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Garmin 550 Zumo – A Very Good Motorcycle GPS
The Zumo represents a new design for Garmin which is appears smaller (in depth) than the StreetPilot “c” series but larger than the Nuvi series. The Garmin Zumo 550 features a waterproof case and large buttons which make it easier for riders wearing gloves to access the buttons.
The Garmin Zumo 550 also includes Bluetooth connectivity so that you can answer mobile calls from a Bluetooth enabled helmet. Other innovative motorcycles includes fuel alerts… The Zumo can calculate fuel range and alert the rider when the motorcycle is getting low on gas. Of course at that point it will recalculate your route to the nearest gas station.
A tracklog feature is also included in the Garmin Zumo to allow you to download your tracks to your computer and later view them on a map through the Motion Based service or Google Earth.
MP3 music files can also be loaded onto a memory card and played through to the helmet.
Upon opening the box, I was surprised to see how much was included with the Garmin Zumo 550. There’s the Zumo, a motorcycle mount, a car mount with an adhesive plastic disc for attaching to your dashboard, black plastic faceplates (if you don’t like the gray ones), an AC charger, a motorcycle power cable that connects to the bike’s battery, a car charger, tools needed to mount the Zumo to motorcycle handlebars, a tiny screwdriver for the “safety screw” on the unit, a USB cable to sync and download software and updates, a City Navigator DVD, a CD-ROM of the owners manual, a quick setup guide for mounting, and some stickers. Tons of stuff.
There’s one word to describe the design of the Garmin Zumo 550: sexy. It has a silver shell with two removable caps on top and bottom of the unit that you can exchange (ahem, I mean purchase) for the unit with a plethora of designs including racing stripes and flames. The unit is compact, measuring 4.8 inches wide, 3.9 inches high, and 1.6 inches deep and weighing in at 10.6 ounces, a bit lighter than the Rider’s 10.9 ounces. In addition, the Zumo 550 meets IPX7 standards, which means it can withstand accidental immersion in three feet of water for up to 30 minutes.
The features are endless on the Garmin Zumo 550 Motorcycle GPS. For starters, the Zumo is powered by a 20-channel, SiRFstarlll high-sensitivity GPS receiver and all maps of North America are preloaded on the device. Operation is even simpler than with the TomTom Rider, but as always, we recommend that you really familiarize yourself with the Zumo and its features before hitting the road.
From the main menu, you are presented with two large and very clearly marked options to begin navigation–Where to? and View map–as well as several items along the bottom of the screen, including a phone icon (if you are already paired to your Bluetooth phone), a musical note icon for the MP3 player, and a tool icon for the Settings menu. Tapping any one of these icons takes you to a bunch of submenus for that function. For eg, if you touch the phone icon, another menu comes up that includes phone numbers for points of interest (POI), call history, and phone book.
You can view maps in 2D or 3D mode with day or night colors. The colors automatically switch to the night setting at sundown.The map screen is very simple and displays your speed, estimated arrival time, and the distance to your next turn. On the top of the screen, the next turn and the street name is displayed, and there are also plus and minus buttons to zoom in and out of the map. If you touch the speed tab, a slick, trip information screen comes up showing your direction, speed, max speed, and a fuel gauge. The last feature will only show up when the unit is connected to the motorcycle mount, however. You can also view POIs near your current location, but this is one area where the icons were too small to easily tap with big gloves. Obviously it’s pretty dangerous when you are actually riding and trying to do this so I don’t recommend it.
I took the Garmin GPS Zumo 550 for a test run in the San Francisco Bay Area. From a cold start, the unit took about 10 to 20 seconds to lock onto a satellite, depending if I was downtown surrounded by lots of buildings or in a more open area. Subsequent starts were quicker. The Zumo accurately pinpointed my location, but the screen is a little choppier than the TomTom Rider’s continuous and smooth motion. I didn’t really mind this though, because it didn’t look like the screen was shaking. It just wasn’t as smooth as the Rider. As the Rider did, the Zumo gave some pretty insane directions to destinations on a number of occasions, some of the POIs were outdated, and it had some wrong names for side streets and alleys. But, at least by hitting the Detour icon, it recalculated more reasonable directions. It also depended on what setting (fastest time, shortest distance, or off-road) I chose.
Route recalculations were a little slower than the lightening-fast Rider. It wasn’t much slower, but enough to be annoying. I purposely missed turns to see how fast it would recalculate and sometimes two streets passed where I should have turned before the Zumo gave an alternate route. Hopefully Garmin will fix this in the future with a firmware update.
The Bluetooth phone integration was great, especially with the built-in mic on the vehicle mount. I tested this feature many times, calling friends’ cell phones and landlines. The audio was brilliant on both ends. They could hear me loud and clear and vice versa. With the top down, I still had decent results but had to turn the stereo down every time I wanted to hear the voice commands. If I missed the command though, all I had to do is push the Turn in icon, and the voice command was repeated, and the map presented a close-up and text of the next direction.
The Garmin 550 Zumo battery is rated for three to four hours depending on usage. I got more than five hours of ride time before the low-battery warning came up, which was impressive.
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