Having had a 2820 for about 6 months and having just taking a zumo550 on an extended (primarily off road) 2500km trip over the last few weeks I thought I'd chip in with my 2c worth ..... This summary was written for a mate who is a real beginner on GPS’s, so the more experienced users may find it a little “simple” – feel free to chip in if you think I’ve missed anything.
Some of the key features of the units as I see it:
satellite acquisition and lock: Zumo is way better. finds satellites faster and holds them longer. is also more accurate in its positioning. Net result of this is that if are auto routing and turn one road too early or too late, the Zumo will quickly detect it and recalculate your route. 2820 is nowhere near as accurate.
Mounting: for everyday use the Zumo is better and easier to get on and off the bike. Also locks in place better. After 1500km hard off road riding the Zumo didn’t shift once. I did have the 2820 jump off once when hitting a pothole at speed. A little quirk is that the security screwdriver on the 2820 is easier to use - it’s a torque driver so is self centering. Another strange quirk is that if you mount the Zumo on the bike and DON’T screw in the security screw, it seems to fasten itself as you drive! The vibrations of the bike clearly turn the screw in with the aid of gravity – then you get to the end of your journey and can’t get the thing off the cradle without the screwdriver!!!
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Screen: both are fine for bike use. 2820 is better in that it is bigger and you can customise the tabs. At first zumo screen was a pain, but I soon found how to get around the menus easily. 2820 lets you see more of the map at one time for the equivalent zoom level.
POI’s. these don’t show on the Zumo map while you navigate
but can be seen on the map browse screen at the 80meter level. 2820 lets you set at what level you can see POI’s and you can see them when navigating. Hopefully Garmin will change this on the Zumo asap.
Battery: Zumo has one, 2820 not. 2820 also cannot be powered through USB. I found this to be a real pain. You always have to be at a power source or mounted on the bike to use the thing.
Buttons: Zumo on the left – nice. 2820’s buttons have a better feel and are bigger.
Memory capacity: both can load additional maps and MP3’s. 2820 has 2gb fixed memory, Zumo 2gb fixed and up to another 4gb on SD card. Zumo clearly better here. Also, the SD card is easier to load with MP3’s using Media Monkey or similar.
Track logs capacity: 2820 has 10000 points. Zumo can hold around 200 000 of which the first 10000 can be used in a sort of track back style feature. The remaining 190 000 can be downloaded in Mapsource. Zumo cannot write track logs to SD card like the “x” series units.
Map datum’s: I can’t remember what the 2820 supports, but v3.2 of the Zumo software now supports a whole bunch of datum’s … more than I need anyway
Proximity warnings (speed cameras): both will warn you of a camera, but the Zumo is better at it. I need to double check this but I think that the Zumo will only warn you about cameras on the road that you are travelling on … 2820 will warn you of any camera in close proximity. Iow, if there is a camera under a bridge (focussed on the road below) and you go over the bridge, the 2820 will give you a warning while the Zumo not.
Auto recalculate: enough said about this already … it’s a pain!
On the 2820 it can be switched off, on the Zumo it can’t. The sooner Garmin provide a “auto recalculate = off” switch for the Zumo, the better. Having said that, I only find it a pain in off road mode (more about this below).
Then, much has been written about the relative merits and problems with these units for off road use. First, let’s just get some clarity about what folk mean when they refer to “routes”. As I understand it there are a number of different ways you can use a GPS to navigate.
One. you follow a route created on an auto-routing map. You specify the end destination and the GPS takes you there. If you go off route, the gps recalculates a new route and instructs you accordingly. Both Zumo and 2820 do this well without problems.
Or, as above except there are some points that you want to go via. E.g. London to Brighton via the Lake district. Again, both Zumo and 2820 do this well without problems.
Both of these can be created either on the PC (Mapsource) or on the unit itself.
Then there are tracklogs. These are routes that other folk have driven and saved on their GPS’s as tracklogs. They typically consist of between 200 and 5000 track log points and you can load them into Mapsource and see where they have driven. They are usually useful for areas not covered by a map.
The 2820 cannot accept tracklogs in their standard format – you simply cannot load a tracklog to a 2820! You need to first load it to Mapsource, manually create a route using lots of via points and then load it to the 2820 – it’s a really slow process and not practical at all.
The zumo on the other hand will happily accept a tracklog which it then “converts” to a route. What happens next depends on what you tell the unit to do…. If you have a tracklog that you want to follow, you set the unit to off-road mode, import the tracklog (the zumo converts it to a route) and follow the route – simple. If you forget to set the unit to off road mode, it tries to recalc the route when it is imported and stuffs your route up (basically draws a straight line from start to finish!). If that happens, simply delete it from the unit and re-import it from the SD card.
Now comes the real killer … if you have correctly loaded an off road route and follow it correctly from start to finish correctly, it works perfectly. IF, however, you deviate along the route, the GPS sees you are off route and tries to recalc from your new position to the end point, but because you are off road, it can’t route you along the road and simply draws a straight line from your current position to the end – bugger. Again, if that happens, simply delete it from the unit and re-import it from the SD card. Clearly not a very elegant solution.
So, in summary.
For road driving (routable maps) the Zumo is slightly better due to its greater accuracy.
Off road the zumo is lots better (and will be even better when the auto-recalc problem is solved.) but you need to keep your wits about you and make sure you are in the correct "mode".
The zumo is easier to live with on an everyday basis (battery, size, etc).
Regards,
Dale
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