Traffic App - INRIX vs CoPilot vs Waze...

[havoc]

I need a traffic app to help with the new commute. Googling throws up the 3 above as likely contenders, but has anyone any first-hand experience? PH search has just gone down too, so that's not going to help...

- INRIX is newly improved and getting good reviews, and is free, but is apparently a battery-hog now.
- CoPilot is £20 (£35?), and seems to come high in all the tests.
- Waze is also free and seems like an interesting idea, but getting mixed reports on accuracy.

Finally, Google maps appears to have traffic too...is that any good?

I've got a TomTom with nav and cameras, but I can't add traffic to it and given the hassle of TomTom's 'new' PC interface, I really don't want to go giving them any more money right now.

So nav is less important than accurate traffic prediction...

Thanks,

Martin.

[havoc]

OK, quick update.

I've been using INRIX for over a week:-
- It does drain the battery to a degree (~50-60min commute each way, so probably 1hr 45min use or so each day), but with mild use at work (I'm busy enough that's all I need to use), I only need to recharge overnight.
- In 7-8 working days (12-15hrs use) it's soaked up <100Mb of data, so it's not a big drain on my contract.
- It's not 100% accurate in flagging up traffic, but IS pretty reliable...>90% hit-rate on jams and >80% accuracy.
- The interface is pretty good and intuitive.
- The route-planning can be annoying if you know a better route - rather than telling you to turn around, and then after that reasonably quickly recalibrating (like the TomTom system does), it flicks the display upside-down/right-way-up repeatedly while on and on telling you to "take the next left in 100yds", "take the next left in 200yds"... (i.e. the right turn you didn't take because of the queue). "Nagging" is a good description.

So I'm currently using TomTom for nav/route timings and for Camera Alerts (PGPSW database), and the INRIX for traffic. Which with the visors down in the sun right now is impacting a little on visibility...need to think what to do about that, might 'hide' the TomTom behind a visor and turn the volume up for the Camera alerts.

Might swap to Waze in a bit, see how that compares...

[havoc]

Jody - INRIX's default is north-upwards.

[havoc]

I'm now running waze on the company iPhone and have back-to-backed it with INRIX for both journeys today:-

- Don't like auto-zoom on Waze - it's speed-sensitive so you lose the ability to look-ahead when you're approaching junctions / stationary (which typically is when you've the most time to look). Which means you need to pinch-zoom to change it...not as easy on the move as just pressing a +/- button.
- 3D feels like a good nav function but not for traffic.
- Waze was better for in-town traffic reporting but notably worse for open-road traffic reporting. On the way home it completely failed to tell me about the traffic around the Evesham bypass (always there) until after I'd driven through it.
- Waze looks to have more functionality and a more 'fun' interface, but also seems more difficult to interpret at-a-glance - it feels like a typical Millenials-app, while INRIX feels more tailored-to-purpose.

Anyway, that's just 1 day data - will keep comparing them.

[havoc]

I know to expect it now...just found it interesting that Waze doesn't tell you about it. Didn't this morning either...

[havoc]

motco said:

havoc said:

I know to expect it now...just found it interesting that Waze doesn't tell you about it. Didn't this morning either...

Did you report it? If not, and nobody else did, how would it know? That's how it works.

Interesting - didn't realise. INRIX is linked to a lot of the OEM navs and automatically pulls traffic speed data from them. So I sort-of expected Waze to be an automatic 2-way communication, rather than a manual 'flag'...