GPS - Motorcycle Alternatives ?

Just pondering with buying a cheap and chearful GPS to use on the bike.
Thought about slipping a Navman or similar slimline portable battery powered unit into the tankbag map holder, which is wind/waterproof, instead of going down the Zumo route.
Does anyone use a cheap (non specific expensive motorcycle unit) with any degree of success?

garmin 2610 @ £180ish. how cheap do you want?

cookie said:

garmin 2610 @ £180ish. how cheap do you want?

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What he says

Brilliant unit

Al

I agree they look superb, however I would like to be able to use it away from the bike, it's a shame that it doesn't haver a built in battery or I would have bought one ages ago.

What I was wondering, apart from the 2610 / 2710 / Zumo or Rider (I gather the Rider is now out of production), does anyone use a car type GPS with any success.
They are almost at disposable prices now if they do happen to get damp.
Just a thought. Probably get 5 cheap car Garmins for the price of a 2610 motorcycle unit.

Looking on t'interweb the "car" Garmins are similar price to the "bike" ones. Why not buy a "bike" one and use it in both, I do with my Quest, and if / when I egt a Zumo or 2610 I'll do the same.

Bananaman said:

Probably get 5 cheap car Garmins for the price of a 2610 motorcycle unit.

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Cheapest Garmin is the i2 (about £80-£90) which would be pretty hopeless for the bike. You would get proximity alerts and about a 6-8 hour battery life out of a pair of AAs but the big downer is that it's not waterproof and will only do A-B, it decides what roads to take in between, fine in the car but no good for recreational bike riding (beware the Nuvi and C series Streetpilots all work this way).

Trust me I though my i3, the colour version of the i2 (£100-£120), would be OK. Above failings plus no audio without butchering the unit and then it kept switching off of it's own accord... Gave it to the Mrs for use in the cage where it's ideal, I then got a Quest off eBay for £130, this is waterproof, does precise planned routing (plan on the PC then upload to the unit) and has an internal battery. A lot less bulky than the 2610 as well. Only down side is fixed memory limits range when touring abroad using the current mapping (the whole of the UK fits on though), this is where the 2610 scores.

You will find used Garmin Quests on eBay for about £120 - they will do exactly what you want. Make sure however you are bidding for the European version and not the N American one with smaller memory - a quick search here will provide plenty of info on this excellent product

A lot less bulky than the 2610 as well. Only down side is fixed memory limits range when touring abroad using the current mapping (the whole of the UK fits on though), this is where the 2610 scores

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OK - as far as i am concerned the 2610 and similar units are a "no brainer" as they do not have an internal battery.
So Is anybody navigating with a car unit that will do the job, which works away from the bike, and without needing power from a 240/ 110 volt supply ?

I used a pda based Medion unit a few times on the bike in a aqua pak case Good enough unit in the car with the windscreen mount, Total crap when used on bike

If you're looking for cheap and cheerful how about one of these :- http://www.pocketgpsworld.com/mitacmio168.php Stick it in a tank bag, plug in headphones and away you go! They sometimes come up on ebay for about £50. It has a 2-3hr battery and will power from the accessory socket on the bike.

Bananaman said:

OK - as far as i am concerned the 2610 and similar units are a "no brainer" as they do not have an internal battery.
So Is anybody navigating with a car unit that will do the job, which works away from the bike, and without needing power from a 240/ 110 volt supply ?

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That's why I mentioned the Quest, its major advantage over the 2610 is that is has an internal battery which Garmin reckon will last about 20 hours, can't be far wrong as I've run it for ages on the battery alone without it going flat. It comes with a car mount and cigar lighter adaptor with integral speaker, I use it in the cage frequently. If you do off road stuff then it'll take the Garmin Topo maps and do off road way-point navigation and then take the blue chart mapping for when you're sailing your yacht

If you want to run it on the bike on internal batteries the backlight only illuminates when you're approaching a turn or you press one of the buttons. The powered bike cradle costs about £50 and will power the unit with the backlight on all the time at the same time as charging the batteries. Additionally this cradle will provide an audio out that can feed into an intercom or just into a plain ear monitor that you can get from Maplins for about £5.

Whilst the Quest is now a bit down on features when compared to more recent models (it's still in the Garmin line-up) it offers good core GPS functionality at a reasonable price. The only thing that might be an issue is the limited range for transcontinental touring as a result of the fixed memory which limits the amount of mapping data you can load at any one time. i.e. Hereford to Marseille then Lyon then Luxembourg and back to Hereford is just a little too much at 249MB (the Quest only has 243MB of space to store mapping data). However as I know my way to Cheltenham I can omit 2 mapping tiles (mapping data is loaded in tiled areas, the UK is made up of 18) which brings the total down to 230MB for the above trip. That's about taking it to the limit, any more ambitious touring and you'd need to take a laptop, omit sections and use a paper map or use two Quests. There is a navigable base map with major roads so you could use that for motorway/autoroute sections.

Quest is good for car, bike and on foot with its internal battery.
I've used mine for all three.
Don't know about boats, I don't care to go on them.

Like Bumpkin says, it holds detailed maps of the UK as standard and has major routes only for everywhere else (fairly detailed for some parts of Europe). And it's waterproof.

brassmonkey001 said:

Quest is good for car, bike and on foot with its internal battery.
I've used mine for all three.
Don't know about boats, I don't care to go on them.

Like Bumpkin says, it holds detailed maps of the UK as standard and has major routes only for everywhere else (fairly detailed for some parts of Europe). And it's waterproof.

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The Deluxe version (I think that's all you can get new now) comes with City Nav. Europe (full unlock). It just won't all fit on the unit at once, you have to load the map segments you want for a specific trip. As stated it'll hold all of the UK plus Northern coast of France.

Looks like I will have a look at the Quest.

I've just bought my good lady a Garmin C510 for use in the car and I think it's a really good piece of kit. It's a lot more 'plug & play' than my 2610 and easy to use.

Have a look at page 140 of the latest Touratech catalogue and you'll see a mount and waterproof cover for the C3xx series. I'm pretty sure that the C5xx series will fit.

Though I'm sticking with my 2610

<<Mark_C>> said:

If you're looking for cheap and cheerful how about one of these :- http://www.pocketgpsworld.com/mitacmio168.php Stick it in a tank bag, plug in headphones and away you go! They sometimes come up on ebay for about £50. It has a 2-3hr battery and will power from the accessory socket on the bike.

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Thats the same as my Medion