FYI: No more Garmin maps for Asia

[The Mountain]

Sometime in the last month or so, it appears that Garmin dropped all of its Asia and Southeast Asia map sets from its US website e.g. The Pakistan/India/Bangladesh set and the Thailand/Cambodia/Malaysia/Vietnam/etc set.

According to the customer support tech I spoke to, the India set, at least, hadn't been updated since 2015. So if you happen to be headed there, be aware that you likely will need to go third-party.

Garmin does have an India division of their company, which appears to sell India-specific products, but there doesn't appear to be a facility for buying map sets separately, and their actual device selection is appallingly small (mostly wearables, and two handhelds).

[Tomkat]

Free worldwide Garmin maps from OpenStreetMap

[chris]

Originally Posted by Tomkat

Free worldwide Garmin maps from OpenStreetMap

Correct.

Garmin maps outside western Europe and North America have always been very poor. OSM has one or 2 little quirks, but for the money (= no money), they are very good.

[berin]

Originally Posted by Tomkat

Free worldwide Garmin maps from OpenStreetMap

These are no longer updated - last update June 2020. There are other sources but this was one of the most convenient.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[The Mountain]

I downloaded the Openmaps file, but I also bought a mapset from a company called GGM. I'm presuming that the GGM map is based on the OSM map. I found a third source as well, and I may get their map too, so I have multiple backups. Neither of the third-party commercial maps are all that expensive, particularly compared to what Garmin wanted.

Thanks for all the help.

[Samy]

Mobile phones makes the digital cameras going to end soon, same destiny will happen for the GPS units.

I think that's why Garmin is not going to update the maps as less people buy them everyday...

[chris]

Originally Posted by Samy

Mobile phones makes the digital cameras going to end soon, same destiny will happen for the GPS units.

I think that's why Garmin is not going to update the maps as less people buy them everyday...

While your comment is correct, even in the heyday of the Garmin GPS unit 10 or 15 years ago, Garmin maps for anywhere outside western Europe or North America varied from barely average to utterly useless in my experience. Hence I used OSM.

[TheWarden]

Until the apps improve their accuracy and functionality a dedicated GPS will still have its place for people want accurate, remote navigation systems.

Garmins North Africa maps are very good, (although using the OSM dataset)

My 10year old garmin still performs better than my newest smart phone

[Tomkat]

Originally Posted by berin

These are no longer updated - last update June 2020. There are other sources but this was one of the most convenient.

Using them on a tour of southern Europe in 2019 I found they were pretty good - only one section of new autostrada near Bari threw me a bit, but it wasn't hard to work out where I needed to be heading. In practice even if they completely stopped updating them, they would still be good for at least 10 or 20 years. Towns and roads don't change *that* much.