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Google's Free Satnav Outperforms TomTom

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the sounds-pretty-badbad dept.

Barence writes "A real-world road test of several different satnav systems has found that the free Google Maps Navigation outperformed TomTom's premium GPS unit. PC Pro put the satnavs through four different real-world tests, covering country roads, inner-city traffic and motorway driving. The Google satnav finished the four tests more than half an hour ahead of the top of the range TomTom Go 950 Live. 'For those in rural areas or people who spend hours in their car every day, we believe the investment in a dedicated satnav device or software will still pay off,' PC Pro concludes. 'But for the recreational user, it's amazing what you can get for free.'"

3 of 242 comments (clear)

  1. Not Free by rwv · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I love using Google Navigation on my Android Phone, but it's short-sighted to say that just because I'm not paying extra for "Navigation" that the cost of this service is completely free. It's all part of the relatively expensive "Google Smart Phone" bundle.

  2. Re:good investment? by Speare · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I grew up in a rural area, and I spent hours in a car commuting because things were so far away... and I question this. There were two possible routes south from my hometown, one was about 150km to the closest big down, the other route was about 250km to the same place.

    A lot of "cityfolk" like to take a drive from one major city they're familiar with, to another major attraction they plan to visit, and rural areas are a huge unknown adventure in between. Some like the superhighway, but many like to get off the beaten track, see some farm houses, smell the manure and wash the beetles off the windshield for a change of pace. They didn't grow up in the area, they didn't know that choice A was 150km, and choice B was 250km. That's exactly when they turn on the GPS and confirm which fork in the road to take.

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  3. Not statistically significant! by six11 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The article is astoundingly hard to read. Apparently they took a bunch of GPS devices, gave each one to a driver, who was in a different car. They all started at the same place and time, and were told to go to the same destination. They had to follow the instructions of their device and follow the speed limit. OK. Sounds good.

    But they all did this only one time. You would need to do this many times before you could start to draw conclusions from it. Sure, it is fun to play scientist and get out in the world and do some sciency fieldwork, but seriously. Anybody who has taken basic statistics ought to understand that meaningful conclusions can't be drawn from this because of the huge variance of travel times as a function of local traffic. Sure, the cars all start and end at the same spots, but they take different paths. If one path that would otherwise be the fastest is slowed down because of a car accident or an adorable family of ducks is walking on the roadside, that will skew the results for this single trial only.

    It makes me sad that this sort of thing passes for research, and it makes me even sadder that people don't think critically enough to realize it is not reliable.