About this time last year, TomTom finally shipped their RIDER after months of delay. The RIDER was a true TomTom product, and yet it was different: for one, it was built especially for motorcycle use and it was the first TomTom device to use NAVTEQ maps. The RIDER only became a moderate success, for many reasons. The biggest reason was that the PND market for motorcycles is smaller than the PND market for cars, simply because there are fewer motorcycles on the road than there are cars. But there were other reasons as well: it was a pretty expensive unit compared to other GO’s, and it offered few extras apart from basic navigating and phoning. Garmin, TomTom’s biggest competitor, must have thought: ‘we can do better’. Enter the Garmin zūmo 550. The big question of course being: IS it better?
History
The zūmo 550 isn’t the first Garmin unit designed for use on a motorcycle. Older Garmin units like the 2610 were also very motorcycle-friendly: so much so that BMW decided to re-brand this model and sell it as an option on their motorcycle line. The 2610 was, and is, a very good unit, but it wasn’t specifically built for motorcycle use. It was a car PND unit that could also be mounted on a bike, and that disadvantage sometimes showed. Not so with the zūmo 550 - here, the situation is clearly reversed: it’s a true motorcycle PND that can also be used inside a car, if desired.Garmin recently sent us a sample of this new PND, asking us if we were interested in reviewing it. Our answer was a resounding "Yes!!"… Read on for our exclusive review of the Garmin zūmo 550!
Compare
We really wanted this to be a true zūmo review, not a zūmo versus RIDER comparison. But it soon became apparent that it was impossible to write a decent review without comparing it occasionally to the unit that has set the standard for these devices, albeit more than a year ago.
In the box
The zūmo ships in a very nice package, measuring 29 cm x 20 cm x 14 cm. On the box there is a nice photo of the zūmo , and also a map of the entire continent of Europe. This map has the countries shaded in four levels of grey. Depending on the darkness of the grey used, you can tell if the country is covered in detail, whether most urban areas are covered, whether only the major urban areas are covered, or the country is not covered at all. This greatly simplifies things for the potential customer, because he or she can determine the coverage of a particular area at a glance.When we take everything out of the box, we’re surprised it contains so much! We see the zūmo itself, the motorcycle mount, the car mount, a carrying bag, a motorcycle charger, a home charger, a car charger, several bits and pieces needed to mount to zūmo onto the motorcycle, a plastic disc should you want to attach the car mount to your dashboard instead of your windshield, a USB cable, a City Navigator on DVD, the owners manual on CD, a small screwdriver, black covers, quick set-up guides, warranty leaflets and a few stickers. Phew, I think that about covers it. Still, we have this awkward feeling that something is still missing, but we can’t put our finger on it. What exactly? And then suddenly, it hits us: there is no Bluetooth receiver and/or earpiece inside the box! Hmmm…very strange. We check again, but no, nothing there. We check both the manuals and the box, but nowhere does Garmin mention an earpiece of any sort. We contact Garmin to ask them if this is correct, and they reply that it is. “Since the device features a Bluetooth connection, and several helmets have this interface built-in these days, or earpieces can be purchased separately, we opted not to include an earpiece in the box. The type of earpiece used is too dependent upon user preferences anyway. Also, there is a double Bluetooth connection present on the zūmo , which means than users can pair both their helmet and their mobile phone to the unit at the same time without a problem.”
OK, so we’ll note this down as the first major negative for the zūmo . Call us demanding, but when we spend almost ¤900 on a motorcycle navigational unit, we expect to be able to use it straight out of the box. No more, no less. This also adds another difficulty to the review testing: we don’t have a helmet with an integrated Bluetooth earpiece, or a separate earpiece for that matter, so we will
not be able to test the sound of the unit while riding the bike. Fortunately, we will be able to test the sound in the car by means of the supplied car mount, but this still leaves us disappointed. Since the lack of an earpiece is not mentioned anywhere on the packaging, we're sure that a lot of zūmo buyers will be as surprised as us when they open the box.The device
Now we take a look at the device itself. Of course, each to his own, but we think this zūmo has got a very appealing design. Clear, clean, sleek and simple, the way we like it! The device itself is almost 4 cm deep, 12 cm wide and 10 cm high; but it’s only 4 cm deep in the centre of the back since that’s where the battery is positioned. Towards the edge, the unit is only 2.5 cm deep.Looking at the front of the unit, we see the 3.5-inch touch screen, and 5 buttons: 4 to the left of the screen, and 1 to the right. The button on the right (5) is simply the on/off button, but the buttons to the left (1,2,3,4) are used for several functions: browsing through the menus, zooming the map in or out while driving, turning the volume up or down and toggling the trip counter on and off. Tapping the screen and browsing the menus can also do all of this, but the buttons are usually a shortcut. On the back of the unit there’s only one connector present, meant for connecting an external antenna to the device, and on the bottom there are two rows of gold pins (8) for connecting to the mount. Hidden behind a plastic cover there’s a mini-USB connector (6) and an SD card slot (7). Unlike the Nüvi, the GPS antenna is not visible, because it’s completely built-in. There is also no LED charging indicator.
Now, let’s turn the zūmo on for the first time! After pushing the on/off button, the screen lights up, and the zūmo starts loading it’s built-in maps. After about 30 seconds of boot-time, a warning screen appears (‘don’t operate this device whilst driving’, etc.), and after tapping "OK" we are ready to go.
Theory
First, something about the screen. This is a very common component, the same as you’ll find in most non-widescreen devices these days: 3.5 inch, 65,000 colours. Nothing too exciting about that.When the unit has booted, a main menu screen greets you, with only four icons on it: two large, and two small. The large ones are the ‘Where to?’ And ‘View map’ buttons, and the other two are for the MP3 player control menu and setting the screen configuration.
The zūmo 550 is currently shipped with software version 2.20 and City Navigator Europe V9, which means that as well as the NAVTEQ maps of Western Europe, a few Eastern European countries are covered; some in detail (Poland), but only the major roads on others (Slovenia, Croatia). The zūmo uses the same hard disk as the Nüvi 660: 1.9 GB total capacity, of which 334 MB is free for additional maps, MP3 files or photos.
Entering a destination is somewhat different with this device. As opposed to TomTom, Garmin has gone to the trouble of developing an interface that is easy for motorcyclists to use, even while wearing thick gloves. After pressing the ‘Where to?’ button, six large icons pop onto the screen. With those icons, you can choose whether to directly enter an address, go to your home destination, go to a certain POI, etc. We choose ‘Address’. First we are asked what country this address is in. Two icons are shown: the last selected country (which will, in most cases, be your own country), or ‘spell country’. When ‘spell country’ is chosen, we see the zūmo ’s very innovative interface. It consists of five letter icons on top, and below those icons a scroll bar that can scroll through the entire alphabet. While scrolling through the alphabet, the five big letter icons on top change accordingly. This enables the user to easily enter the country, city or street that he or she wants. As the letters are entered, the zūmo compares them to it’s own database, and once there are only a few matches left, it takes over and shows the possible alternatives for you to select.We have to be honest: this system does take a little more time than a normal keyboard does. But on the other hand, unlike a normal keyboard, this interface is very usable while wearing thick gloves. We like this very much, but if you don't, you can always disable the scrolling keyboard, and use the regular ABC keyboard layout instead. (there are no QWERTY or AZERTY layouts though).
It seems that the zūmo shares a lot with the Nüvi 660, most likely also the same CPU. Let’s test this out with our ‘San Marco Square’ test. With this simple test we've been using since we tested the GO 700, we determine how long a device takes to calculate the best route between Oegstgeest (NL) and the San Marco Square in Rome, Italy. And this is where things go wrong immediately. After 2 minutes of processing, the zūmo returns an error message: ‘Not enough memory to calculate route’. Hmmm…
Ok, let’s just try this thing in practice then.
In practice
First, let’s mount the zūmo onto the motorcycle. For this, we need to bolt the mount onto the handlebars using a ‘U’ shaped bracket and two bolts. Unfortunately, no protection or padding is provided to wrap around the handlebars before fitting the mount onto it. We remember that the RIDER came with a few rubber straps in the box for protecting the handlebars against scratches. OK, let’s see what we can find in the good ‘ol toolbox then. Aha! Thick electrical tape. That should do the trick! And it does. Less than 10 minutes later, the mount is installed onto the motorcycle. A very painless install…We do have to say that, once fitted, we like the bike mount very much. The unit feels a lot more solidly fixed in it’s mount than the RIDER does. The zūmo is attached by four pins: it sits on two at the bottom, and then the top two are clicked into place with a lever, making a very solid and secure fixing. But if you are still worried, the mount also has a very small screw on top, and two or three turns of this screw locks the zūmo firmly into the mount. You needn’t even worry about having to carry a screwdriver with you: as we said Garmin provide a very small one with the unit, and it is designed to attach to a keyring, so you can keep this screwdriver with you all the time. Nice eye for detail Garmin!
After the mounting, we enter a few addresses and start driving. Yes - a few addresses, because unlike TomToms, after every address entry this unit asks whether you want to drive to that address, or if you want to make it a waypoint. In this way, complete routes and itineraries can be created very easily.
All goes very well. We drive a few hundred kilometres in total to several different addresses, and the zūmo gets us there every time. Just one small detail that we found lacking: the house numbers aren’t always 100% correct. We’ve noticed this before with NAVTEQ maps on TomTom, so we don’t think this is anything Garmin can help. But we have grown accustomed to TomTom’s Tele Atlas maps being very precise when it comes to house numbers. With NAVTEQ, when they say you’ve reached your destination, the chances are that the correct destination will be a few dozen metres further on up the street, or on the opposite side of the road. Shame.
Click to enlarge...
The Garmin zūmo 550
Or course, throughout the test, we had no sound, because we lacked the Bluetooth headset we talked about in the beginning of the review. While riding a motorcycle this was not too good, because you need to be even more attentive to the road than when driving a car, simply because you are less conspicuous and more vulnerable. That’s why we quickly decided to do most of the testing from inside a car, using the excellent car mount supplied.
In-car use
The zūmo is shipped with an excellent car mount. This car mount contains a speaker, but to be able to use this active speaker you must plug in the power lead to your cigarette lighter socket. In other words: the speaker doesn’t work when the zūmo is running on it’s built-in battery. This isn’t such a big deal because it also means that your zūmo will never run out of power. Some will argue that they don’t like the cable on their dash, but we don’t really mind because, when we leave the car, we always remove the mount from the windshield as well. (and wipe the ‘circle’ off the windshield with some cloth) Attaching and removing the mount is a piece of cake: push the mount to the windshield: flip the lever and voilá: it’s very solidly attached. Removing it again is equally easy. The zūmo itself clips into the mount in the same way that it clips into the motorcycle mount. The car mount doesn’t vibrate or droop while driving, and the position of the zūmo can be adjusted after the the mount is attached, which we thought was very nice.Display
When we look at the display, we can be brief: this is the same display as the 660, albeit smaller in size. It’s equally functional, and it’ll get you where you need to be. But… we have to be honest: we really don’t like the colour schemes which Garmin uses as standard. When we look at all those lurid colours, it always makes us think of a pencil case or a candy shop. We also miss the direction arrow which a TT unit displays in the bottom left hand corner of the screen, and which tells you what your next manoeuvre will be.On the other hand, we do like the text bar on the top of the screen, which tells you the name of the street you are currently driving on, and the name of the next street (eg. ‘Chapel Street’ to ‘Baker Street’).[I've changed the street names to show Upper Case first letters - change them back if the zūmo only uses lower case] We’ve asked TomTom to add this simple feature for a long time now, but they still insist on only displaying the name of the next street…
We also like the way the zūmo 's display defaults to tell you the compass direction: N, E, S, W, NE, SE, SW, NW, when no destination is entered. Very nice!
And then we get to the thing we dislike the most about this device: the jerkiness of the display. Just like it’s bigger brother the Nüvi 660, the zūmo ’s display is not smooth and fluent when driving. Maybe TomTom has spoiled us with their very fluent displays in the last couple of years, but the image sort of ‘stutters’ on the zūmo and that’s annoying. If we had to guess, we’d say that the display is shown at 2 frames per second. This is a problem e.g. at large roundabouts with lots of exits - It’s quite possible to imagine that you could take the wrong exit because of this.
We have no idea why Garmin products seem to have this ‘bug’. The CPU certainly ought to be capable of producing fluent images, so why doesn’t it? We have no idea, but can only hope that Garmin will fix this as soon as possible with a firmware update.
Voices
Some of the voices (not all!) have text-to-speech capabilities, which we think is very nice. In the past we had never believed that a feature like text-to-speech would add anything to the navigational experience, but now we have to admit that we were wrong. It’s a very handy feature: one we wouldn’t like to be without anymore. The zūmo ’s text-to-speech engine does an adequate job of pronouncing most street names. No problems here. Should you decide to choose a voice which isn’t TTS compatible, the names of the streets simply won’t be spoken!Extras
The zūmo is a very complete package. Besides all the standard features navigational devices have these days, it’s also capable of showing photos and playing mp3’s. Audiobooks don’t seem to be supported, unless they are converted into mp3 format first of course. Adding photos or mp3s to the device couldn’t be simpler: just connect the unit to your computer via the supplied USB cable, and then you simply drag and drop the files to the correct folders. Piece of cake!The device also comes with black covers, so you can change the appearance of the unit should you wish to. We used those black covers, because black reflects less in a car’s windscreen than silver does. Very nice extra!
And lastly: if the optional GXM 30 antenna is added to the device, reception of XM radio is possible too. However, since XM radio isn’t available outside the US, we doubt this feature will ever be used by Europeans.
Battery
Garmin claims that a fully loaded battery should last up to four hours, and we think they are not far off the mark with that claim. We’ve never been able to run the zūmo completely flat anyway. Also noteworthy is that, as opposed to TomTom products, the battery of this zūmo can be replaced relatively easily. It’s simply a matter of unscrewing one screw, taking the old battery out and replacing it with a new one. No soldering necessary here!Safety cameras & RDS-TMC
The zūmo comes pre-installed with a collection of safety cameras. When approaching a safety camera, the user is warned by a visual and audible signal. Of course it’s best to keep this safety camera database up-to-date. It works just like the 660, but it does require a paid subscription. RDS/TMC is also supported, but unfortunately the TMC antenna is not built-in, neither is it shipped with the unit. It is available as an option though. This is somewhat of a shame because adding this antenna will no doubt mean adding an extra (loose) cable to it. And that is something motorcyclists can do without…Phone
Because of the lack of a Bluetooth earpiece, we were unable to test the zūmo ’s handsfree phoning capabilities. But, since this unit is quite similar to the Nüvi 660, we have every confidence that this feature will be A-OK. We did try to pair our Bluetooth mobile phone to the unit though, and we were surprised at how how swiftly this went. The whole process took less than 30 seconds! Even thoughTomTom's pairing has improved since the early days, it’s still a lot less swift than with this zūmo . This is pairing the way pairing really should be. 'Nuff said!Mapsource
Lastly, a small word about the included MapSource program. MapSource is a very cool piece of software, and it’s one of the major differences between the zūmo and the RIDER. Without going into too much detail, MapSouce is route planning software which runs on your computer. That’s right: MapSource provides you with a complete detailed map of the region which your unit supports, and makes it very easy to plan routes. You can simply point and click to make several waypoints, and that way create a whole route. It doesn’t take a genius to see that this is one feature motorcyclists in particular will like.Most motorcyclists are hobbyists these days, so a lot of the time they spend on their motorcycle is done in their free time. This differs from ‘normal’ navigational device users, because these users aren’t necessarily interested in the fastest route from point A to B. What they are interested in, is driving through nice scenery, as a way of relaxation. This is where MapSource comes in: not only can users create the nicest routes for themselves, but these routes can also be shared with other users on the internet, and vice versa. Already hundreds of routes can be downloaded from the internet. We think this is a very, very cool feature, and exactly what the TomTom RIDER lacked. OK, so the RIDER had it’s itineraries, but this method is sooo much easier, and sooo much better. One HUGE plus for the zūmo!
