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Add to SafariWhen comparing Google Maps vs Avenza Maps, the Slant community recommends Google Maps for most people. In the question“What are the best offline GPS navigation apps for Android?” Google Maps is ranked 10th while Avenza Maps is ranked 19th. The most important reason people chose Google Maps is:
You can download offline data per city or parts of cities if you live in an especially large city, but not for states or countries. Points of Interests are generally more relevant & current than the typical stand alone GPS unit.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Offline functionality
You can download offline data per city or parts of cities if you live in an especially large city, but not for states or countries. Points of Interests are generally more relevant & current than the typical stand alone GPS unit.
Pro Best execution of save location feature
Recent updates have made it so you can label a place instead of being stuck with some address or GPS coordinate and forgetting what it represents. Saved places show as stars and are all on one layer as long as you're logged in. There is also the ability to create maps (parallel to groups) for things you might not want to see or have show up all the time whenever you're using google maps from day to day.
This feature is highly helpful for planning, even if you're a person who likes to wing it.
Pro Find your parked car
You save the location of your car and easily find it again
Pro Accurate mapping
Pro Updated constantly
Nearby my house, there is major road construction in progress. Apple maps didn’t show this at all, but google maps did. There was also a new, small road that was finished around 3 days ago. Google maps shows this road. Apple maps still hasn’t shown the major construction.
Pro Most ubiquitous third party app integration
Asides from the stock Apple Maps app, Google Maps is the most commonly supported 3rd party map. 3rd party apps often have links for directions, Google Maps is usually an option whereas other 3rd party GPS apps are not.
Pro Navigation background change based on ambient light
This is great for night driving or even when going through tunnels as the map will be more visible for low light situations.
Pro Secondary routing
Google Maps can now search for and add a route for a second location on the way to the primary location that you are going to and have already routed. Note that it cannot do a third or true multi routing like the desktop webapp can.
Pro Very detailed official local maps
Supports official maps published by park services, etc, which often have more details than any other map available.
Pro Save placemarks
Pro Records GPS tracks
Cons
Con No plan-ahead for commuters
Cannot plan trip ahead based on commuter lane.
Con Not very precise traffic information
Depending on a country information might not be very accurate for traffic.
Con Sometimes takes too long to load
Con Saved locations needs online connection and has no visible label
Two negatives about this feature is you have to be online to be able to save a place, but it is stored off line once google map gets on the net and syncs. The other negative is there is no visible label for saved places, you have to click on stars to see the label for them.
Con Maps saved offline can easily wipe your bandwidth cap via auto update
Google Maps offline maps update automatically in the background. Not a problem if you're using a sim card in your phone, but if you connect to a pre-paid hotspot that the phone recognizes and connects to as a wifi device you risk burning through your data allotment. The offline maps can be set to update manually, but this is not default behavior.
Con It’s Google
Con Cannot use SD card
Even though the maps are free of charge and some of them are official park maps without copyright issues, the app still refuses to store them on the SD card, so the map storage tends to take up far more internal flash memory than any other app.
Con Map search is awful
Searching for map files is very frustrating as the map search only shows the center point of each map as a pin, so you can't see whether the map includes a point you're interested in, and since there are usually many historical maps of the same location, they produce many pins appearing on top of each other. You have to download each one and open it in order to see what it will look like, rather than previewing them in the live display. Good overview maps will appear as pins in random locations, while there will be tons of topo map tiles everywhere else
Con Only shows one map at a time
It supports USGS topo maps, for instance, but if you walk off the edge of one, you have to manually load the adjacent map, which is a hassle. It would be nice if, like other apps, you could select "USGS topo" as the map source, and it would automatically show whichever specific map your location is currently near the middle of (since the USGS maps have margins and legends, etc.)
Con Only supports local maps
You need to plan ahead and download a map for each park or region you're going to visit before you go offline.
