Snooper Satnav

[Parksy]

My Garmin is getting to the end of it's life. I am thinking of getting a Snooper Ventura Pro S2500, the only bad thing I can see is it is the price. The reasons we are looking at this one. It gives you the choice of truck or car settings, has the Caravan Club and The Camping and Club and also the ACSI club sites as well as full coverage of Europe.
Does anyone have one, if so how do you find it, good or bad information wanted.
I have been looking at this website. I hope the link works
www.satnavcompany.com/caravan/snooper-ventura-pro-s2500.html

Les

 

[Mike_S]

Hi Les
I've had a Ventura Pro 5000 for about 18 months, bought for the same reasons ( sites, Europe, etc). Very pleased with it . Part of the setup is to input your vehicle details ie caravan length, width, height, etc. In use, the first step is to say whether the route is for a car or your outfit, then destination details. Wasn't cheap but I think, worth it.
Mike

 

[Surfer]

The biggest drawback with the Snooper is that you are unable to enter your own POIs although they do supply a substantial list.

 

[JonnyG]

Biggest drawback is it appears to have no updates, you have to buy the maps which means without quarterly updates your maps are more behind than the big 2 or 3 sat nav firms, they only use TMC for traffic data so use the inferior [is that the right word] compaired to the better garmin and Tom tom units.Who Also use historic traffic trends which these days is usefull in a world full of sat navs.

 

[carper2]

Surfer
i am not really that bothered about the POIs but you do get free updates.

Les

 

[carper2]

JohnnyG
You free lifetime map updates, according to the website I have put on.

Les

 

[JonnyG]

JohnnyG
You free lifetime map updates, according to the website I have put on.

Les

last time i checked the best they had to offer was half yearly updates, has that changed to the quarterly updates of the big two?

 

[RayS]

I've just bought a S6400 Ventura and registered it for free updates, but not enquired on how oftern these are available. The mapping will be out of their hands anyway and may take some time to keep up with Europe. I bought from the Sat Nav Warehouse and the delivery was as promised and the couple of questions i have asked since have been answered promptly. The instruction CD is not as easy to follow as it could be, but perhaps justs needs more study. You can print off the instruction book - the first 84 or 477 pages are the english version - or copy it onto yur computer. I've saved it onto an ipad as being easier to take with me. You can't do this using gmail as the attachment is too big, but is you have another mail service e.g. Windows Live Mail, then just send yourself and email to you ipad with it as an attachment. You can transfer the .pdf file to the Kindle App if you have it.
Depending on where you buy it there may be things in the box not to be found in the instruction book. For example, a 5cm x 2 cm block with a USD connection one end and bare wires the other. this turns out to be in case you wish to wire into the vehicle and not use the plug-in vehicle charger (which they recommend you do not have connected when starting the engine). But it has absolutely no labels or moulded-in information on it and is not referred to anywhere I can find.
However, the satnav looks far more use friendly than the built-in one on my previous tow car, especially in being able to add 'via's' to force a route you prefer. Also according to the book, you can add a fair number of your own POI's and also have a Favourites facility - presumably to store you favourite places. First thing to do is to turn off the irritating touch screen bleeps.

 

[RogerL]

The Snooper satnavs also have the best speed camera database, bar none, it includes all the fixed camera sites (as they all do) but it also includes mobile sites as published weekly by local "safety partnerships" and "high risk" areas where mobile police patrols are used to monitor/manage perceived accident hot-spots,
You do need a subscription, separate to the map updates, to keep this database up-to-date and it's best done weekly - or daily if you really live on the edge!

 

[dave8858]

Don't use it in France with the speed camera updates as you will get fined. The TomTom sat nav app for iPhone comes with free map updates for life, the ability to search the internet for any of the places of interest types AND automatically switches OFF speed camera functionality for those countries in which it is not legal to have speed camera notifications!

Only costs 47 quid and works fine for all western europe too but then other sat nav devices and software is available.

David

 

[RogerL]

Thanks - I was aware of the situation in France - although my understanding was that the speed camera facility had to be physically deleted from the satnav, not just switched off or not used - it's easy on a Snooper to delete the camera database for individual countries without deleting data for those countries where it is legal.