Andrejs 2 Comments

Today I’d like to share with you a little about my personal experience with Sygic GPS Navigation App.

It is the review of a real user and some conclusions may be different from other users reviews or app’s developer introduction.

I have not written about car GPS navigation for a while. Actually, since last summer when I enjoyed a great car holiday trip to Croatia from Latvia. Then I praised Waze as a great free navigation tool.

Even Today, I mostly use a Waze car GPS navigation app for everyday use. Just to remind that the main advantages of Waze, in addition to the turn by turn street navigation, are real traffic information as congestions, police control and speed traps. All the above mentioned is provided that you have an Internet connection.

Waze is a crowded source application and all information is very close to the real-time situation. But it does not mean that you can exceed speed or make other driving violations just relying on Waze information. There are so many hidden traps or even misled by the police so better and much safer is comply with traffic regulations to avoid tickets or accidents.

So, why numbers of other car GPS navigation application, software and a dozen well-known brands spending money to develop their own car GPS navigation tools and digital products.

For car navigation, main players on the market are Garmin and TomTom.

It is no secret that today many drivers prefer to use smartphones for street navigation as it is much cheaper and very convenient solution. As I mentioned above that today driver wants to know the current situation on the road and the best way to provide such an information is the continuous internet connection.

Smartphone, no matter is it Android, iOS, Windows Phone, and Symbian operating systems can provide the following service luckily a Mobile Internet rates are getting cheaper, e.g. in Latvia unlimited internet traffic coast for me € 10 per month.

In fact, a stand-alone car GPS navigation device, in general, have better features for street navigation than smartphones. Even more, the latest models of Garmin or TomTom can be connected wirelessly with the smartphone to get an internet access but some have their own SIM card slot and could communicate with a network independently which leads to the possibility to collect online traffic and warning information.

For an extra charge, manufacturers can equip your new car with an infotainment system with many advanced features for navigation and communication. But let’s back to the topic about Sygic car GPS navigation app.

Regardless of overall good navigation solution, the Waze has some significant drawbacks for long-range navigation.

The first of all it currently can’t calculate a route which exceeds 1000 miles (1609 km) which is sometimes annoying as you need to cut the route in parts to create your next trip.

Secondly, it is lack of lane feature on the street or highway which is crucial when driving in an unknown city or high-speed highways as you can miss a next exit or intersection.

In all, Waze is a good navigational tool, and I have not encountered other shortcomings.

About a month ago I was asked to help to transit the car from Monaco to Latvia. I decided to see what new App Store offering for car navigation. I found Sygic GPS Navigation App as good and made a purchase of Europe+Traffic Lifetime Premium Licence for €13.99 luckily it has 80% discount at the moment of purchase. To be honest, it is not a new application as Sygic is the first company worldwide who offer GPS navigation for iPhone back in 2009.

What is Sygic?

Sygic is the Slovak company of global automotive navigation systems for mobile phones and tablets. It uses TomTom 2D and 3D maps. Sygic GPS Navigation offers all-around navigation solution. A user can download maps on his device and use it online or offline as well. Online mode gives you traffic information.

From Wikipedia
“Real-time traffic information is based on TomTom Traffic. Traffic information is collected from more than 400 million drivers and updated every 2 minutes. “GPS data is collected from connected personal navigation devices (PNDs), commercial fleet GPS devices, mobile phone signals, road sensors, journalistic data, smartphones and car dashboard systems.” Users do not report anything – the data is collected automatically and anonymously.”

Why I choose Sygic?

I have about ten different navigation in my navigation folder of my iPhone like ViaMichelin, Maps.me, Google maps, iMaps, BalticMaps, and some other mainly for marine navigation-related applications. I choose Sygic mainly because of TomTom maps. TomTom has his own independent cartography and I like it in many ways better than Navteq for Garmin and some other.

What is my conclusion and experience after about two thousand miles trip from French Riviera to home in Latvia? Overall conclusion-very good for car navigation as well as for hiking and train routes.

Route calculation and recalculate is very fast. The great feature is exit lane indication to keep them in time. Tunnels are showing in the 3D mode like a real picture.

Another convenient feature for route planning is a Route Planner on Sygic home page. You can play around with different stopovers or by adding waypoints. After you are happy with the ready to go route the only you have to do is send it to the phone. Very convenient.

But, unfortunately, there are some significant drawbacks because I did not use Sygic GPS navigation app as the main navigation tool on my trip.

The first one is unstable positioning and it could cause confusion and even can be dangerous while driving on high-speed highways.

What do I mean?

Sometimes your car drops to adjacent access roads. As I mentioned above Sygic software recalculate position very fast and gives you new track which is wrong (mainly forcing you to make a U-turn or so) and you easily could run into the confusion. I encountered this at least four times when driving the autobahn. Luckily, I realize this fault shortly and switched over to Waze which was on the background online mode all the time to warn me about police traps and speed cameras or accidents ahead.

As far as I used two online navigation apps I was able to compare trustworthy of traffic information. Information comes from different sources, Waze is mainly crowdsourcing but Sygic data is collected from connected personal navigation devices (PNDs), commercial fleet GPS devices, mobile phone signals, road sensors, journalistic data, smartphones, and car dashboard systems.

This competition won Waze.

Not to be said that Sygic traffic is useless and could be good enough if none, but really better info gives you Waze, although it has its own disadvantages. One of the unpleasant features of Waze is switch over to Russian voice while driving in some places of Eastern Europe countries. Luckily, I understand Russian but sometimes it could cause anxiety or confusion, even for a short time which can lead to distractive driving.

What are my final words about Sygic GPS Navigation app?

So far it is one of the best in terms of maps and route calculation. To avoid distracted driving use it in company with online Waze as the main or background GPS navigation application.

I forgot to mention some other Sygic add-on options as the Head-Up display, Dashcam, and Real View Navigation. You can check them out on the homepage just my two cents regarding them.

Sounds great but I think that none of them ever can be used in constant mode. I guess that those features are used to increase the value of the Sygic GPS Navigation App.

Have a nice and safe trip.