“Designed by bikers”, according to Garmin, the Garmin Zumo 550 weighs in at 269 grams and features a 3.5-inch screen and large buttons ideal for the motorcycle-riding user. An on/off button on the right and four contextual buttons on the left are “ideal for the gloved hand”, uses the identical 1.9 GB hard drive as the Garmin nuvi and uses Western European Navteq maps with street-level directions. The mount if very secure and easy to install although routing the power cable can be tricky with some bikes. The battery has a fairly long life for a GPS unit, providing a good 4 hours of usage time. Power up takes up 30 seconds and a GPS lock is stable about 20 seconds later. Five buttons run across the top of the touchscreen, large enough for gloved hands and a slider bar on the bottom can be used to use the touch buttons as well.
The Zumo 550 still uses the traditional Garmin country/town/street/number input system which obviously can be a little tough to use riding a motorcycle and all, but route calculation is just as quick as most car-based systems. The quality of the text-to-speech audio instructions is impressive but actually looking at the screen in direct sunlight can be a little tough, although easier than many other motorcycle GPS units.
Other features include route redirections, Traffic Messaging that displays possible route delays, a weatherproof design, USB 2.0 connectibility, an MP3 player and a picture viewer. The last two features are pretty much useless on a motorcycle obviously. In the box, the Garmin Zumo 550 also contains a car mount for in-car use and the unit contains a built-in speaker so text-to-speech directions can be heard without a Bluetooth earpiece. As you can probably deduce from this feature, the Zumo 550 doesn’t feature Bluetooth.
The Garmin Zumo 550, made specifically for the European market, is available from Amazon.
via lordpercy