I used Roads of Russia quite a bit, although only in European Russia. It is generally pretty good, except when it isn't...

As Walter says, a fair number of roads are off by several hundred meters, but also some major highways do not seem to be in the right place. But once you learn its tricks, this is not that big of a deal. It is more irritating when it tells you to go somewhere, and then all of a sudden it changes its mind and tells you to go in some other direction. Not exactly confidence inspiring. Let's just say I never leave home without a paper map.

That said, for all these complaints, it is really great to have (at least in European Russia); just today I returned from a trip to Belgorod, and used RoR to navigate back via all sorts of tiny backroads, very cool. Sure, I could have done it with paper maps alone, but it would be kind of a PITA and signage is not great on most of these little roads.

The biggest problem of all is the requirement for the distributor to reflash your Garmin device, I can't see this as being practical for anyone outside of Russia. You can load RoR without the reflash, but you can't read any city names, which makes it of rather limited utility.

Finally, for anyone coming to Russia, I highly recommend staying off the main highways as much as possible. They are choked with trucks and speedtraps, and just not very pleasant. Staying on the backroads is much more fun, but if you can't load RoR you'll need a decent atlas, the ability to read Cyrillic, and lots of time for when you get lost (and you will get lost...).

[QUOTE=motoreiter;336469]I used Roads of Russia quite a bit, although only in European Russia. It is generally pretty good, except when it isn't...

As Walter says, a fair number of roads are off by several hundred meters, but also some major highways do not seem to be in the right place. But once you learn its tricks, this is not that big of a deal. It is more irritating when it tells you to go somewhere, and then all of a sudden it changes its mind and tells you to go in some other direction. Not exactly confidence inspiring. Let's just say I never leave home without a paper map.

That said, for all these complaints, it is really great to have (at least in European Russia); just today I returned from a trip to Belgorod, and used RoR to navigate back via all sorts of tiny backroads, very cool. Sure, I could have done it with paper maps alone, but it would be kind of a PITA and signage is not great on most of these little roads.

The biggest problem of all is the requirement for the distributor to reflash your Garmin device, I can't see this as being practical for anyone outside of Russia. You can load RoR without the reflash, but you can't read any city names, which makes it of rather limited utility.

Finally, for anyone coming to Russia, I highly recommend staying off the main highways as much as possible. They are choked with trucks and speedtraps, and just not very pleasant. Staying on the backroads is much more fun, but if you can't load RoR you'll need a decent atlas, the ability to read Cyrillic, and lots of time for when you get lost (and you will get lost...).[/QUOTE


Hi I have the latest Garmin CN Russia NT 2012.10 and have loaded onto a SD card and selected it in a old Garmin 260w, it seems to work OK and I can search for streets (in Cyrillic naturally) in moscow and addresses and it shows in Cyrillic OK.
we are coming to Russia for a while near Moscow so I will be interested to see if it works without flashing, I am getting the latest Roads of Russia and Topo etc as well and will leave the Garmin in Russia with relatives, we do you get it flashed (in Moscow) We could get it done if necessary while there.
No problem asking in shops about getting it done if required
thanks

If you need to flash it, the place I had mine done was in the giant electronics mart ... the Gorbushka, at Bagrationovskaya metro. There are loads of garmin dealers there but you need to find the little shop / stall of the garmin distributor / franchisee there. Its on the ground floor ... I once wrote down the stall number but dont have it now. If you ask around any of the many garmin dealers there, they should be able to direct you. From memory it cost something like 1000 rubles and took 10 minutes or so.

__________________

Thanks Colebatch we will see how it goes and if it does not work correctly I will get it flashed, I suspect its operating off the card and not from units memory so it may be alright
Thanks again

My understanding is that CN will work without the flash, but its not very good. For RoR, you need the flash, I tried it without it a couple of years ago and you couldn't read the Cyrillic. I guess it's possible that Garmin's firmware has been update since then to allow it to work without the flash, but I kinda doubt it. Please keep us posted.

will do get there 12/6/2011 and will report later

In spite of the criticisms of Road of Russia, it is not really that bad. I have used it since 2008 mainly in western russia. The garmin distributor Navicom flashed my kenwood/garmin hideaway unit KNA-G520 and all worked fine. The comment about european characters is valid though. I now have 2 nav units, one with the latest european system and one with the russian system. I will get my russian system and Roads of Russia updated this summer. RoR has the road outside my dacha on it so it can be quite detailed. CN Russia coverage is far inferior to RoR coverage.
Les

PS I ought to add that older garmin units have apparently a map file size limit of 2gb. When KNA-G520 system 4.1 was released it enabled sd cards of >2gb capacity to be read. I use 4gb cards - have not tried larger ones. However, I am told by garmin that the map file size of 2gb remains. In addition, I also own a 2010 garmin 1490T and the RoR sd card works fine in that unit because, I suspect, that the files and system are much more advanced compared to my older 2007 KNA-G520 unit.