GPS Device for motorcycle really necessary?

[mtbe]

We drove the Panamerican between 2018 and 2020 in a van and used Google Maps, Maps.me and Waze (for traffic in a few of the big cities).

Next year, we are going to the Balkens, Italy, Greece and Turkey on a motorcycle. How necessary is the extra GPS device for maps? Why not just use the phone? Is it due to data usage? We're not looking for off roading or difficult mountainous tracks...just main roads, even if some are gravel/dirt.

 

[El-Dracho]

Hi David,

Welcome to Overland Bound!

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Regarding the GPS question. I also sometimes just use the phone to get from A to B in urban areas. When travelling, it has several decisive disadvantages for me. Dependence on a telephone network, costs for data, inaccurate maps and often non-optimal routing, the phone is not robust, too few navigation options. My navigation setup consists of a very robust old Garmin GPS that I can always rely on, a robust tablet with very accurate offline maps, various other apps such as OB1, Garmin inReach and, of course, paper maps for an overview and in combination with a compass as a backup.

Greetings from currently Romania,
Bjoern

 

[Alanymarce]

It depends on what you want from the GPS - we use a GPS unit to know where we are with respect to the area (not for navigation, but to know how we are from a river or lake for example, often when google maps et al don't have what we need), we also download the GPX tracks for sharing and future reference, also the speed indicated on the GPS is more accurate.

If you need none of these, then there's no need for a GPS unit.