My experiences with the Road Angel 9000 - Full Review
Discussion
PLEASE NOTE: THESE ARE MY OWN EXPERIENCES OF THIS UNIT, MAYBE UNITS DIFFER FROM EACH OTHER BUT I SHALL ONLY COMMENT ON MY OWN ONE.
Well, I would like to tell you my experiences with the new Road Angel 9000. I have a history of Road Angels, happily owning an original Road Angel, currently owning a 'New Road Angel', briefly owning a Road Angel Navigator and even more briefly owning a Road Angel Naviagtor 7000.
The build quality of the 9000 is superb and the unit itself looks very smart indeed. A lovely big screen with ultra clear graphics and bright colours. It has a built in Sim card on the Orange Network that allows itself to constantly update all its speed camera info, road info, traffic info and even weather info! Thats unfortunatley where the positive remarks end for me.
The first test that I put this 9000 to was to check out how accurately it measured my speed (mph). This is its first disappointment for me. There is a lag of about 5-6 seconds (which might not sound like much, but really is) before it can keep up with exactly what speed you are doing. Let me explain. If I am doing 30 mph and quickly accelarate to 50 mph, I will look at the screen and it still wont have picked up my new increased speed until about 5-6 seconds later. Similarly, if I pull to a halt, my 9000 would still show about 10mph, for a period of time before it would then register 0 mph. This is clearly not readjusting itself quick enough. My 'New Road Angel' which is the oval unit that is purely a spped camera detector reacts amazingly quickly to speed change with a lag of only 1-2 seconds. In my opinion, the 9000 therefore cannot be relied on if you suddenly find yourself at a speed camera site and need to know exactly what speed you are doing. By the way, I have since tested a TomTom One XL which is as good at keeping up with speed measurement as my old 'New Road Angel'.
The speed camera graphics, mph display, map display etc are superb however. You cant miss a thing. The volume of the speed camera warning tones could be louder though.
My next real source of aggrivation was the Sat Nav part. Entering details is as simple as any other Sat Nav - extremely intuitive, but again thats where the positive comments end. Its first test was to get me from Hammersmith to Oxford Street. This must be such an easy route for it being that Oxford Street is the most famous street in the UK. Immediately, it failed by telling me to head towards Ealing, the exact opposite direction from Central London. I humoured it, just in case it had a secret plan up its sleeve...but it didnt. It actually got it wrong!! Very annoyed, I decided that I will direct myself to the A40 flyover and get into Central London that way. The 9000 did a very quick re-route for me and saw what I was planning. The next problem however was that it didnt know that I was on the flyover - it thought I was on the road below which was Harrow Road. So when you are on a motorway at 60mph and it asks you to turn an immediate right, you know there is a problem!! With the 9000 not being able to register where I was, it actually gave up directing me and just started monitoring where I was going instead. Could not believe it - the unit had literally got fed up with me making (what was in its opinion) mistakes.
Now to my most frustrating experience...! I bought this 9000 as an upgrade from my old 'New Road Angel' speed camera detector as I wanted a good Sat Nav as well. The reason I paid £429 for this unit was also that it had this inbuilt traffic information service which sounded incredible. The unit gets constantly updated with traffic info etc and sends it to your unit so that you can avoid the bad areas, or else the Sat Nav can actually re-route you around them. Great in theory, terrible in practice! I got my first traffic warning as I entered the Marylebone Road. It warned of a lane closure in Maida Vale. I wasnt that near to Maida Vale so im not sure i needed to know that at this point. When a traffic warning comes on screen, it audibly says 'Traffic Warning' and then displays on the screen more info about what and where it is. The problem is that as it updates itself so often, it keeps saying the same warning over and over again! In the space of about 10-15 seconds it said 'traffic warning' about 5 times which drove me crazy!! It was so interruptive and was just telling me the same info again and again. I was hpoing that there would be a way to accept the info so it wouldnt need to tell you again, but this is not an option. You cant even silence the audible traffic alerts - its either tarffic alerts on or off! The same thing happens when you enter the Congestion Charge Zone, road after road you get 'Congestion Charge Zone' audibly through the speaker. At this point, I wanted to smash my unit through the windscreen!!! I restrained myself and switched off the device and never turned it on again. I returned it to the retailer the same day.
As a point of interest, I called Road Angel who were so helpful and responsive. I explained the traffic alert problem and they told me that due to the unit constantly updating itself and getting info fed to it, there is no way to stop these repeat messages from happening. In my opinion this renders this possibly great feature useless!
I am sorry to sound so negative in this review but these are my own experiences with the Road Angel 9000. It makes me very angry when a company releases a unit thats so much more expensive than just about anything else in its class and its clear that it has not been tested properly. I feel cheated that I had to test this 9000 myself and easily discover 3 very apparent and important flaws that in my opinion make this machine not usuable for its purpose. Surely someone must have tested this prior to release and seen these glaring faults??
I have now decided to keep my 'New Road Angel' speed camera detector (cant recommend this unit enough - its fantastic in every respect - http://www.blackspot.com/products/newroadangel/ind... ) and also buy either the TomTom 720 with traffic alerts or the Garmin Nuvi 660.
Well, I would like to tell you my experiences with the new Road Angel 9000. I have a history of Road Angels, happily owning an original Road Angel, currently owning a 'New Road Angel', briefly owning a Road Angel Navigator and even more briefly owning a Road Angel Naviagtor 7000.
The build quality of the 9000 is superb and the unit itself looks very smart indeed. A lovely big screen with ultra clear graphics and bright colours. It has a built in Sim card on the Orange Network that allows itself to constantly update all its speed camera info, road info, traffic info and even weather info! Thats unfortunatley where the positive remarks end for me.
The first test that I put this 9000 to was to check out how accurately it measured my speed (mph). This is its first disappointment for me. There is a lag of about 5-6 seconds (which might not sound like much, but really is) before it can keep up with exactly what speed you are doing. Let me explain. If I am doing 30 mph and quickly accelarate to 50 mph, I will look at the screen and it still wont have picked up my new increased speed until about 5-6 seconds later. Similarly, if I pull to a halt, my 9000 would still show about 10mph, for a period of time before it would then register 0 mph. This is clearly not readjusting itself quick enough. My 'New Road Angel' which is the oval unit that is purely a spped camera detector reacts amazingly quickly to speed change with a lag of only 1-2 seconds. In my opinion, the 9000 therefore cannot be relied on if you suddenly find yourself at a speed camera site and need to know exactly what speed you are doing. By the way, I have since tested a TomTom One XL which is as good at keeping up with speed measurement as my old 'New Road Angel'.
The speed camera graphics, mph display, map display etc are superb however. You cant miss a thing. The volume of the speed camera warning tones could be louder though.
My next real source of aggrivation was the Sat Nav part. Entering details is as simple as any other Sat Nav - extremely intuitive, but again thats where the positive comments end. Its first test was to get me from Hammersmith to Oxford Street. This must be such an easy route for it being that Oxford Street is the most famous street in the UK. Immediately, it failed by telling me to head towards Ealing, the exact opposite direction from Central London. I humoured it, just in case it had a secret plan up its sleeve...but it didnt. It actually got it wrong!! Very annoyed, I decided that I will direct myself to the A40 flyover and get into Central London that way. The 9000 did a very quick re-route for me and saw what I was planning. The next problem however was that it didnt know that I was on the flyover - it thought I was on the road below which was Harrow Road. So when you are on a motorway at 60mph and it asks you to turn an immediate right, you know there is a problem!! With the 9000 not being able to register where I was, it actually gave up directing me and just started monitoring where I was going instead. Could not believe it - the unit had literally got fed up with me making (what was in its opinion) mistakes.
Now to my most frustrating experience...! I bought this 9000 as an upgrade from my old 'New Road Angel' speed camera detector as I wanted a good Sat Nav as well. The reason I paid £429 for this unit was also that it had this inbuilt traffic information service which sounded incredible. The unit gets constantly updated with traffic info etc and sends it to your unit so that you can avoid the bad areas, or else the Sat Nav can actually re-route you around them. Great in theory, terrible in practice! I got my first traffic warning as I entered the Marylebone Road. It warned of a lane closure in Maida Vale. I wasnt that near to Maida Vale so im not sure i needed to know that at this point. When a traffic warning comes on screen, it audibly says 'Traffic Warning' and then displays on the screen more info about what and where it is. The problem is that as it updates itself so often, it keeps saying the same warning over and over again! In the space of about 10-15 seconds it said 'traffic warning' about 5 times which drove me crazy!! It was so interruptive and was just telling me the same info again and again. I was hpoing that there would be a way to accept the info so it wouldnt need to tell you again, but this is not an option. You cant even silence the audible traffic alerts - its either tarffic alerts on or off! The same thing happens when you enter the Congestion Charge Zone, road after road you get 'Congestion Charge Zone' audibly through the speaker. At this point, I wanted to smash my unit through the windscreen!!! I restrained myself and switched off the device and never turned it on again. I returned it to the retailer the same day.
As a point of interest, I called Road Angel who were so helpful and responsive. I explained the traffic alert problem and they told me that due to the unit constantly updating itself and getting info fed to it, there is no way to stop these repeat messages from happening. In my opinion this renders this possibly great feature useless!
I am sorry to sound so negative in this review but these are my own experiences with the Road Angel 9000. It makes me very angry when a company releases a unit thats so much more expensive than just about anything else in its class and its clear that it has not been tested properly. I feel cheated that I had to test this 9000 myself and easily discover 3 very apparent and important flaws that in my opinion make this machine not usuable for its purpose. Surely someone must have tested this prior to release and seen these glaring faults??
I have now decided to keep my 'New Road Angel' speed camera detector (cant recommend this unit enough - its fantastic in every respect - http://www.blackspot.com/products/newroadangel/ind... ) and also buy either the TomTom 720 with traffic alerts or the Garmin Nuvi 660.
Edited by Polizia Lambo on Wednesday 24th October 10:42
I thought about one of these but my poor experiences of the RA 6000 put me off and I have a Garmin Nuvi 760 on order.
My recent experience of the 6000 was that it has a habit of routing me in the completely wrong direction ..... and it does seem the 9000 would, from what you have said, be likely to do the same. It hasn't happened once with the 6000, but quite a few times !
The lag for the speed when you come to a halt and not realising you are above a road like on the A40 is IMO one of those things ....it was just the thought of getting poor directions having spent £400 that put me off.
Thanks for the review though - I did want to order one of these but am now really, really glad I didn't.
My recent experience of the 6000 was that it has a habit of routing me in the completely wrong direction ..... and it does seem the 9000 would, from what you have said, be likely to do the same. It hasn't happened once with the 6000, but quite a few times !
The lag for the speed when you come to a halt and not realising you are above a road like on the A40 is IMO one of those things ....it was just the thought of getting poor directions having spent £400 that put me off.
Thanks for the review though - I did want to order one of these but am now really, really glad I didn't.
sounds like most RA hybrid hardware... the old Navigator was poo, the navigator 6000 is too slow to be useful, the 7000 is a bit faster but the sat nav is poo, and the 9000 sounds like it's continuing the family progression...
the camera detectors however, are utterly, utterly excellent pieces of kit (apart from when the RA Plus has a paddy and gives a solid red screen indicating that the firmware is corrupt - easy sorted however).
the camera detectors however, are utterly, utterly excellent pieces of kit (apart from when the RA Plus has a paddy and gives a solid red screen indicating that the firmware is corrupt - easy sorted however).
That's pretty much what I thought would happen. I was almost about to buy one but ended up with a Sony NAV-U92T instead. Although the Sony relies on FM RDS traffic information, I knew that their system was pretty good and reliable. OK, so it can take a while to lock on to a channel which has the RDS information, but I recon'ed that its a case of crap in and crap out.....
The RA 9000 might get the alerts quicker and more efficiently, but if its crap info in the first place then there isnt much you can do. Maybe TomTom have the right idea teaming up with Vodafone offering their own service in the coming years - maybe that way they can control things a little better and have more accurate information. But in the meantime its still a bit hit and miss. Shame that the RA 9000 isnt fully resolved, but they aren't the first and wont be the last.
The RA 9000 might get the alerts quicker and more efficiently, but if its crap info in the first place then there isnt much you can do. Maybe TomTom have the right idea teaming up with Vodafone offering their own service in the coming years - maybe that way they can control things a little better and have more accurate information. But in the meantime its still a bit hit and miss. Shame that the RA 9000 isnt fully resolved, but they aren't the first and wont be the last.
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