Garmin Zumo 220 Motorcycle Navigator (European Mapping,Lane Assist,Spoken street names)

 

 

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I can't say I'm happy to be writing this as I shelled out a lot of money for my Garmin but it is without doubt the worst satnav I've ever used. I used it over the last 3 weeks touring round Europe and it's given so many wierd routes and incorrect directions that I was seriously wondering if it was broken in some way.

There is nothing more infuriating than being told to keep left only to then be told that you should have went right. This happened a number of times and always when it was most inconvenient such as on the autostradas when you couldn't turn around for 20K.

The bluetooth connected fine to my headset but the volume was pathetically low. So much so that I disabled it as I couldn't hear the instructions anyway. This was using an Interphone F4 in a Shoei Multitec. The Interphone's a superb bit of kit that I used 'bike to bike' with my wife on the same trip. The issue seems to be the Garmin's volume, not the Interphone's. Of course you can't adjust the Garmins volume when synced with Bluetooth. You can only use your headsets control. It won't let you turn the Garmin's volume up seperately. Terrific!

If that wasn't bad enough it also decided to route me through loads of A and B roads about France instead of using the freeway even though I told it I wanted the fastest route and NOT to avoid tolls. The end result of this was that I didn't make my planned destination and had to book into a rural hotel well away from where I wanted to be. Checking maps later confirmed that it's routing choice was terrible. On most occasions I'd say it chose a poor route and sometimes gave me different routes coming back from a location as the one it gave going. As a computer programmer that particular gem is beyond my understanding.

The next annoyance is POIs. There's no way to overlay them over the map view. If you need fuel for instance it only brings up a list with some arrows showing the rough compass direction of petrol stations. Not exactly helpful believe me. Especially when you can't tell if it'll involve a major detour off a motorway for instance. Why can't I just choose to overlay them on the map view?

Then there's the routing again. I plotted an arrow onto a road in Italy (the E35) to tell the system that I wanted to go to Lugano via the E35 as it always tried to take me over a very slow mountain pass otherwise. The only way is to point a little arrow to a via point on the map. When zoomed in you only see one solid line representing the entire road the system decided my via point was on the opposite side of the road from the direction I was going in and directed me off the E35 onto some side roads and then right back down the E35 back the way I came to reach the via point. Yes there's an element of stupidity on my part as I suspected something was up but, in a foreign country, you sometimes have to trust it. Of course when I realised what it was doing it was too late and I had to waste another 24km before I could turn round on the motorway.

Oh, and one more one the routing. Almost every turn tells you street names such as 'turn left onto Whatever Boulevard'. That'd be fine except that the signs by road turns never ever give street names. How about 'take the next left heading for Reims'? That'd actually be useful! The map view also never tells you the town names as you pass through so it's a pain trying to guage where you are when you're forced to dig out the maps.

Finally, there's the support. I accidentally dropped the unit and broke the silver trim on the front. This is a flimsy plastic cover and is purely a cosmetic item that clips on the front. I called Garmin who told me they don't sell spares but for £90 they would replace the whole unit. When I pointed out I only wanted the little cover which must be worth a couple of quid I was told too bad and that it wasn't Garmin's fault that they don't sell spares or do repairs. So who's fault is it??? I'm now left with a unit I can't sell that doesn't actually work worth a damn.

My wife has also told me she's never going to go a run with me again if I use the Garmin. So well done Garmin for making me waste over £300 on your useless product which will now lie in a drawer unused. I only hope I can deter others from making the same mistake. I'd read that the TomTom Rider's had reliability issues. Stupidly I chose the Garmin instead. I'm now off to investigate the new TomTom Urban Rider. It can't possibly be worse. Or maybe I'll just buy some maps instead.

* UPDATE: Garmin have restored my faith in their customer services. After writing a letter to them about my broken trim they have sent out a replacement trim for free. It does mean that their call centre's claim that they don't carry spares was complete nonsense but at least they've sorted this out for me. I can't fault the subsequent service I received which has been superb. If you find an issue I'd advise writing a good old fashioned letter.

It is hard to review an electronic device these days without comparing it to something Apple might have made. If this is the current benchmark then this product does not fare at all well - being slow, bulky, with a low resolution blurry screen and poor UI.

Despite these shortcomings, once a route has been entered and calculated, it does do the job of a sat nav reasonably well - including nice features like lane guidance, configurable display, speed limits info (not always correct) and overspeed warnings for speed cameras. I found it pretty easy to forego the voice assistance and rely on the map and time to next turn feature.

On battery power and with screen brightness to compete with a sunny day, it seems to have 4+ hours of life, but annoyingly there is no indication of power remaining from the main nav screen. For many trips, this life is ample but for longer journeys external power will be needed. To power the device from a bike, you either need to use the 'cigar' charger (which I doubt is waterproof) but supports traffic info, or to wire the bulky 5v converter into the bikes wiring harness and securely attach it somewhere (I am still looking for a good place).

So what improvements could Garmin make:

There is no QWERTY keyboard input option, how hard would it be to have this?

For some reason it seems to think all my local grocery stores sell petrol. My old Garmin car nav gets this right.

Battery life is way better than regular car navs, so they obviously intend some people to use it on battery power... So where is the mains charger - I am travelling guys, USB charging is no substitute.

Battery charge indicator is a crude 4 block affair and not visible from the Nav screen. It should display minutes remaining, then you could manage your juice use!

The supplied bike sat nav holder does a fine job while on the move but offers no security at all from opportunist thieves, and since you have to carry it with you while off the bike, not supplying a case is just being cheap! I don't need a delicate sat nav to juggle with while I am trying to pay for yet more petrol.

Oh and the supplied software is unintuitive, clunky and buggy (at least on a Mac) - and just how many important numbers does a product need?

Despite all this griping, it is still probably the best bike sat nav on the market for the money and does come with car fittings too, but it is too expensive and so not made by Apple.

Let me make my position clear from the start, I only use Satnav's where I can programme in my own detailed route from a PC and then squirt the route into the satnav to follow when travelling.

I cannot comment on the use of the Zumo 220 as a point to point do as you are told satnav, I haven't used it this way.

I bought the 220 because I already have a zumo 660, but the wife keep knicking it when I want to use it, ( to be fair, it was bought for her!) it works fine in the mode I have described above.

I decided I wanted to be able to do the same thing on my motorbike, but didnt want to shell out for a 660 again, so I got the 220, thinking that I could use the existing pc routes on the 220.

When I download a proven route into the Zumo 220, it corrupts it so that you might end up on wrong roads, or even non existent roads. I have not tested this problem exhaustively,(life is too short) it is unusable on the two long routes I have tried.

After a frustrating few days with Garmin support, they came to the conclusion that it was not only my unit at fault as they had a similar problem! They couldn't tell me when the problem might be fixed!

I sent the Zumo back for a refund!

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5.0 out of 5 stars Garmin zumo 220 europe
Very Good gps for motorcycle. It comes with everything to pulg-and-play: RAM mount for car and motorcycle,lighter cable for 12 v plug, eléctric wire for permanent... Read more

Published 17 days ago by José Poiarez

2.0 out of 5 stars rubbish volume
we have had the Garmin Zumo 220 for about 2 weeks but have yet to find a blue tooth head set that will give enough volume at speed on a bike Garmin have been no help at all, we... Read more

Published 5 months ago by evo

1.0 out of 5 stars Don't....just don't
The Zumo 220 is my third Garmin. I had a Zumo 550 which I sold with my Honda and still have a Nuvi 250, which although has a limited performance does at least work 100%. Read more

Published 5 months ago by al de baran

1.0 out of 5 stars Buyer Beware
After just 5 days my sat nav fell off the mount at the ball socket and went under a lorry RIP. Garmin say its user error, I say buy a lanyard!!

Published 7 months ago by Michael

4.0 out of 5 stars Zumo 220 dual purpose
Not only is this a great GPS for a motorbike, every bit as good as the Zumo 550, I have got it located into the ash tray of my new VW scirocco as a GPS , saved me £1200 by not... Read more

Published 10 months ago by ian

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