Saw this on hotukdeals website, Becker Traffic Assist Highspeed 7934 - £84.97 at Tesco. Got one in Sheffield and they had 10 left at 4pm today. I found reviews on German websites and they seem to be positive. Updated maps fom Becker website.

BECKER - Great Britain

For this price it's a steal - 37 European countries including Eastern Europe. Other models have TMC functionality, when updating I looked through the files and saw TMC ones as well. I wonder if TMC function could be enabled. Anyone tried?

Cheers

Went to Tesco this morning and they still have loads of them left at £89.99. Works a treat for me, can't wait for my Easter trip to Czech to test it proper.

Petr

No chance of getting speed camera data on these?

I got one to replace the (massively flawed and out-of-date) viaMichelin on my ageing PDA - they're selling them online too, if anyone else wants one.

No chance of getting speed camera data on these?

When I originally got my viaMichelin sat nav, the pocketgpsworld database didn't support it, but it ended up being a case of some simple fannying in Notepad, a change of filename extension, and voila I was able to import the database as POIs and use the POI alert function. I'm assuming something similar can be done with the Becker, although it supposedly has a current speed vs. speed limit function (allegedly adjustable ), which might actually be more useful seeing how I've never found the pocketgpsworld database to be particularly up-to-date...

Go here:

Pocket GPS World

and use the Search function for 'Becker'.

Lots of information there.

Have had it a week or so now, and will post a proper review after I've had an opportunity to use it properly, if anyone's interested. What I would say, though, was that I tried installing a patch via ActiveSync and it caused the unit to crash on a regular basis. I've put the same patch on again via the memory card, and it seems to have settled down. Worth bearing in mind, if anyone else on here has bought one.

so how are you guys getting on with these units?

I see they are still £89 from tesco direct.

I'm looking for sat nav fro SWMBO...it has to be dead easy to use, so immidiately assumed TomTom, but then I spotted this.

Are the maps any good? I see you get a DVD with them on. How often are maps updated and what do they cost?

thanks in advance

mf

guess I should have googled first!

It appears the becker units use navteq maps...the map DVD itself is solde for 90 quid!!!!!! eeek!!! Not sure how often they are updated either!

Navteq - Maps for your Navigation System

so this compares to say a TomTom One GB for about £130 and maps that are regularly updated and cost £40...TomTom still sounds like the better deal to me

It's not quite like-for-like. £90 will buy you mapping for the whole of Western Europe, plus reduced-quality mapping for Eastern Europe for Navteq. £30 will buy you UK mapping on TomTom, and £60 will buy you mapping for Western Europe.

So if you never venture out of Britain but need a new map, the TomTom is a shade cheaper at £160 for the unit + 1 updated map. The Becker / Navteq at £180 for the unit + 1 updated map is slightly cheaper if you plan to use it abroad (£190 for the equivalent on TomTom, but with no Eastern Europe coverage).

You pays your money and takes your choice...

only really needs to cover GB for SWMBO and seeing as the TomTom unit can be had for even a bit cheaper if you search a bit, that seems to be the one to go for for.

becker does seem a good alternative that may suit others though as you pointed out.

Any one tested one of these Becker units yet ...are they any good ?

Yeah, I've got one. I've not compared it to, say, a TomTom, but it's streets ahead of the ViaMichelin navigation that's on my old PDA.

In a totally subjective manner, I like:

Screen seems large, bright, and very clear to me;

Full mapping of Western Europe plus major roads in Eastern Europe on one SD card plus back-up DVD;

Fast start-up from 'cold' (takes about one minute to position itself if I start it from somewhere other than the last place I used it);

Plenty loud enough to hear over stereo;

Will charge off USB, car charger, or my Motorola phone charger;

Lasts a good four or five hours off one charge;

Has a speed warning function that you can set to anything up to 25mph over the limit (if you're that way inclined!)

I don't like:

You have to have either all POIs off or all of them on;

You can't edit the POIs;

The speed camera add-in only seems to list fixed cameras and the EXE file you download inputs the locations but doesn't upload the corresponding instructions (although it's easy to work around - will post how if necessary);

Won't work with PocketGPSWorld speed camera database (yet?)

Other things about it:

You can play MP3s and view JPGs on it, although I'm not sure how useful that actually is!

I was able to create a cradle / phone holder hybrid to sit the unit on the dash vents rather than have it stuck about 10 miles away on the screen...

There are 'mood lights' either side, like on a Philips plasma TV!

All-in-all, considering the price, I'm very pleased with mine!

Sounds very interesting. I've trialled a TomTom and a Garmin and the Garmin was a lot nicer as it didn't keep telling me to perform a legal U-turn when I strayed off the boring motorways!

Does the Becker allow you to configure the types of road you want to use, eg plot a route that keeps me off motorways, and how easy is it to create a list of way-points to create your own pre-defined route?

Chris

You can set it to avoid toll roads, motorways and ferries, but (irritatingly) not town centres - would have liked that after a trip to a family birthday took us through the middle of Nottingham. Don't know if any of the other sat navs on the market will do that either, though...

It'll steer you around traffic jams of various lengths, and you can set up interim destinations on any given route, which you can move up and down the itinerary so you don't need to put them in in order. I thought of another bug, which was that some of the POIs come up in more than one language, although I've not spotted it recently so it might have been connected to the failed patch installation I posted about earlier in the thread...

Yeah, I've got one. I've not compared it to, say, a TomTom, but it's streets ahead of the ViaMichelin navigation that's on my old PDA.

In a totally subjective manner, I like:

Screen seems large, bright, and very clear to me;

Full mapping of Western Europe plus major roads in Eastern Europe on one SD card plus back-up DVD;

Fast start-up from 'cold' (takes about one minute to position itself if I start it from somewhere other than the last place I used it);

Plenty loud enough to hear over stereo;

Will charge off USB, car charger, or my Motorola phone charger;

Lasts a good four or five hours off one charge;

Has a speed warning function that you can set to anything up to 25mph over the limit (if you're that way inclined!)

I don't like:

You have to have either all POIs off or all of them on;

You can't edit the POIs;

The speed camera add-in only seems to list fixed cameras and the EXE file you download inputs the locations but doesn't upload the corresponding instructions (although it's easy to work around - will post how if necessary);

Won't work with PocketGPSWorld speed camera database (yet?)

Other things about it:

You can play MP3s and view JPGs on it, although I'm not sure how useful that actually is!

I was able to create a cradle / phone holder hybrid to sit the unit on the dash vents rather than have it stuck about 10 miles away on the screen...

There are 'mood lights' either side, like on a Philips plasma TV!

All-in-all, considering the price, I'm very pleased with mine!

I have it and am very happy with it. Especially the speed, used to use Navigon 4 before on Fujitsu PDA and it was painfully slow. It has more than just major roads for Czech, it is covered by about 33% - street level on big Cities (Prague, Plzen, Ostrava, Brno etc.)

Could you post a picture how you made dashboard vent mount, I would be interested, could help in summer when device overheats (at least my PDA used to and simply switched off). Cheers

I have a becker sat nav and try as I might I cannot get it to update the software......anyone done it yet?

I have a card reader so I can put files on the card direct...or through the windows ce program...but for some reason they don't update

I have a becker sat nav and try as I might I cannot get it to update the software......anyone done it yet?

I have a card reader so I can put files on the card direct...or through the windows ce program...but for some reason they don't update

It wouldn't work over the USB cable, but I got it to work OK by just extracting the files onto a blank SD card and sticking it in the slot...???

Could you post a picture how you made dashboard vent mount, I would be interested, could help in summer when device overheats (at least my PDA used to and simply switched off). Cheers

I just took the phone cradle apart, and used sticky foam pads to build up the back of the sat nav clip so that I could stick it to the required parts of the cradle. That's not a very good description - you're probably just best looking at the attached pictures! The cradle was just the cheapest one from the supermarket...