Garmin GPS with Europe maps, Google map download or Maps.me downloaded maps?

I've done both the Garmin GPS with Europe Maps and the Google Maps offline with my Android phone.

Google Maps offline isn't perfect, but it works. I found a few times (driving around Slovenia last month) that it would occasionally give an error "unable to load map" but keep navigating (and talking). If I hit the "back" button would would resume from where it left off.

I had data on my phone - super cheap to get a SIM, really, so this should be an option too, unless you have an AT&T phone that can't be unlocked - but I was saving data with my phone in airplane mode while I was driving. I did turn data on a few times. Google Maps does work a little better that way, but without data, I would have survived and not have gotten lost.

I used a real Garmin GPS a few years ago driving in Croatia and Bosnia. It worked OK, but maps were sometimes out of date, even though I supposedly had the latest Europe map. I sold my Garmin once I realized how much more advanced Google Maps is on my phone.

If you want to see how your iPhone works with Google Maps offline or Maps.me offline (haven't used that one), try it at home. Download the map for the area where you live, put your phone into airplane mode, and try to navigate somewhere and see how it works.

In May we rented a car for travel in Spain and France. I wanted to experiment a little, as I've never really gotten Google maps to work well for me offline (not that I tried real hard). I couldn't get the addresses that I added to Google maps to show offline (apparently it's an issue, as I found doing online research). So I started, before the trip, with maps.me. I added all of the hotels, restaurants, etc. that I wanted before we left.

So I used paper maps, our tom tom GPS and maps.me (offline). The paper map was good for a high-level view of a large area, and also to locate scenic roads; though even the large-scale (small-scale?) paper map that we had didn't show all the detail that the electronic devices did. The GPS and maps.me on my Android phone had different pluses and minuses. Tomi (as we call her) had more detailed verbal directions, but it's hard to make it show very far down the road. On the maps.me verbal directions, they weren't as detailed, but it was much easier to to manipulate the view. I was easily able to add addresses and locations during the trip, which I tried to do only when I had Wi-Fi. I did have a data plan, which I used sparingly if I had to locate somewhere while we were on the road.

Lexma, I wonder what kind of problem you had with Google Maps offline. You mean, tried to add places ahead of time to the offline map (hotels, etc.)? I didn't try that - I used it only to go to random places as I was driving: type in a town where I wanted to go next and it would work for that.

We used google maps to drive from Varenna in Lake Como to the Dolomites and then return our car to Venice . Just type in where you want to go. We will be relying on that for our 6 day Tuscany drive so hopefully that will work out also. Good luck. Have a nice holiday. We are in cinque Terre at the moment, picking our rental car in Pisa in a couple,of days time then to our base in Monteriggioni Tuscany

Doesn't anyone use Waze yet? Everyone here does (except me). I'm told you can plan and download routes using wifi. They have the most up-to-date info always.

I used Google Maps offline maps on an iPhone in France in September 2016 with good success. The only challenge was the drive from Paris to Beaune, where I loaded the airport area map and the Beaune map, but not all the area between. For later trips I made sure to get the full area between the two cities.