City Navigator Russia

Whoa there ... just checked and the other set of maps I was thinking about other than Topo 6, was "Roads of Russia" (RoR). Those are the two sets made by the Russian Garmin Franchise / Distributor.

City Navigator Russia might actually be a Garmin product ... and I have only limited experience of those maps mate, sorry. Apart from the fact that Sherri Jo was given the Garmin maps of Russia last year (2010) by Garmin Australia as part of their sponsorship. We arrived in Vladivostok and her RUssia maps were showing only a single street in town, with no name ... the road in ... and it was completely inaccurate - completely useless. So I just loaded her up with the OSM maps. Garmin (or rather Navteq) has mapped the urban areas of Moscow and St Petersburg well. If its the Garmin maps I am thinking of, they will have normal Garmin level detail of those 2 cities, and pretty much zero detail at all in Siberia - and what detail they have is hopelessly inaccurate and un-useable ... as if someone has scanned a 1:10,000,000 world atlas or drawn the main highway with a crayon.

Dont know if that is what you have mate. Maybe best best is to zoom in on cities like Valdivostok or Magadan and compare the detail. OSM in places like Magadan is awesome - right down to building numbers (you can view the detail on the web .... at the OSM website - just keep zooming in on magadan till you see the individual buildings marked, along with their street numbers) and compare with the CN Russia in your GPS. I do find with OSM maps, you have to set your Garmin unit to read Highest detail, to get the most out of them.

A check of Garmins website and reading the detail of the CN RUssia product says only this about the level of detail ...

"Contains metropolitan area coverage of Moscow and St. Petersburg as well as the intertown road network in western Russia."

Which would indicate it is the maps I am thinking about (that Sherri Jo had) ... Good in Moscow and St Pete ... poor to very poor in western Russia, and uttely hopeless in Siberia. If that is the case, at best mate, I would stick it on an SD card and file it somewhere in the bottom of your luggage, to be used only if everything else blows up.

There are only 2 sets of Garmin maps to consider for Russia ... the OSM maps and Topo 6/RoR ... and Topo 6/RoR has the drawbacks listed above - needing to "convert" your hardware, and frustratingly inaccurate.

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