How Do I upgrade in-built Tom -Tom to include Europe?

[cassie]

Have just purchased in the U.K. a 2013 Megane Dynamique with in-built sat nav. and used it to get to Portsmouth.

On arriving in France I find NO coverage of France !!

Maybe its just me and someone can tell me a trick to find it.......... or maybe I have to pay somebody/somewhere to upgrade to include Europe.

Any advice greatly appreciated

[Kong]

Trade your car in and buy a French one?

[nectarine]

I think you'd have to go to a dealer and get an SD card ... they often have special rates for this. Although a new-ish car should have several years of updates already paid for. Have you spoken to the dealer?

[Théière]

If you can't select France from the menu then you may have UK & ROI only so need the upgrade to western EU as apposed to full EU which you maybe able to download from TT's website.  You should run the update program to make sure everything is the latest.  Not sure how that happens on a built in unit but probably a USB socket somewhere for WiFi adapter etc.

Bound to be a cost for this around £38 for 1 year western EU or £79 for lifetime updates (guidance price only)

[BJSLIV]

You should be able to download the update / maps you need.

A map of France seems to start at 45 Euros.

https://www.tomtom.com/fr_fr/shop/maps/#deviceSelected=11980&mapSelected=France

[Lehaut]

Or if you have a decent smart phone, down load Sygic and the European maps. You get three licences for the purchase price, on line updates and no need to connect to the internet when on the road. You can have a screen as big as you like if you put it on a tablet! (no commercial attachment, just delighted with a product that works well on my motor bike, mine and my wifes car/camper). Tom Tom maps and lifetime updates included in initial price.

[Pickles]

[quote user="Lehaut"]Or if you have a decent smart phone, down load Sygic and the European maps. You get three licences for the purchase price, on line updates and no need to connect to the internet when on the road. You can have a screen as big as you like if you put it on a tablet! (no commercial attachment, just delighted with a product that works well on my motor bike, mine and my wifes car/camper). Tom Tom maps and lifetime updates included in initial price.[/quote]

Sygic gets my vote as well: I tried out several different free applications and settled on Sygic.

[Théière]

[quote user="Pickles"][quote user="Lehaut"]Or if you have a decent smart phone, down load Sygic and the European maps. You get three licences for the purchase price, on line updates and no need to connect to the internet when on the road. You can have a screen as big as you like if you put it on a tablet! (no commercial attachment, just delighted with a product that works well on my motor bike, mine and my wifes car/camper). Tom Tom maps and lifetime updates included in initial price.[/quote]

Sygic gets my vote as well: I tried out several different free applications and settled on Sygic.

[/quote]

It's not a bad app but not as good as a real satnav and the OP's car is new and has the unit already so just needs an upgrade.  Hopefully it is one of the newer TomToms' with upgradeable maps for life included.  It may also feature live traffic without a subscription which is very important when roaming abroad.

[cassie]

Many thanks to everyone who responded......we will try Tom Tom website first

[Lehaut]

"Théière"

"not as good as a real satnav"

Pray what do you class, Théiere, as a real satnav? In my professional life, the satnav we had was the size of a bathroom, would that count? (and probably less accurate than my phone one) );

[Pickles]

[quote user="Théière"][quote user="Pickles"][quote user="Lehaut"]Or if you have a decent smart phone, down load Sygic and the European maps. You get three licences for the purchase price, on line updates and no need to connect to the internet when on the road. You can have a screen as big as you like if you put it on a tablet! (no commercial attachment, just delighted with a product that works well on my motor bike, mine and my wifes car/camper). Tom Tom maps and lifetime updates included in initial price.[/quote]

Sygic gets my vote as well: I tried out several different free applications and settled on Sygic.

[/quote]

It's not a bad app but not as good as a real satnav and the OP's car is new and has the unit already so just needs an upgrade.  Hopefully it is one of the newer TomToms' with upgradeable maps for life included.  It may also feature live traffic without a subscription which is very important when roaming abroad.

[/quote]

I have to say that I have found Sygic (the paid-for version) to be at least as good as my last Garmin Nuvi (which came with lifetime map upgrades and traffic and died after just over 2 years). I find the Sygic interface easier to use for the things that I want to do. The Garmin's habit of running out of memory and resetting itself at important times was not endearing! However, I have not used a TomTom at all.

What I would say about Sygic is that it needs a smartphone with at least 1GB of RAM (you need to read the specs carefully: the smartphone that I tried it on first was a Huawei G300 which only had 0.5GB RAM, which caused it to fall over occasionally). Shifting to a Nexus 5 solved that problem.

[Lehaut]

Obviously a man with taste I use a Nexus 5 too!

Mind you it ran fine on an old HTC HD2, even when the phone fell off my motorbike doing 120 on the autoroute. It bounced twice but worked fine after I recovered it.

My wife's Moto G runs it fine too. When I installed it on her phone using my licence number it gave her the HUD for free!

Off topic, have you suffered from the New SIM card problem for the Nexus 5?

[Théière]

[quote user="Lehaut"] In my professional life, the satnav we had was the size of a bathroom, would that count?[/quote]

Yes that's the one [:)]  Actually probably could have put it better.  In a comparison between a good satnav and Sygic the satnav still has the edge but sygic is good too.  I just sold my old TomTom for more than I paid for it 5 ish years ago [:-))]  and because TomTom won't listen to their customers and some of the functionality wasn't good I have jumped ship to Garmin only yesterday.  I will run Sygic net to the Garmin for a test but there are several features Sygic doesn't have like phone optimised for stanav and hands free calling and pickup whilst still navigating.

Pickles hard luck with the Garmin but if that was widespread they would have gone out of business so a rare but unlucky out come. I hope the new digital traffic is all they talk it up to be. My £37 Chinese satnav just started packing up as the sat lock keeps dropping out and it takes up to 45 mins to get a position, not bad for 3 ish years.

[Pickles]

[quote user="Lehaut"]Off topic, have you suffered from the New SIM card problem for the Nexus 5?[/quote]

Hmmmm ... had to look that one up, so evidently the  answer is "no". Mind you, mine was purchased fairly recently and so had the latest update, which might have included a fix. In any case, I think we will get an upgrade to Android 5 within the next few weeks, which may introduce a whole other set of issues!

[Pickles]

[quote user="Théière"]I will run Sygic net to the Garmin for a test but there are several features Sygic doesn't have like phone optimised for stanav and hands free calling and pickup whilst still navigating.[/quote]

I must admit that I hadn't noticed any issues with that ... but that COULD possibly be because I haven't had any incoming phone calls whilst driving (Billy-no-mates doesn't get any calls now!)

[quote user="Théière"]Pickles hard luck with the Garmin but if that was widespread they would have gone out of business so a rare but unlucky out come.

[/quote]

The issue that I had is a known issue with that model and one or two others from around the same time - I ended up searching on the internet and came across quite a few identical stories. Garmin's response was that if I sent the device back and paid them £72, they would send me a new one. I didn't take them up on their offer (although I suspect that I would end up with a newer model) because Sygic came out at around £45 for whole world maps, but I have offered the device to friends on the basis that if they give me £72 I can get a new (working) one for them.

[Théière]

It's been a week now with the new Garmin and whilst with this model over my old Tomtom which had much the same talk to address ect features the Garmin actually works, although the technology of course is newer.

The badish bit,  The traffic updates frequently which is good but Garmin just don't seem to have it working properly.  Last night's example delay on route 34mins but apparently I was still on the fastest route, Bunkum! I turned off and used my own knowledge and the garmin then recalculated and this time no delay and 32 mins earlier arrival time.  I was on home ground so knew this route but it doesn't fill me with confidence for areas I don't know. 

Still have some time left to return it, what are your impressions of Sygic's traffic and re route?  I may reload it and get the traffic to test it, I believe it uses TomTom information?

 

[Pickles]

[quote user="Théière"]It's been a week now with the new Garmin and whilst with this model over my old Tomtom which had much the same talk to address ect features the Garmin actually works, although the technology of course is newer.

The badish bit,  The traffic updates frequently which is good but Garmin just don't seem to have it working properly.  Last night's example delay on route 34mins but apparently I was still on the fastest route, Bunkum! I turned off and used my own knowledge and the garmin then recalculated and this time no delay and 32 mins earlier arrival time.  I was on home ground so knew this route but it doesn't fill me with confidence for areas I don't know. 

Still have some time left to return it, what are your impressions of Sygic's traffic and re route?  I may reload it and get the traffic to test it, I believe it uses TomTom information?[/quote]

Now you mention it, one of the things that I found out about the way that the Garmin worked was that when it "recalculated" to take into account traffic or my decision to drive past a specific turning, it would not re-calculate and re-optimise the whole route: it seemed to do what I called a "local" recalculation with the aim of getting you back to the previously-calculated route further along. I frequently had to stop, cancel the route and re-enter in order to get a proper, full recalculation. Similarly, I only had the old traffic info (RDS EON?) on the Garmin, and quite often it was out-of-date (eg ended up driving quite happily along a stretch of motorway that the garmin was merrily trying to get me to leave because it was certain that this section was closed). I must say that I rarely found the traffic feature in the Garmin useful.

I haven't used the Sygic traffic function because, along with being "Billy-no-mates", I am apparently also closely related to the pre-Christmas Scrooge, and so don't use mobile data at present.

[cassie]

thanks for all responses.

We have bought an SD card and downloaded W. Europe maps onto it for £45 from TT website.....seems to work o.k. and beats Renaults offer of 162 euros for a pre-loaded SD card