Garmin Zumo 550 is a GPS device designed specially for bikers, can also be used with the car-kit to use it both on two and on four wheels. It comes with both a motorcycle mount and a car mount, an AC charger, power cable to connect it to the battery, USB cable for software updates, a city Navigator DVD, owners manual, setup guide and another bunch of stickers.
Garmin gave us a bonus with the car mount, that has a very strong adhesive disc and is already at the eyes level which make it pretty nice feature if we think this is a motorcycle related device. Zumo has a 3.5-inch UV resistant touch screen display with a 320×240 pixel resolution, and it gives you the ability to choose the size of the icons for those that need them bigger. Some other interesting features are the SD slot card, mini USB port and a 24-pin mount connector.

Great features:
- 20 channel SiRFstar III high sensitivity GPS receiver
- all North America maps are preloaded
- text and voice guided directions
- built-in MP3 player and Bluetooth for hands-free calling or listening to music
- night mode for the display (automatic change of color)
- display that will inform you about speed, estimated arrival time, distance till the next turn, street name, zoom in/out button

When it comes to performance the guys at Crave had a very nice performance test with the new Garmin Zumo 550 in San Francisco Bay Area and the result is that it gave some weird directions, had some streets and alleys with bad names or no names at all, and the recalculation time was pretty big. The battery is supposed to power the new Zumo 550 for three to four hours but the test they conducted revealed about five hours.
The new Garmin Zumo 550 is a bit pricier than the competition (TomTom Rider at $800), and it costs around $9000 depending on the store.

Filed under GPS