Thanks
Yes we’re interested in accuracy. Yes I looked to see what the underlying mapping units were, but could not find that. I’m not sure what Hema use. We have found them reliable for find tracks e.g. off the Birdsville track, which the car nor Apple / Google units could not show. They also have the option of showing topo maps that help locate places. There also useful in the city.
Accuracy won’t vary much between models and brands as they will all use the same satellite signals. There may be differences in how they process the signals (processing speed and time taken to display the information), but any slight differences in time causing a slight shift in accuracy/actual location from this processing won’t be noticeable.
It depends on that you mean by accuracy. Is it just an accurate position or an accurate map, or an accurate route to your destination?
I’d previously commented on the gps article as it lacked any regional of remote testing. We’ve just returned from two months travelling around Queensland, when we used Apple & Google maps via Apple car play and also had a Hema X-1 which we have used for some years. Once we were north of Mossman / Port Douglas, Apple & Google were useless. Typically we had a blank screen, with the arrow wandering around, or just an image of the likely road we were on (no side roads shown). It didn’t matter if we set a route (starting from a large town where something worked) or just used the apps in an 'explore / drive mode. It seemed the gps position worked, but not the background maps. When Apple & Google showed the road we were on, it at times split into two and the arrow ended up bouncing between them or sat in the middle. Even in many villages and towns where you had a mobile telephone service we couldn’t get Apple or Google maps to work properly - they didn’t seem to have any local maps. At other times they took us to a supposed petrol station, where it was obvious none have ever existed. We did over 11,000kms in Queensland and for much of the time Apple & Google maps were useless - we left them running to provide some amusement. In contrast the Hema worked faultlessly, though once it wanted us to go down a farm track instead of the main road, 19kms away. The Hema has both drive and explore modes with the later providing very useful topographic maps. Choice do need to revise their testing procedures as I’m sure people will often head off on a serious trip to suffer the problems we encountered. Make sure you take a printed map.
Not surprised about Hema - they actually drive most of the roads they map.
That’s a lot of kms out of the more than 33,000km of main roads. 
Is the difficulty when mobile coverage is not available for extended periods? It’s typical of how QLD mobile coverage has been implemented.
Our experiences travelling recently through mid western NSW differ. Relying on Apple’s navigation and an iPhone the pre-set route instructions were continuous and reliable even when we had lost coverage.
Note, there are options to download maps and routes with Google Maps. From memory one requires internet/ mobile service to create a new route setting.
Comment:
Being from an older generation we always travelled outback QLD with road maps. RACQ member free. The HEMA maps are equally useful. It’s a skill set not learnt or taught these days. To our detriment it appears to be in the best interests of the media to promote expensive digital products over all else.
I would suggest everyone who does not want a dedicated GPS gadget, and also does not want to get caught up in Apple/Google… look at the free Navmii for your phone, which uses OpenStreetmaps Yes I know Waze is free, but its Google too.
For a small fee you can remove advertisements from the back end (they dont appear on maps) and for an equally small fee you can get other addons. I’ve paid for speed cameras. Th POI database is decent and mapping is as accurate as any other. Where I once loved Sygic, I find it gives less than it did at first and its off my radar now, has been “off” for years.
Navmii is my choice these days, and the good news is, if you go overseas you can get free maps for there, too.
Thanks for taking the time to detail the issues that you had with Apple Maps and Google Maps as well as your experience with Hema.
We have, several years ago, tested a Car GPS unit that had Hema maps, but one of our staff who is an SES volunteer commented that he thought that the maps were in some areas inaccurate, and that he would not trust them when off-road in his 4WD, and would rely on printed maps instead. Perhaps his observations were NSW/ACT-specific though, and that the Hema maps have improved since then is also a distinct probability.
An interstate road test of Car GPS is well beyond our testing budget, so we would only be able to conduct a test in partnership with another organisation, if at all. I’ll certainly raise this with our content producers for consideration.
Thank you again,
Thanks Scott for your comments. The comment about paper maps is interesting as in general you get the comment around the traps that Hema printed maps are the more reliable. They also have map patrols to travel as many roads as they can find to keep their material up to date. I realise that people will have different scales at which they want maps to be accurate. Yes 20 years ago the basic Hema map would be limited. I understand the earlier maps were simple rasterised versions, whereas newer maps are vector based and can be scaled up & down with greater accuracy.
The latest review (https://www.choice.com.au/transport/cars/navigation-systems ) is interesting but did not include a brilliant home-grown navigation app called Metroview:
https://apps.apple.com/au/app/metroview-gps-navigation/id370753892
I have been using this app for more than a decade, mainly to help me drive within the speed limits. In 2013 I co-wrote a conference paper that pointed out the potential road safety benefits of including speed assistance functions in navigation devices and apps:
Metroview performed well against the proposed assessment criteria. I recommend that Choice incorporates those criteria in its future reviews.
Thank you Mike.
As the paper alludes to, the majority of car navigation devices and apps are able to warn the driver when they have exceeded the speed limit.
Of course, this function is only as good as the map data that contains the speed limit for each section of road.
As our test is primarily focussed on navigation, we would need to calculate the benefit of adding further criteria to score the speed warning function as this would add time and expense to the test.
We have tested Metroview in the past, but as apps have become increasingly popular with motorists, we have reduced the number of apps we test to those with large market share.
I’ll further discuss your suggestion with the content producer.
Thanks again for taking the time to give us your feedback.
As my conference papers shows (International Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles - ESV) the provision of speed limit information via aftermarket devices is extraordinarily cost-effective. Way better than any vehicle-safety initiative that I have encountered in 30 years of working in the field.
I have found the Metroview app very accurate for warning the driver about exceeding the speed limit (by a user-selected amount) in a non-intrusive way. This includes school zone warnings (although I wish they took account of school holidays).
The assessment criteria set out in the paper could be easily added to the Choice assessment with minimal increase in resources needed.
Today I am in Sydney going cross town toward Bondi. My trusty Garmin 3597 (admittedly a few years old) with a current map kept crashing and rebooting itself at the most inopportune times adding 10’s of minutes to recover each time.
The inbuilt Tomtom did not miss a beat although the map is well out of date.
The behaviour of the Garmin suggested it was struggling to keep the sats while trying to route through Sydney’s very interestingly laid out streets and it overloaded itself. Navigating through Sydney’s eastern suburbs where there are high rises to shield the sat view might be an interesting test for future GPS reviews, not that there aren’t enough high rises in the CBD.
Hi Phil, in the early days of Car GPS testing, we used to include a route through the Sydney CBD for exactly that reason. Over time, units improved across the board, and there was very little in the way of differences in reception, so we dropped that part of the test.
I am not convinced it is reception as much as inability to process GPS data with the interesting street patterns, both at once. I would hope more recent models would just stutter rather than do a full crash.
The moon landing programmers had it right that when the onboard overloaded it dropped interrupts but kept on as best it could, and history shows it was a wise decision.
