Navmii GPS Live UK
Bargain iPhone option, with clear maps and Google/Bing search
Price: £2.50 (£3 inc VAT) per country
Platform: iOS
Traffic: N/A
Performance: ★★★★
Features: ★★
Value for money: ★★★★★
Overall: ★★★★
There are plenty of cheap and cheerful sat-nav apps around, but Navmii is the best we’ve come across. For the paltry sum of £3 you get UK maps, and these are stored locally on your phone, so you’ll still be able to navigate even when your data connection is lost.
That gives it an advantage over Skobbler, which is online only, and it beats Skobbler’s search abilities too. You get postcode, address and Google local search tools, plus the ability to switch to Microsoft Bing. Local map storage makes it ideal for those on pay-as-you-go tariffs, but beware taking it abroad – each additional country requires a £3 download.
Compared to TomTom and CoPilot, Navmii’s feature cupboard looks pretty bare. There’s no speed camera data – that’s £1.79 extra – and no option to match TomTom’s superlative HD Traffic. There’s no lane assistance, speed limit guidance or text-to-speech, either.
On the road it was a mixed bag. It chose sensible routes in our local tests, avoiding obvious traffic hotspots, but on our north-east to south-west London route it ignored the Limehouse Link tunnel, and on the Liverpool route it didn’t give us the option of travelling via the M6 Toll road. There was a map inaccuracy on our local test route, too, where Navmii tried to get us to turn right at a no-right-turn junction.
All in all, though, we can’t complain too much. Its maps are clear, we found fewer errors on our routes than with the free Skobbler app, and voice instructions were generally delivered in a timely fashion. For only £3, what more can you ask for?
