I struggling to see how anything could be "definitely" better than "crappy" Google Maps. To me, GMaps has made navigation about as exciting as using a door knob. It works without fail, and is so incredibly mundane, that the thought of forming a strong opinion about it makes me drowsy.
Maybe it's just the UK maps and it works fine elsewhere, I don't know.
If you're in a city or suburb with a Google office, it's spotless, including transit options that are often customized to the city itself.
If you're in a city or suburb without a Google office, it's reliable on roads but probably doesn't cover transit particularly well. I'm not sure if the Google vs. non-Google office is just a bias towards the kind of cities Google would put an office in as opposed to the presence of an office making a difference, but Pittsburgh is much better than Columbus or Jacksonville despite being a smaller city.
If you're in a rural area, it's much rougher. Private roads marked as public roads are the biggest thing I've noticed (presumably because aerial maps can't help much there), but also things like ATV tracks and driveways marked as roads and missing one-way indicators (i.e. routing the wrong way up a one-way street).
I use it daily to make sure my commute doesn't have any wrecks I'll have to work around, and any time I'm going somewhere unfamiliar. It really got stress tested on our way back from Tenessee during the eclipse exodus a few years ago, routed us (and lots of cars around us lol) through all sorts of Appalachia back-roads when the main highways were clogged and got us home just fine.
With the incredibly large sample size of two I have to conclude it's region specific.
If I use an alternative and get stuck in traffic, I'm not gonna be thinking about how proud I am of myself for sitting in traffic in the name of sticking it to Google. I'm gonna be thinking "should have used Google Maps"
The audio directions are much clearer - e.g. "Go through this light, and at the next one turn right".
The integration with Siri and CarPlay is very handy - e.g. "Hey Siri, get directions to Bob's house".
And the traffic data is noticeably better in the last year.
Disclaimer: I live in suburban U.S. - I've heard less good things about AM in rural areas.
If any app would allow me to have some sort of ability to let me set a level of "pain" (traffic, stoplights, smaller roads, extra turns) that's acceptable vs. a level of time savings, I'd use that app and never look back.
The number of times I've gone seemingly way out of the way only to rejoin a highway 30 minutes later in order to save 2 minutes total (vs the traffic I would have sat in) is way too damn high.
I trusted it because I didn't really know where I was going, and it had never let me down before. So I followed its instructions down a series of little farm roads to detour around the "break". Except one of the roads crossed under a raging stream, and was only passable during the dry season. I actually fishtailed a little to stop, because the road was slightly downhill and made of dirt. If I had followed the instructions, I would have died.
Anyway, I submitted a bug report about that highway break, and 5 months later Google wrote back and said my fix had been accepted! How thrilling.
One slight oddity - it doesn't seem to care about which side of the street your destination is on in a lot of cases. Sure, in a suburban neighborhood, that's irrelevant. But in a city with two-way traffic on the street, it can matter quite a lot.
In those cases I just mute it, there's always a mute button.
In all seriousness, have you tried Waze? Gives multiple options each time you search, allowing to choose routes that are simpler, or maybe partially but not fully use tolls.
But Maps is definitely worse than dedicated navigation devices, although it does improve over time.
There are certain things it is particularly bad at, for example routing down slow 20mph residential roads with speed bumps.
But... are the dedicated navigation devices so much better than Google Maps to justify the increased cost? Probably not for 99% of people.
I used to use a Garmin satnav, and plug it in to my laptop and use Garmin's software to do my travel expenses, full tracking of all my movements, and it's my data to do with as I wish with no concerns. I can do the same thing through Google Timeline... but it's not even close to as well executed, and gives me serious data privacy concerns... because Google.
Google Maps is quite terrible in many parts of the world that are not-America. In Europe, it routinely suggests absolutely insane "shorcuts" because it doesn't seem to understand that even though a narrow, winding country lane with stone walls on either side may have a 90 kph speed limit, it would be suicide to actually drive at that speed.
They also have a tendency to make you stick to the main - congested - roads. You won't notice unless you're a local to the area though, so let's say that's good enough.
Waze in my experience seems to have more realistic ETAs and is better at routing around traffic jams. Even though it's built on Google Maps.
However I'm in Romania and I do long weekends in mountain retreats in the middle of nowhere. As I said, YMMV.
A phone running google maps is a multi-tool.
So long as you have a data connection or planned ahead with a downloaded region.
- And have a vehicle that's the size of a normal passenger car. (I used to own a special "RV GPS" that had better data on bridge heights and weight limits.)
One time it wanted me to walk through the waste/sewer pipes of Mallorca to go from a beach to the city center, let me tell you it's not a pedestrian path.
