About the freedom to go wherever, I went to San Bernardino and Banning yesterday and missed my turn off 3 times. Doesn't say much for my memory. First time cost me 20 miles round trip.

 

here are the main differences...

HD branded Zumo 550 :
Has a Harley Logo on the front
Has the dealerships pre-loaded
Replaces the Home button, with Dealer Button
Costs 200.00 more
Has Harley Splash Screens
No car mount included (98.00 + 28 for the cable at garmin.com)

Regular Zumo 550:
No Logo, (Add a sticker)
No preloaded dealership file
( Poifactory.com Takes 10 minutes or less)
Has the home button, routes you home automatically
200.00 LESS ( more bling for the scoot)
No HD Splash screens (make your own..its easy)
Comes with Car mount


There ya go...operationally, they are the same unit Why spend an additional 200.00 for things you can get for free?

 

Harley's website has a "Ride Planner" feature that let's you include the dealers on the route you plan to take. It also lets you download to your gps. I haven't used it myself but it might be worth a look.

 

Good Choice

Zumo 550 comes with the stuff for the car and it comes with a Ram mount for the handle bars.
Now if you need to go from the audio on it to the MP3 audio imput you can go to Walley world and git one.
While yer there git a memory card say 4 gb. load it with music and put it in the Zumo, now you got enough music to play threw the radio speakers for about 2 days non stop.
Yer radio has to be on accessories.
And you can program in a address to go to and the zumo will talk threw the radio speakers.

 

To me, the Zumos are just overpriced toys. I'll never pay 600 bucks and more for one of these gizmos. I don't care if they're designed for bikes, can play MP3s and are XM capable. A good 200 bucks GPS for cars provide the same navigation capabilities and that's all I'm interested in. As for 100% waterproof, a ziplock bag is sufficient when I ride in light rain. If it's pouring I stop cause I can't see the road, much less a friggin' 4" LCD.
Just my opinion.

 

The Zumo series for motorcycle ain't just waterproof, they hold a 25 times more shock resistance than the other zumo's.

If everything is about money, sell yer bike, then you don't have to buy things for it.
And you can sit at home an watch TV

 

As someone touched on before the big difference to me between the regular Zumo and the Harley Zumo is that there is no car mount (which has a built in speaker) included with the harley zumo package. I didn't know that and thought that was a pretty stupid thing to do on harley's part since then regular zumo costs the same or less. I called garmin at first and they said that harley decides what to include in their package. Maybe they have changed that since i bought mine over a year ago. The zumo has no built in speakers so you need a blue tooth headset, or if on a harley with a radio connect it to that.

So somethings that i really like about it:
* it automatically tracks where you ride, and if you like that route you can save it for future use. as you are riding you will see a blue line that is laid down on the map behind the motorcycle icon. If you don't like that i believe you can turn that feature off, but i actually like that and leave it on.
* i like the display, meaning i can see it well on sunny days as opposed to a non-motorcycle GPS that i used to use. and it has been out in a downpour many times and have had no problems.
*the harley dealerships can come in handy when you are out of town and you don't have to pull over and pull out your HOG map ( if you have one) if you feel the need to visit one or need some service.
* another little feature that can come in handy, you can set an alert to come up when you get close to getting empty on gas. When that happens an icon appears on the map, when you touch that icon on the screen it will list all the gas station near you based on distance. When you select one it will route you to that station. That came in handy when traveling home from sturgis and the head wind was killing my gas milage and the amount of exits are few and far between in some areas in south dakota.
*Lastly i can create a route on the computer, choosing nice backroads and then downloading it to the GPS and now i can take that nice scenic ride without having to always be focusing on where i need to turn next. Without that, just like any GPS if you just choose your destination on the GPS it is not going to take the backroads the way you want to.

Sorry, about this being so long but just wanted to post some reason why i like the zumo 550.

 

Suffer through a mini hijack with me please..

Recently someone mentioned to my wife that "home" on the GPS should not actually BE your HOME...maybe very close by would serve as well. Reason gave me a DUH moment. If somebody grabs your GPS then all they have to do is press HOME and get directions to where you ain't at so they can steal some other stuff too.

Now back to the thread. John

 

good point....i set mine up so you have to enter a passcode when the unit is first powered up. When you set up the lock feature it doesn't need a password when you are at home, that way it allows you get back into the unit if you were to forget your passcode.

 

On a related note...we arrested some kids last year that had been breaking into cars and stealing whatever they thought they could unload. Among the items they'd taken were 2 GPS units. The officers were able to punch the "home" buttons and drive directly to the unknowing victims houses!