Zumo: gps for dummies ?

[GEOFFREY DEACON]

Still waiting for my Zumo to arrive, and now desperate to know at what zoomscale does the Zumo rests at?.(if you know what i mean?).

I want to know how far the map looks ahead with autozoom , Is It like the Tom Tom Riders scale?.
is the 2820 better for this?.
Come on zumo owners, Tell me please?.

 

[ebbo]

I want to know how far the map looks ahead with autozoom , Is It like the Tom Tom Riders scale?.
is the 2820 better for this?.
Come on zumo owners, Tell me please?.

Of the Garmin GPS's I've owned, they have zoomed out after a turn to show the next turn on the map, be it 1m or 100m away. So if you turn on to the motorway with no turn off for quite some miles it can zoom out a long way.

 

[HMR]

Still waiting for my Zumo to arrive, and now desperate to know at what zoomscale does the Zumo rests at?

I think (but I don't know) that that's user definable. You can't stop the Zumo from zooming in but you can limit how much it zooms out.

is the 2820 better for this?.

Yes for two reasons. The screen resolution is much higher on the 2820 and the zoom rate is user controllable.

 

[GEOFFREY DEACON]

Thanks for the replies but the point I was so badly trying to make was, if you use the zumo as a travelling map?, at what scale would the screen be based/set on ..
ie KLM above ground level etc?.

 

[ampthill]

One of the problems with Autozoom is that it will zoom out a long way when it thinks you will not be turning off the road you are currently travelling on for some distance - therefore you get a screen with a little local detail. However problems arise when the route it has marked out on the screeen does not correspond to the roads themselves.

For example the GPS believes that the route you need to follow is the road you are currently travelling on when in reality the road it needs you to follow is a left or right turn. This can be a particular problem on some minor country roads which have a bend with a junction on them which is straight ahead. If you follow the road round the bend the the voice comes up to tell you are 'off route' and should have gone straight ahead, even though this meant a change of road. However because the autozoom has zoomed so far out you can't see this - therefore much better IMO to set autozoom as off. Personally I ride with the screen scale set to 0.2m for most riding.

Peter

 

[Bumpkin]

For example the GPS believes that the route you need to follow is the road you are currently travelling on when in reality the road it needs you to follow is a left or right turn. This can be a particular problem on some minor country roads which have a bend with a junction on them which is straight ahead. If you follow the road round the bend the the voice comes up to tell you are 'off route' and should have gone straight ahead, even though this meant a change of road. However because the autozoom has zoomed so far out you can't see this - therefore much better IMO to set autozoom as off. Personally I ride with the screen scale set to 0.2m for most riding.

Until I found the menu setting to turn this off on my Quest I was very disappointed with this 'feature'. If you can't turn it off on the Zumo I wouldn't consider buying one. The number of ambiguities I encountered on that one initial ride where the Quest failed to provide directions and a map view that gave no clues had me thinking I had made the wrong choice. Wake up Garmin, firmware update required!

 

[BurnieM]

Comments from the US Goldwing forum
Apparently you can manually set the zoom level in 2 steps (speed dependant)

Can somebody confirm this and comment on its useability ?

"It has an auto zoom feature to the map screen when not navigating a route, but it only has two levels; more zoomed in for slower speeds and a larger zoom when traveling faster. While accelerating it switches zoom levels at about 58MPH and when decelerating it switches at about 45MPH. Each of these two levels can be controled. When traveling less than 45MPH set the zoom to a comfortable level and do the same when traveling above 58MPH. It will remember and switch based on what you previously set.

When you are navigating a route it set's the zoom level to get the next turn on the screen. However, it doesn't zoom out further than your high speed setting. I like this better than the way the 276C does it. When traveling accross country every time I would get on the freeway the 276C would zoom out to see the whole country because the next turn wasn't unitl the next state. This is less of an issue with the zumo."

http://www.gl1800riders.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=73123

 

[Kritou]

Until I found the menu setting to turn this off on my Quest I was very disappointed with this 'feature'......

Could you please enlighten me as to this menu - many thanks

 

[samwise]

As far as I know they are very similar except for the preloaded map. The removable cards are the same as before.

One difference is that the 278C runs the NT map while the 276C runs the standard map. Two interesting questions following from the fact that the 278C runs the NT map are:

- Can you do full post code search with the 278C?

- Can you use the POI-loader to upload POI's to the 278C?

Anybody knows?

POI-loader - yes (see page 106 of the manual

Post codes - not mentioned that I can see

 

[HMR]

POI-loader - yes (see page 106 of the manual

Post codes - not mentioned that I can see

Also postcodes are OK. Se http://www.garmin.com/uk/marine/gpsmap278.htm