Are there any serious issues with Zumo 500?

[spencetj]

I am hoping to get hold of a Zumo 500 and save some money over the price of the new models. According to what I have seen and the comparison on the Garmin website it appears to be virtually the same as the 550 so I think it should do the job. I tried using a TomTom ONE but it doesn't support loading your own customised preplanned routes so it always sends you down the nearest motorway. Not very helpful. The 500 allows you to load you own routes and you can turn off the auto recalculate thing can't you? Sorry, never used a garmin so I'm not familiar with how they work. Are there any big issues with the 500 that would make it worth spending more for a newer version?

Possibly the hardest part is finding somewhere that still has the 500 as stock seem to be running out. Best price I have seen is £275 but no stock at present.

 

[Allan Davies]

I have had my 500 since they first came out (over 2 years ago its been that long) Not had any issues with mine at all. The main difference between the 500/550 is the 550 has ALL of Europe pre-installed (500 has to have it on an SD card) so the 550 has a bigger memory. Saying that I imported the whole of my Euro tour over 2K miles on the 500 and just selected the maps around the route and not all the countries I visited. That way if I did stray of the planned route there as scope to explore and not get totally lost. If I would of got lost, I had All Europe on an SD card anyway
There are a few other differences, but none that I could see which were that vital, when I compared it to my mates 550 on the same trip. The 550 also comes with the car mount kit included, about £50 ish.
HTH's

 

[jack.pe]

Srock is hard to find, I eventually got mine on Ebay for £285, that's the cheapest I could find. All other cheap offers have not had stock for several weeks. Works fine for me, will upload Europe from the SD card I have bought. The only other major difference is that the 550 reads out the actual names of streets as opposed to just turn left or right like the 500, but this feature is useless on the continent and hardly essential in the UK...

 

[spencetj]

Thanks for the info.

Jack.pe, how long ago did you buy yours and which ebay seller? I wondered if they still had any in stock. Are Garmin still making them, or is it just whatever they have lying around that is being sold off? The 500 is still shown on the Garmin website but its not really clear what the availability is.