GPS Navigation in 2024 and Beyond – Alternatives to Garmin?

For the longest time Garmin and their Basecamp program has been the industry standard in GPS navigation and desktop route planning.

No longer.

In recent years Garmin really have not progressed in the face of alternatives in this space. I would say both in terms of hardware and software. I’ve been a Garmin fanboy for many years and rely on a Garmin Fenix watch as my EDC timepiece but sadly their GPS navigation crown looks ready to fall.

As an example of this, their route planning app Basecamp has not had any updates since March 2023 and that was simply bug fixes. There are a number of other issues with the Garmin ecosystem causing me grief:

• In 2022 I purchased a Garmin Tread to replace a Garmin Montana 680T. My main goal was a bigger and brighter screen and the promise of the Group Ride function was attractive to me. Reality is the user experience has not been amazing.
• Difficulties with connecting the Tread device which is based on Android software to my Mac laptop. Connecting the GPS via USB cable is extremely slow so instead of doing this old school method I have resorted to exporting a .gpx file from Basecamp then importing that .gpx file in Garmin Explore on their website. When I start the Tread it will then download the files via wifi or phone link. It works well in one way but it’s a process.
• When planning routes lately in Basecamp I have had more and more issues with routes not calculating properly and causing errors using their own City Navigator maps. Other 3rd party maps work fine!
• Garmin seem to have an assortment of apps now that overlap in functionality and just confuses the end user. Explore, Tread, Earthmate, Messenger are four apps that I can think of and some of them do similar tasks so it has become really confusing.
• My last ride was a recce on South Coast of NSW and I ran my usual setup with Tread GPS up high on the DesertX dashboard with either Gaia or OsmAnd running on my iPhone on a Quadlock mount on lower down on the handlebars. Interestingly I found myself looking at the comparatively smaller iPhone screen more often and relying on that rather than the dedicated GPS.

So I’ve made the decision to go ditch the Garmin eco-system and go to a tablet.  I’ve found myself using my more intelligent iPhone more and more for navigation so I will no longer resist. There are now some viable alternatives on the market for tablets as navigation devices.

Advantages of Tablet

The advantages of using a tablet for navigation are many:

• Internet connectivity
• Use different apps for different purposes other than just navigation. For example we use WhatsApp for group messaging and Life360 during our events so I can have that info displayed.
• Choices in navigation apps
• Option to connect OBD dongle to your bike for reading data

The list goes on frankly.

One of the biggest hesitations may be stability or maturity of the software but frankly Garmin is not foolproof in this regard and certainly companies like DMD or MRA are way more progressive.

Which Tablet?

You could realistically run any Android phone or tablet or for that matter an iPhone or iPad as your nav device but I want something reliable so will go for either the more established Carpe Iter or Drive Mode Dashboard dedicated tablets.

The Carpe Iter tablet was my first consideration but I’m not sure now. The screen is brighter but the unit is heavier.

Frankly I feel DMD (Drive Mode Dashboard) seems to be more active in developing.

The DMD2 from Thork Racing is leading the charge at the moment. Maybe some say according to specs the screen isn’t as bright as others but in practice haven’t found this to be an issue.

Here are some of the tech spec differences against my Garmin Tread as reference.

There is way more to it than just these spec differences but they were some key considerations.

Changing to a device with internet connectivity brings heaps of benefits:

• Can plan, share and download routes on it more easily
• Can use Google Maps to accurately and easily find fuel stations etc.
• Use a bunch of other useful apps such as weather, Life360 etc.

Now Garmin may counter by saying with their later units, like Zumo XT and Tread, being able to bluetooth to your phone and sync some route data via their Explore app but it’s just not the same and you can’t browse the web on your GPS.

Mounts and Accessories

One drawback to having a larger screen is a potential lack of real estate to mount the tablet. This will require some tweaking.

Some other bits I’m keen to add on which tablets can make use of include:

• Handlebar mounted controller to zoom and pan around on the map screen
• OBD dongle that can connect to bike and read data. I’m most interested in this from the troubleshooting point of view in that I could also install some OBD scanner software on the tablet and look up fault codes or potentially reset service light etc.

Navigation Apps

Going hand in hand with a change from navigation device choice is the choice of app to navigate my routes or tracks with once I have a tablet on the bike. The ideal scenario will be the same app is used for desktop planning and on bike navigation but maybe that nirvana doesn’t exist yet?

Navigation apps to consider are:

• DMD – comes preloaded on the DMD tablet and development appears to be constant and rapid
• Gaia GPS – I already use it on my iPhone, heaps of track info, great for off-road
• OsmAnd – pretty good to use, works on both IOS and Android
• MRA (My Route App) Navigation – this looks interesting, similar to Google Maps for on road navigation but their route planning looks smart and promising

I’ve got a couple of key criteria when it comes to navigation apps:

• Must be able to display multiple Tracks on screen at once and control their display colour what can and can’t be seen – ie. an Adventure and Enduro track option for the same day but not other days of a tour.
• Syncs with the cloud / internet
• A good data management structure
• Multiple map layers easily visible
• Dynamic routing is not as important to me because usually I’m following a Track line

So I will make my decision shortly about buying a tablet and I hope to get it and use it a little before we head to Europe in late June 2024 for our tours.

I’ll report back about what decisions I’ve made and how it works out. Could be frustrating or enlightening!

*Update August 2024

I’ve just returned from running two tours in Europe where I tested out four new pieces of technology:

• DMD2 T865 tablet
• Silverfox H1 controller
• DMD2 navigation app
• My Route Planner

I bit the bullet just before heading to Europe and bought a DMD-T865 tablet plus a Silverfox H1 bluetooth controller. It was daunting and a little risky to be heading into multiple weeks of navigation on the road with a new to me device but it worked out well.

This is my initial experience:

I mostly used My Route App as the daily navigation app. I also had Gaia running on my iPhone as my 2nd backup and reference.

I also used the MRA app for Route Planning using this sequence:

• I had the original route plans created in Basecamp and then imported them into MRA as routes
• There was a little double checking and cleaning up of the route plans to be done in MRA but it did most of the conversion really well
• One of the great aspects of MRA is how easy it was to share the route plan with other riders that were using MRA as well. In the mornings I could make changes to the route plan on my phone at breakfast, save the new new plan, import it into the ride group I had setup, then each rider could follow the same updated route plan and there was guaranteed consistency across each rider.
• If we missed / bypassed a waypoint every rider in the group would be seeing the same route calculation so over intercom I could say “Skip ahead to waypoint 5” and each rider would be in sync.
• The turn-by-turn instructions were accurate and detailed (very similar to Google Maps) which made it a lot easier to navigate at Italian autostrada spaghetti junctions!
• The map screen is clear with little clutter but I would say they could use more colours to help differentiate info. It has a blue theme where I think they could for use other colours more, like red, to highlight warnings.

So really impressed and happy with this initial experience of switching to a tablet. Look out for a full review of the DMD T865 tablet in the future.