Garmin Zumo 550 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator
by Garmin
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List Price: Our Price: $595.00 You Save: $304.99 (34%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Category: GPS or Navigation System See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Garmin Zumo 550 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator
Customer Review: Nearly perfect motorcycle GPS system
Summary: 5 Stars
I purchased this item over 2 years ago from Amazon, and thought that allow me to give someone a great perspective on this Garmin system. I also purchased the GXM30 XM radio antenna to go with it, so some of my review will cover the XM radio side.
Advantages:
1. Installation was simple. The power cable can be connected directly to your battery, since it is fused, or, if you own a BMW, you can easily connect it to a CANBUS wiring system available from BMW at a surprisingly low cost.
2. The unit is Mac and PC compatible. Hardly any other GPS manufacturer cares about the Mac market, but Garmin does. You can manage maps, update the firmware, plan routes, tracks and waypoints, add POI's and more stuff using the Mac software. It's updated regularly, so you know it's not an afterthought.
3. The box includes everything for putting it onto your bike. And if you move it between your bike and car, they provide really well designed automobile mounts. This is my opinion, but the automobile mounts are better than some of the other stuff I've seen out there. Admittedly, I've used it in a rental car once, so I'm not all that experienced with it.
4. The XM radio (if you get it) has some outstanding features for the biker. For example, it has XM Weather (which doesn't have a lot of detail, but provides warnings for wind, rain, snow, etc.) that allows you to plan your ride better. If you get the more expensive XM Nexrad system, it has real time weather radar, which is very useful.
5. The 550 is built for a motorcycle. It is waterproof. It is beefy and can resist a lot of abuse, including off-road adventure riding. I haven't dropped it yet, but it looks like it could take it!
6. The touchscreen is glove friendly.
Issues:
1. The cradle is just not built to securely hold the 550. It's not bad, but the spring-loaded clip is either too hard to pop open, or opens too easily. This is not good for riding if you're worried that it will pop out, and end up being smashed by the car behind you. Besides, when riding a bike, you just don't need that worry. I purchased a locking Touratech mount to hold the 550 in place, but it is HUGE.
2. I've had to replace my cradle twice because of issues with it. I'm not sure I'm happy about that, because the cradle is expensive.
Overall, I think this is a great GPS system. I've recently replaced it with the newer Garmin zümo 665, but it wasn't that I disliked the 550, I just like a couple of the features of the 665. Here's the thing: the 550 plus XM antenna is about the same as the 665, which includes the XM antenna. But if you're not into the XM world, then the 550 is a much better value for your hard-earned dollar. And the 550 is slightly easier to install, but just slightly.
Customer Review: Motorcyclist LOVES His Zumo 550
Summary: 5 Stars
I spent several months finding out about motorcycle GPS units. My first choice was TomTom, but at over $1,000 it was out of the question. The Zumo 665 is nice, but people were complaining about it being slow to update / re-calculate. So I settled on the Zumo 550. I have to say, the 550 rocks! The motorcycle mount was very easy to install, and the the cradle holds the unit very securely, which is important for the kind of sport touring I do (high speeds, leaned over on curves, not sedate cruising). One thing I've found is the 550 is very fast to re-calculate, and even if I do something silly like start the route "Mt. Snow VT to Home" and it asks do I want to navigate to the starting point (from Home) the calculation only takes 5 seconds.
When you are riding a motorcycle, this kind of speed and reliability is mandatory. Unlike when I have it in the car (and I do use it there, it blows my Nuvi away) where I can look at the chart display, on a bike, if it doesn't calculate fast enough to tell you in the headphones, its too late and a U-turn is sure to follow. With the 550, I don't often have to worry about being told a turn is coming up in enough time to react. Even at high speed.
Problems? Yes, Garmin's map update process can be a real pain in the behind. Try to download the 2011 North American (v30) map to your 550 (connected to your pc by USB) and chances are, it won't let you because it says you don't have enough storage on your unit. Garmin tech suppport will tell you it will overwrite the old map but if the web application won't even let you start the process because it doesn't seem to know this fact, you can't get the map update installed. I've resorted to downloading it only to my computer (GPS still has to stay connected via USB to your pc to do this - more silliness) and then using MapInstall to put it on a piece at a time.
And when you use a GXM smart antenna with it, you get real-time Traffic and Weather alerts. Simple example, when I bring up a Route or Favorite, it tells me the temperature at the destination. If there are strong storms you get a weather alert on-screen. Never had bad enough traffic for NavTraffic to detour me, but they say it will.
The problem with the GMX smart antenna I have had, is my original unit was DOA (dead on arrival) and the REFURB unit Garmin sent me to replace it died 2 months after I got it. So right now I don't have Traffic and Weather.
If it was a TomTom, all of the above would be irrelevant, but it isn't a TomTom.
And it is indeed waterproof, I can vouch for that, having ridden in driving rain for 200 miles one day. The 550 didn't miss a beat.
So if you ride, and need waterproof, and don't want to spend $1,000+, the 550 is a fantastic unit for the touring motorcyclist.
Customer Review: can't live without it now
Summary: 5 Stars
I researched a lot of GPS devices before choosing this one, and I am very happy with it. I take it on my bike and car, and took it with me on a recent trip to Colorado, hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park.
Having a GPS on the bike really frees me up to be able to ride off in any direction, taking any roads I come to, and I never have to worry about getting lost. Plus I don't have to get a map out all the time. Say I'm out for a lazy ride just going wherever and a rain storm pops up. I just enter a destination or press 'home' on the Zumo, and I don't have to worry about trying to remember the route I took.
The navigation engine works pretty well. Occasionally it will get confused by a vague address, but usually if you make sure you use common sense and don't let it do all the thinking for you, you'll be fine. An example of this: my workplace is at a large piece of property at the intersection of two roads, and it tells me to go a quarter mile past the entrance I usually use and make a u-turn.
On a recent vacation, my rental car had the Hertz Neverlost GPS (Magellan) in it, and the Garmin's directions were equal or better in most situations (I had a local with me who was critiquing the results).
The map info in my unit was already a little bit old, however--when directing me to a restaurant on my vacation, it had me going around in circles until I realized that the empty building I kept passing was most likely the former location of the restaurant, which was apparently no longer in business.
The map updates seem a bit pricey to me (~$60).
I don't live in a big metro area so I didn't bother with any of the traffic routing services. The XM Radio antenna is expensive, so I didn't go with that option either.
The Zumo is advertised as having 'glove-friendly' touch-screen. It really does work well--even when using the on-screen keyboard layout to type in addresses and locations--the accuracy is spot-on.
Installation on the bike is simple and took me about fifteen minutes. Bare leads are provided to attach the motorcycle mount to your battery--you may need to stop by the hardware store and get some spade terminals to attach it to your battery. You may want to attach it somewhere to switched power--I have mine directly to the battery, so I have to remember to turn it off when leaving the bike, but it is pretty obvious that it is on.
A cool feature of the Zumo is a separate odometer to track your fuel tank on the bike. It only counts that odometer when it is attached to the bike mount--any place else and it doesn't count the mileage off your gas tank. When your fuel gets low, it pops up with a little fuel pump icon that searches for the nearest fuel station when pressed.
Customer Review: Wow.
Summary: 5 Stars
All the write-ups suggested this Zumo 550 was going to be impressive. They weren't wrong. The BIG positives, from my perspective:
1. Satellite acquisition must be seen to be believed. In my basement it took less than 15 seconds, out of the box, first power-up. That performance has been repeated every time since, with the exception of first-power-up after upgrading the firmware to 3.2. Thereafter it went back to sub-20 second acquisition.
2. Its built like it should be, like you wanted it to be. Solid. Its going to spend time on my Harley ElectraGlide and in my Corvette and I wanted someting that matched their image. I got it.
3. Firmware upgrade was a 5 minute affair, no hassles, no fuss, no tears. Several nice new features were added, for my 5-minute investment.
4. Interchangeable top and bottom plates, in contrasting black, are a nice little extra. They even included the Allen wrench for the 3-minute task.
5. There's no need to buy extra (read, "expensive") accessories. This was the biggie, for me. This unit ships with a bike mount, complete with hard-wire power connector, AND it ships with a car-mount, with its own power connector. The fact that Garmin includes BOTH mounts with this unit was the deciding factor for me. The fact that both docking cradles with each mount are thoughtfully designed to allow super-quick, super-solid on and off mounting of the GPS unit itself, is a nice added plus. Also, the voice quality and volume of the built-in speaker in the car mount is impressive.
6. Bluetooth pairing of both my Blackberry 8700 and my Jabra BT800 was simple and flawless. Thereafter, when the BB and the Jabra were on and the Zumo was insereted into either the bike mount or the car mount, the Zumo automatically paired back with each unit, within 30 seconds of being mounted. I love technology that works. The real zinger was that the Zumo synched the 400-odd contacts in my BB8700, inside of 45 seconds.
7. For me, simply put, Garmin hit a BIG homerun with the design, execution and packaging of their new Zumo 550. Is it expensive? Not really, considering I didn't need to go out and scrounge up the expensive extras Garmin included for free. And the little things, like designing a magnetically-positioned weather cover for the bike's connector pins, is just icing on a big, well-decorated cake.
Bravo, Garmin.
Customer Review: One of the best GPS units I've used
Summary: 5 Stars
This is one of the toughest, most well-thought out gps units I've ever used or owned. How many units can stand to be submersed in one meter of water for 30 minutes? This one can. Thats why the unit can't have an integrated speaker. It makes it teriffic for motorcycle or marine use, though.
However, the supplied car mount has a speaker that is much better than the majority of self-contained gps speakers that I've heard. Plus the car mount has outlets for audio - so use can listen to mp3 music or books on tape through your car speakers if you like (rather than through the mount itself). The unit will conveniently pause your music or book on tape for voice prompt directions, then start right where you left off. It does the same for incoming calls and makes a great hands free car kit. Plus, the car mount is TOUGH. It locks the unit in very well.
I use a Scala Rider Teamset bluetooth headset on my motorcycle, which enables me to hear voice prompts/music/books on tape while I ride. The unit works perfectly with the zumo 550. I see caller id on the zumo screen when someone calls. I can use the zumo to accept or ignore calls. Plus I can dial calls from the zumo screen very easily. I have synced my contact list from my treo with the zumo and it retrieves my contacts and addresses easily, allowing push button calling (or directions) from the zumo rather than fumbling with the phone (which is risky).
I usually ride with friends and we speak often use the scala headset to speak while we ride, which has really been a lot of fun and has often permitted us to steer clear of danger. It is easy to connect with the zumo. One shortcoming in my mind is that I wish the zumo had an option to choose whether to hear direction voice prompts over the telephone conversation as it does with books on tape/mp3. That way I could choose to be interupted for directions when my buddies and I are talking/riding, but could also choose not to be interupted when I take business calls etc...
While I have yet to find the perfect gps unit, this unit comes closer for car/motorcycle/marine use than any other I've found. I am not disappointed with this purchase and would highly recommend it. It has transformed my bike riding.