Garmin Zumo 550

I mentioned before that I wanted to add the Garmin Zumo 550 to the Road King Classic. Well having installed it last Friday and ridden down from Stoke to Portsmouth and then Santander to Almerimar this week I must say that it is great. It is beyond great actually, it has overnight become one of my all time favourite ‘gadgets’!

I had decided on the Garmin Zum0 550 as it is designed with the motorbike in mind, specifically controls on the left hand side and large! Additionally the touch screen is easy to operate with gloves on it is waterproof, and the provided mount is both secure and shock resistant.

The first impression was great. Excellent packaging, and instruction leaflets in a wide variety of languages. The actual device has a pleasant look and feel and fits well in the hand. Most impressively the excellent build quality extends through the motorbike mount, and the car mount.

I have fixed the Garmin Zumo 550 to the Road King Classic. As the handlebars on the Road King Classic are wider than standard, and much wider than a typical motorbike the U Clamp was too small, but I sorted that with a exhaust mounting bracket that cost 89p from Halfords. It is ‘hard wired’ to the battery with the cable provided, but I did need to buy the fittings for the battery. The cable is more than long enough for pretty much any position on any bike.

The car mount is a suction mount, with a power feed to the cigarette lighter, so nice and flexible.

There is also a power adapter for mains supply as well, so it is possible to keep it charged in the house and given it’s size it is a realistic option as a hand held sat nat device as well.

The first real surprise though was the Garmin software …… it works with the Mac!!! I was all set for a work around so was more than happy with the integration with the Mac. Connection is via USB or SD Card, and I hadn’t realised that the SD Card would enable the Garmin Zumo 550 to play music (and show photos which is less useful, and in fact somewhat dangerous when riding a motorbike!). With either a bluetooth headset or headphones attached it is an option to listen to music as well as the directional instructions.

Setting destinations on the Garmin Zumo 550 isn’t great until you have way points set (easy to do especially as you only need to press on the screen to set one), but integration with Google Maps compensates. Overall data entry is somewhat cumbersome in my view, but bearable.

The real joy though is in using the Garmin Zumo 550 with the accuracy and responsiveness exceptional. I was particularly pleased with, and thankful for the speed with which is recalculated routes. This is possibly the single most impressive and useful feature of the Garmon Zumo 550. A close second is the advanced notification of directional changes and the approaching speed cameras and mobile speed ‘traps’. Found this pretty useful in both the UK and Spain!!