different ways.

Thanks for your response, really appreciated and good to see that there's more going on under the surface in terms of learning and adjustment. I've just returned from a trip to Cornwall and ran the XT alongside Tomtom on my phone. The XT was regularly selecting a longer route (in both time and distance) and ignoring obvious lanes that Tomtom was using. I can't help but feel it's either more suited to the US or perhaps geared towards larger vehicles that might struggle with small(ish) lanes. It's done similar things in Hampshire where it's been determined to route me out of the way and on to the motorway when there was a quicker way highlighted by Tomtom, Google and Apple maps that the XT refused to recognise. Having to manually reroute it every time feels absurd (and time consuming) and surely the point of a machine is to select this for you. Admittedly I haven't seen it 'learn' favoured routes (or indeed read anything about this) which suggests sticking with it, but it's hard not to feel it should do this out of the box. Thanks for your feedback though, perhaps I'll keep trying a couple more time to see what it comes up with. Any thoughts on this from others appreciated...

Mikeg2234 wrote: ↑Tue Sep 07, 2021 9:59 am Admittedly I haven't seen it 'learn' favoured routes (or indeed read anything about this) ...

See https://support.garmin.com/en-GB/?faq=S ... xBFWKu9tb6

Your device learns your speeds on different types of roads so as well as giving you a more accurate ETA it also affects routing ...

This learning of driving habits I suspect is rubbish. If anything it's not going to affect routing.

I suspect you are just encountering the results of the poor routing algorithm the XT uses.

Yes I suspect its very Interstate based and has no idea of the real progress you can make on a country lane.

For example if you try adventurous routing in the UK its a joke.

I wish I could get a better screen for my 660.

Thanks for your response, that's certainly how I feel about it. If it was a one off on a specific route then I would just put it down to dodgy mapping but it is a recurring a repeatable outcome across several areas of Hampshire, Dorset and Isle of Wight - places I know well and hence which are the quickest routes - most of which I learned (ironically) from a Tomtom device. I might leave Garmin to our American friends.

See if you can pick up 660 on ebay. The routing engine in that works great.

I had to upgrade as my 660 ran out of screen and did not have life time maps.

I did try the 595 but sent that back. Search on this forum to see why.

I get around these issues for now by creating a track in basecamp from my route and then on the XT I create a route from that. Downside is you can't edit the route. Upside is you don't end going through Portsmouth...

Good luck