Opinions and prior experience appreciated:
What is easier and most helpful while driving in Ireland? To rent a garmin with our car rental is $14/day. Or, should we just our phone, upload our routes while on wifi the night before our travel, and just use our phone?
All thoughts will be appreciated. We leave this Friday for Amsterdam, then off to Ireland.
Thanks All!
We uploaded Europe maps to our Garmin and took it. We used a Collins atlas in conjunction. The paper map was very helpful on little tiny back roads.
I've used both Garmin and Google maps. I've even run both simultaneously to compare them (in Spain and Portugal) and found little or no difference in routing. I've also tested Google off line locally and it works well. I'm about to drive through Sardinia and Corsica and I'm only taking my phone. Google doesn't give lane advice and off line doesn't show traffic info. I would not pay $14 a day for a GPS. Use your phone and get a good road map of Ireland.
As navigator for our trips, I did a "test drive" in Scotland this summer, comparing my phone with Google and the GPS in the car (didn't manage to get the European maps ready on our own Garmin). What I found: Google DID give me verbal navigation offline and it was dependable, but it was a bit slower. As mentioned it was not as good about giving lane directions, although it was ok on roundabouts. The car's GPS was excellent at giving clear directions but you can't preview the route easily the night before and there are often ways it works that take a bit of time to figure out. Having done my comparison, I would feel good about just using Google maps with good preparation and preview before driving. (I also do some street view ahead of time, but am not a paper maps person.)
Our rental car had navigation built in which was nice as we did not have to pay extra for it.... we also used our phone like others have said and noticed very little difference.
To save $14 a day , I would use your phone.
$14 per day buys a whole lotta data, and on a device you are already familiar with.
I used Google Maps on my phone and downloaded them before I left so I could use them while offline and driving. This worked well, and I could update using the Wifi each night at my B&B, guesthouse, ect.
If you use your phone, make sure you have a car charger for the phone. Using Google to navigate burns up battery time quickly.
Also, make sure the rental car charger works before you leave the rental lot. Some of them don't.
If you have a Garmin GPS with North American maps and just need European maps without spending a bundle, I posted a method to get free (legal, open-source) maps for any region for a Garmin.
Here: https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/tech-tips/how-to-get-free-garmin-gps-maps-for-europe
I used these maps pretty much exclusively for a two-week trip to Ireland at the end of August/beginning of September. I noticed that every goat path and hedgerow seemed to be marked on the maps but it never attempted to route me down any of those. I did end up going down some single-track roads that i wasn't expecting but that's pretty standard in Ireland.
Thank you for your responses. I think you all helped me confirm my original thought of using my phone and have a good map!
