What is the best GPS Traffic Receiver?
April 26, 2015 2:17 PM   Subscribe

My husband drives a Tractor Trailer. He has a Rand McNally TND 510, he bought a accessory for it - a Real Time Traffic Receiver that uses FM Radio Stations that currently uses 98 cities in the USA. He is disappointed in it, it doesn't seem to help him in traffic like he had hoped. What other GPS units would work better, if any, regarding traffic?
posted by just asking to Travel & Transportation (11 answers total)
 
A smartphone with Waze.
posted by kindall at 2:24 PM on April 26, 2015 [7 favorites]


+1 for Waze. My car has a traffic receiver in its built in nav system, and I also have a standalone Garmin gps with traffic, and neither comes close to the accuracy I get from Waze. Especially the speed with which incidents and slowdowns are reported. Which is kind of a bummer because I find Waze pretty annoying to use. But the traffic data is better than anything else I've found.
posted by primethyme at 2:40 PM on April 26, 2015


Response by poster: Well, he doesn't have a smart phone, so Waze is out. Any other suggestions?
posted by just asking at 2:46 PM on April 26, 2015


Waze is really the best -- so maybe the question should be what's the cheapest, easiest way to get a smart-ish phone to be able to run it?
posted by BlahLaLa at 4:00 PM on April 26, 2015 [2 favorites]


nthing Waze
posted by zippy at 4:39 PM on April 26, 2015


Response by poster: Sadly - my husband isn't going to be getting a smart phone. I guess my question is - are all GPS units with traffic feature the same as the Real Time Traffic Receiver - as in utilizing FM Radio Stations in 98 cities?
posted by just asking at 4:50 PM on April 26, 2015


How would he feel about an iPad mini with 3G and waze/google maps installed? This can be dash mounted and serve as GPS and traffic info.
I can't imagine that any radio stations would have anywhere near the amount of info that the new smart phone apps have.
posted by saradarlin at 8:47 PM on April 26, 2015


Yeah, figuring out a way for him to use Waze is gonna be your best bet.
posted by MexicanYenta at 9:03 PM on April 26, 2015


I hate Waze in so many ways, but it really is the best for this. You can get an unlocked no contract Moto G for under $200 and enough data to make it useful for around $30 a month on Cricket or an at&t MVNO. Moto E is even cheaper and will also run Waze but wouldn't be great for multitasking. Go for the G if you can make it fit in the budget.

You won't need more than 250MB of data at most if you only use cellular data for Waze. I used around 60MB on Waze last month, which included around 4 hours a day of driving with Waze active.
posted by wierdo at 9:21 PM on April 26, 2015


I should mention that Waze does not handle the necessary routing restrictions for trucks like Copilot and a few others do, but other than Google Maps it's the only one with traffic handling that I consider good. Google is OK, but Waze is far better. Point being that he should not rely on its automated rerouting without thinking carefully about what it is telling him to do. It will route you along narrow residential streets and through tight corners when traffic is bad.
posted by wierdo at 9:25 PM on April 26, 2015


If he won't join the 21st century, maybe you'd want to show him a 3G/4G enabled tablet running Waze... Just told him it's a new gen GPS. :D
posted by kschang at 10:13 AM on April 28, 2015


« Older Vegan Portlandia Restaurants With Available Fart...   |   Corner Bakery's Vegetable Dip Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.