Garmin City navigator NT Europe V9 & Zumo 550

[Dutchman]

Spent some time this evening checking out our demo example of the new Garmin Zumo 550.

It's shipping with V9 of the MapSource City Navigator NT Europe.

We've had no word from Garmin about this and it's not mentioned on their website....so this is what V9 is all about:

Full Detailed Coverage now includes Republic of Ireland, mainland Portugal, Poland & Spain.

Expanded coverage now covers many eastern European countries including: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, eastern Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia & southern Greece.

These countries only have major urban areas coverage at the moment.

Also in V9 is expanded address ranges for Belgium, 7.3million kms of roads & 1.3 million POI's.

There is also a comprehensive European Safety camera POI database already pre-loaded to the unit.

There is a track log facility which can be shared with other Zumo users via SD card or uploaded to Google earth.

The Zumo 550 itself is an extremely competent motorcycle specific GPS. Obviously learning their own lessons as well as those of TomTom's Rider, Garmin have created a complete package which includes a very robust & versatile motorcycle mounting cradle with power, 3.5mm audio out & 2.5mm microphone jack.

The fastenting clip is metal and lockable with the tool supplied. There is zero movement between cradle & GPSR when secured.

The car cradle is equally versatile & can either fix to the windscreen or dashboard and has a built in speaker. Power comes from the usual cigarette lighter type power lead.

The package is completed with a universal RAM mount with short arm, a neat protective pouch for the GPSR, USB data cable & mains power adapter for in-house charging.

Black and silver trim caps are provided as well as comprehensive user manuals on CD.

I've not had the chance to fit this to a bike yet or try the Bluetooth connectivity......this will be done tomorrow.

First impressions are extremely favourable and confirm my earlier thoughts that this may well be the ultimate GPS for bikers.

That's about it for now, I'll post images on the bike tomorrow.

Cheers

Dutch

 

[GS_Mad]

Sounds good Dutch,

If I was on the phone tomorrow with a credit card when could I expect delivery? You've mentioned that you have another delivery tomorrow - have they all been allocated?

Thanks.

 

[ebbo]

Well that all sounds good, including the mapping upgrades, (that’s always welcome).

If they just do a couple of mods to the operating system, I’ll probably be investing some time after Christmas, I really like the units ability to download trails to the card, that means I wouldn’t have to take a laptop on extended trips next year. And the sirf star III chip would be good too.

Looking forward to seeing the pictures.

 

[Dutchman]

Sounds good Dutch,

If I was on the phone tomorrow with a credit card when could I expect delivery? You've mentioned that you have another delivery tomorrow - have they all been allocated?

Thanks.

The first 50 have been allocated and some of those have already shipped out for delivery to customers tomorrow.

Any order placed today would be fulfilled in two weeks.

Cheers

Dutch

 

[BurnieM]

We have tried it with the Scala Rider BT headset and it works well.

The zumo has 2 channel BlueTooth.
You can pair your BT phone with the zumo and also your BT headset or helmet with the zumo.
If you pair it this way then the phone will mute both the mp3 music and the navigation instructions.
The navigation instructions will mute the music.
All phone controls are onscreen when paired this way (rather than pairing the headset direct with the phone). Most BT phones will also download their memory numbers into the zumo and let you dial from them or a keypad.

The firmware that it comes with has a few lockup and BT issues and I would recommend upgrading to v2.20 on Garmins website straight away - http://www.garmin.com/support/agree.jsp?id=1907

The bike cradle has a mic and speaker socket on the side which should make it easy for Autocomm and Baehr.
You should be able to pair a BT phone with the zumo and talk thru your intercomm.

 

[BurnieM]

While the zumo is a great onroad unit I am reserving judgement on it as an onroad/offroad unit.

We have feed info back to Garmin and would like to see an ability to display the tracklog, compass screen displayed in all navigation modes and UTM coordinates.