Sygic - 1 week free trial (premium traffic and navigation) and heavy discount

If anyone fancies trying it Sygic for Android (possibly Windows or iOS - I've not checked) currently has a free trial of their full premium product including traffic from Tomtom.

What also seems a bit of a bargain is they have their Premium + Lifetime Traffic version discounted until the 15th of Jan. I think that's £19.99 for Europe or £24.99 for worldwide (23.99 & 29.99 in Euros).

Given it's the same traffic as Tomtom and Magic Earth Pro, that's a bit of a bargain for someone who will use it in the long term.

I've started my trial and it's vastly improved since last time I tried Sygic (the routing used to be terrible but looks far more sensible now). The ETAs it gives are perhaps a little over-optimistic comparedt to Tomtom, Google and Magic Earth (which are all pretty close) but otherwise., based on first impressions of this version, I'm impressed. Like Magic Earth it detects traffic a long way away, unlike Tomtom Go itself which uses a radius of about 80 miles - so it has potential to be better for longer journeys than Tomtom + Google (neither of which accounts for distant traffic).

For any existing Sygic users - I'm very interested to know how it behaves if it detects a faster route during your journey. Does it change over hands free or does it require a screen press? If it's completely hands free I'll probably purchase it (Edit: Sadly, I 've just tested a route through a know jam while it expired and it informs you about the faster route but doesn't select it automatically. Does the alternative route display on screen when you drive past like in Google maps?)

Of late Tomtom Go and Magic Earth have been a bit flakey so I'm considering alternatives. Tomtom's been missing traffic incidents that are present in its own info and Magic Earth has never been quite right since they changed it from Route 66 Navigate - they seem to be going through cycles of breaking and fixing features with every update. If there's one thing you need a nav app to be it's predictable and reliable.

- If anyone is wondering why I pay to use these apps instead of Google / Waze - they use far less data and Tomtom's traffic info (in all 3 apps) is still ahead of the others (although Google and Waze have made vast improvments over the last couple of years)

been using Google Maps for my Sat Nav Duties but interested in this, may give it a go.

thanks for the heads up

I see it allows sound off or alerts only.

Given it's long-range traffic detection ability, I'm quite tempted to run this in the foreground with sound on Alerts Alerts only and Tomtom in the background for voice directions (it works on my Galaxy Alpha but I guess it could be a struggle on lesser specced phones)

That would work around the no automatic redirection issue in Sygic (tomtom reroutes automatically when running in the background) but still allow me to see the Traffic incidents that currently aren't making it into Tomtom Go.

By the way - I often run different nav apps concurrently to compare routing, traffic avoidance behaviour etc. For some reason Google Maps has been having positioning problems when running alongside other navigation software recently but most of them play nicely together. Being able to turn the sounds on and off in app is handy for that. It avoids the 'two women arguing' effect.

I bought this ages ago as I prefer TomTom mapping but it ran terribly on my Moto X Play so I switched back to Co-Pilot which runs really well. Shame really as the interface and mapping did look better.

How long ago? It's had an interface change since last time I saw it. If the routes were in purple last time you saw it, it's had a complete overhaul.

Runs very smoothly on my Galaxy Alpha, even with a 2nd nav app running in the background.

Edit: The makers of Magic Earth Pro replied to my query about it not always picking the fastest route. They apparently have a trade off between time saving and length of detour. They explain - if travel time difference is more than 5 minutes the fastest route will be selected. If the difference is less than 5 minutes, it will factor in the length of the journey at an assumed standard speed to avoid big detours. I can see the benefit of this because it used to do odd things like diverting off congested motorways onto slip roads and back. Hopefully that should solve it.

does the trial have Live Traffic updates too?

had it for ages, i find the ui quite poor for somethings searching for places, adding favourites, but overall like it. What really annoyed me the other week was that there was a load fo roads closed that google knew about but presumably tom tom doesn't (I assume it pulls tom tom live data as well as maps) and was just a night mare, but also shows why i dont like google, no phone reception so couldn't switch to google maps.

however i do love the decent size button that pops up for rerouting if traffic jam ahead, or find car park when your near destination.

It frustrates me enormously that neither Google nor Tomtom seems to have a comprehensive live database of road closures. It's a lottery based on where you are in the country, and which local authority you're dealing with as to how complete local road closures are (it's usually not bad for the Highways England strategic road network but Tomtom update in a more timely fashion for that and Google has a nasty habit of blindly ignoring road closures until you're right upon them).

Tomtom (and hence, Sygic and Magic Earth Pro too) recently started getting road closure info from Elgin / roadworks.org but there's a bit of a bug in the system in that if they have a road closure on a local authority controlled road, it will often only show in one direction when both directions are actually closed. I've had a good complain to Tomtom about this but no sign of them fixing it. Google and Waze also get roadworks.org data but the implementation of it is really inconsistent. Often you'll see text about a road being closed but you won't be routed around it.

lmfy2k said:

does the trial have Live Traffic updates too?

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Yes.

im travelling tomorrow and will give this a try instead of using Google Maps

are the speed camera alerts accurate?

lmfy2k said:

im travelling tomorrow and will give this a try instead of using Google Maps

are the speed camera alerts accurate?

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The database is the same as Tomtom's, which is pretty accurate. Tomtom Go has a better implementation for average speed zones and it will measure your average speed when in them.

A nice thing about Sygic is you can select your own sound (including setting a text to speech message) for traffic, speed cameras, sharp turns and the speed limit warning (which you can alter the threshold for separately for urban and extra urban areas). So if you want it to say "******* hell - hit the brakes!" when you're 20mph over the speed limit, you can tell it to.

Edit: Just for an experiment I have Sygic and Magic Earth Pro apps currently running on my phone through a traffic congested area - Tomtom and Google have the same route planned running in a browser on the PC.

Sygic's arrival time is ludicrously optimistic - about 10 minutes quicker than the others for a similar route. I suspect their maps lack Tomtom's historic average speed profiles. Sygic tells you when faster routes are available but you need to select them via 2 screen taps.

Magic Earth Pro has an irritating habit of telling you repeatedly a faster route is available but not switching to it if it's a longer route less than 5 minutes faster than the current route. Confusingly it shows you the routes but doesn't select them while they're on screen (it gives you 20 seconds to tap on them, when first announced. It will then randomly reroute with just a brief 'calculating' message on screen and no audible warning (presumably this happens automatically if a time saving greater than 5 minutes or a route that is both shorter and faster is available).

From previous experience Tomtom Go (if set to automatic) constantly checks for the fastest route and always tries to stay on it. It doesn't warn about re-routing, which can be confusing if it changes its mind after voice directions have been given. Tomtom also has options for button pressing and 'decide by steering', when it gives a 'ping' to indicate a faster route is available but then shows you the alternative route on screen as a green line navigation view.

You'll all be familiar with Google, which shows alternative routes in grey during navigation and informs you via audio if a faster route is available.

Thanks for the info mate. Will test it out tomorrow. ( Manchester to Bedford)

Uriel said:

Sygic's arrival time is ludicrously optimistic - about 10 minutes quicker than the others for a similar route. I suspect their maps lack Tomtom's historic average speed profiles. Sygic tells you when faster routes are available but you need to select them via 2 screen taps.

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oh yes that is a pain, if you stick to the speedlimit the estimated time works, obvious thats not accurate.

is there any that has everything? decent estimated time, live traffic, full uk map downloads so no internet required. Shows 3 route options, rerouting for the live traffic etc.

Glaucus said:

oh yes that is a pain, if you stick to the speedlimit the estimated time works, obvious thats not accurate.

is there any that has everything? decent estimated time, live traffic, full uk map downloads so no internet required. Shows 3 route options, rerouting for the live traffic etc.

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Tomtom Go has all those.

Unfortunately there's currently a bug where some traffic events (you can see then in MyDrive.tomtom.com) don't make it into the app. Hopefully it'll be fixed soon. Similar things have happened before when there's a mismatch in map version between the current app and TT's traffic server. Hopefully a map release or app update will sort it out soon.

Magic Earth Pro also has all of them. It used to be consistently brilliant but the developers changed the name from Route 66 Navigate in the summer and since then the quality of updates has been up and down like a yoyo. The first Magic Earth Pro release was terrible. They're nearly back to being as good as Route 66 was but my current annoyance is it keeps nagging you about marginally faster routes (less than 5 minutes) without automatically switching. Back when it was Route 66 the behaviour was more obvious and it would just pick the fastest route identified all the time (but that did sometimes lead to very pointless minor detours - so I can see why they've made the change).

Basically - of the two - Tomtom Go (when fully functional) is better for journeys less than 40 minutes. It reacts instantly to a changing traffic situation and usually provides me with the clearest routes but it disregards traffic jams greater than 40 minutes away and the furtherst closure information is about 80 miles from your location. Magic Earth Pro is better for journeys longer than 40 minutes. It takes traffic jams and road closures into account for the length of any sensible journey in this country. You'll hit sea in any direction before the traffic info runs out.

Tomtom Go and Magic Earth Pro both seem to estimate a high proportion of my journey times to within minutes of the actual driving time (although I'm not the world's fastest driver and for Tomtom Go - this obviously only applies to within it's traffic horizon radius).

The main disadvantage all these Tomtom based solutions (TT Go, Magic Earth Pro, Sygic) have is that map updates are still quarterly at best. By contrast Google and Waze usually have the maps updated within a few days to weeks of a change being made on the ground.

Uriel said:

How long ago? It's had an interface change since last time I saw it. If the routes were in purple last time you saw it, it's had a complete overhaul.

Runs very smoothly on my Galaxy Alpha, even with a 2nd nav app running in the background.

Edit: The makers of Magic Earth Pro replied to my query about it not always picking the fastest route. They apparently have a trade off between time saving and length of detour. They explain - if travel time difference is more than 5 minutes the fastest route will be selected. If the difference is less than 5 minutes, it will factor in the length of the journey at an assumed standard speed to avoid big detours. I can see the benefit of this because it used to do odd things like diverting off congested motorways onto slip roads and back. Hopefully that should solve it.

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It was only a few months ago, might have to try it again but it really ran badly. The only reason I uninstalled it.

Tried this last night on my commute home, tbh seems like the display is congested with so much information it's quite difficult to locate key information when you glance over at it.

I'll make use of the 1 week premium trial but don't see myself paying for it.

I asked Sygic customer support about fully automated, hands free, redirection around traffic. They indicate that it's under consideration for the future but that they don't have a timescale.

I'm leaning towards not purchasing it too. It won't replace Tomtom Go or Magic Earth Pro as my primary nav app given its current feature set. I've bought apps based on promised features that were never delivered before and don't intend to do so again.

On my commute this morning I spotted some routing problems. I'm about 90% sure that it doesn't have Tomtom's speed profiles data in the maps and seems to have some very low turn time penalties as well. Routing speed estimates are almost certainly based on speed limits not measured historic speeds. If the speed limits are wrong it messes up the routing too (there's a 30mph road that it incorrectly has as 60 and it always picks it over an adjacent slightly shorter alternative that the other apps all go for.

Another weird thing is I had my phone connected via BT to the car, everytime I had a notification it initiated a phone call for some reason to provide the instructions, not sure if this is the app or the cars BT implementation.

ph0 said:

Another weird thing is I had my phone connected via BT to the car, everytime I had a notification it initiated a phone call for some reason to provide the instructions, not sure if this is the app or the cars BT implementation.

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Try going into Menu > Settings > Notification and Sounds > bluetooth.

You can select between:
- Always play on phone speaker (experimental)
- Play over bluetooth
- Play as bluetooth phone call

Uriel said:

Try going into Menu > Settings > Notification and Sounds > bluetooth.

You can select between:
- Always play on phone speaker (experimental)
- Play over bluetooth
- Play as bluetooth phone call

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Ah! Cheers I'll give it another try tonight.

We've been through this many times

This simply does not beat Google Nav or Waze.