I need help finding the right sat nav.

I made a journey from Middlesbrough to Manchester and back with my father who knows the route well. I'm on the other hand fairly new to driving on motorway journeys. The journey was fairly straight forward and my father wrote the route for me for future reference.
I decided to do some research and went on about 5 or 6 route planning sites including google, rac and the AA. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. All these so called route planners were giving the most ridiculous routes and then after a lot of research I discovered this is quite common place. I find this very ironic as technology is supposed make life easier but going by these routes you could loose will to live.
This got me thinking, what if sat navs have all these crappy routes? So, what I'm looking for is a sat nav that is always up to date and one where you can see what route the sat van is taking on you before you start the journey so if need be the route can be changed. Any help would be appreciated.

[mikealder]

To be honest I would look at devices from either Garmin or TomTom as both these manufacturers provide new maps for their devices periodically. Most of the others that you see for sale don't to supply new maps so the device becomes less useful as it ages.

Primary question is down to budget, how much are you prepared to spend as Sat Navs can be bought for a little under £100 to over £300, do you only need UK mapping or mainland Europe, is US/ Canada mapping important? - Mike

Yes I only needed it for the UK. Do garmin/tomtom provide good maps and not take you on complicated routes like the route planner sites? I want a sat nav where you can see it's route before you set off and amend it if i need to. Can you recommend any garmin satnav's? price is no issue.

[mikealder]

The Garmin I use is a 3790T which is one of their higher end models which is reflected in the cost, damn fine device though.

As for units from TomTom, I have used most of what they have offered over the past six years, my favourite is still the Go-940 Live but these are very difficult to obtain these days, the Go-950 Live is also a credible device but TomTom removed some of the features when compared to the earlier 940. For UK only use I would suggest the 550 Live see Here it does all you want (and lots more), it also has the all important memory card slot for future expansion and doesn't require the use of the new (and useless) Web Kit based software called "MyTomTom" - Mike

Would any of the models you have mentioned give me free updates for life? would they let me see what the route is before i set off? would they let me change the route if i wanted to change it? please reply thanks.

[mikealder]

The TomTom products off the route summary overview just after its planned the route, you have the option to change this route if you know better than what its decided to do. Should you want to force a detailed route following multiple waypoints then look at the Itinerary option which you will fin don the x40/ x50 model ranges, this is missing on the newer Go-1000.
As for life time free map updates, TomTom seem to offer this as a special offer from time to time on specific models, to be honest its not really worth much in my opinion. For a start the device will be out of useful life after about three years, (Batterys fail, screen issue, connector fail etc) To purchase map update on an annual basis is a better option, and this is something that is available for all TomTom models - Mike