Standalone Truck GPS units that are NOT Rand McNally?

I see a lot of drivers raving about Copilot, but I just don't get it. I've tried it and found it very lacking.

I've used Smart Truck Route 2 for a couple years, and it's really top notch.

Having said that, I will also say that Hammer is really coming along. It was pretty rough at first, but it's come a very long ways lately. It looks very promising.

I just treated myself to a DEZL785 this week. We'll see how that goes. I've seen guys saying the DEZLs die after a year, I wonder if it's the battery giving up.

 

What copilot lacks. There's an app. For free.

I didn't care for anything else. I just wanted to get there. And copilot did that. For a much cheaper price.

What's not to like?
My atlas very seldom got touched.
It was nice to just input address and drive.
With all parameters set. It never steered me wrong.

$150 for software that works or $500 for a paperweight.

 

Garmin didn't start out perfect, but it appears they have made a commitment to keep fixing problems. The good part is once it is fixed you never see it again. They have people from the mapping program actually driving around to see what is wrong and if the information given is correct. Sadly, I doubt if any of these companies have CDL drivers on staff, so sometimes they just don't "get it" when you are trying to explain why this route is not the best. When I call in they pull up the area in question on google and let you explain what is going on. On an exit on 75 going to Atlanta they had a truck stop supposedly two miles down the road. I said it's right there at the exit. See it? He said yep, and we will fix it. At least they are receptive to help. Last night I did an update. It took one minute. I can't imagine what that was about, the last one took an hour. Must have been important, but glad to see they are trying.

 

I never tried the Garmin's

I have nothing to say about the other brand. Tried it for 2 weeks. That was all I needed to know.

 

The 710 and 720 ran on Windows CE. They were just as slow.

In fact, the Android version is arguably worse. Memory management on the Android based 730 is so bad the unit just freezes if you change screens too many times. It's especially bad if you are using the traffic feature. Mark once told me it holds each rendered screen in memory and doesn't recycle the memory when you leave that screen. Eventually it just runs out of memory and crashes.

I never bought the 740. I'm still running the 730 and will not be buying any more RM devices.

I'm about 95 percent sure RM doesn't do any software development in house. I think they are just jobbing it all out to some foreign sweat shop. I think they don't fix bugs because they simply can't.

 

I’m moving to A from B after four years. My truck route knowledge of NYC boroughs is better than average. I just downloaded Hammer and checked some routes and it appears to be absolutely spot on accurate. I realize NYC isn’t the be-all-end-all of difficult navigation, but I’m really impressed.

 

I'm looking into buying my next gps, always heard either Rand McNally or Garmin. I've always used Rand and have had nothing but problems routing is really bad at times, chargers and just holding a charge in general etc etc.

I'm thinking of trying a Garmin this time around I'd love to try an app but the idea of makes me nervous lol. I've tried an app a year or two ago while my rm was messed up and it was actually pretty good. Can't remember the name of it.