I think Garmin has lost their mind!

So, then, it's still the best for motorcycling, no?

(BTW, Hi There! Still did not get a chance to get in touch - will try this fall.)

After TomTom checked out, Garmin is the only game in town for motorcycle specific navigation, so they are the best and the worst at the same time.


(I'm not sure about this fall- just back from the longest ride of my life, probably will be grounded with the family for the rest of the year)

Ahhh! Nice ride - I did look it up.
Since this is a GPS topic, let's hijack the thread only slightly: how were you geo-tagging your pictures?

you would be right if that was all gamin sell- MC GPS. But this is not the case- They sell car GPS - Zumo 660 is basically the same as any NUVI GPS which sells from less than $100.

Only thing they added is Water proof -ability - how much does a couple seals and a waterproof speaker cost!

The other additional functions are mostly software based with no additional hardware necessary..

Oh i suppose they add a bluetooth chip so it can communicate to your helmet.

The additional manufacturing cost will be less than $50 at the most. If they want only $100 to $150 above the car equivalent, that would be fair enough. For a long time Zumo 660 commands a $300 to $500 or more premium over its car equivalent depends which part of the world you are
buy it from

CE test do not cost hundred of thousands.....

Since I'm a bit of a photog nerd I have Lightroom 5 and it has the feature to be able to load your GPS track log and tag the photo's using the time stamp.

You may want to do a TINY bit of research. While I'm no Garmin homer, most of the NUVI's have hardly any of the features of the ZUMO, especially the $100 ones. You can't create routes and load them into on of those $100 Nuvi's. You can't take a bunch of tracks and navigate them with one of those $100 Nuvi's. These are 2 of the most important needs of a motorcycle GPS and those $100 CAN'T do it. Now I'm not saying that the ZUMO's are deserving of their high dollar price tag, but you need to be more realistic in you comparisons.

Thanks! It was definitely a ride of the lifetime for me.
For tracking I had my phone mounted on the dash. I used an Android app Tasker, which is a sort of programming environment for dummies to create a script, which would send my GPS coordinates to the site myroad.info which could put them on the map. From time to time the phone would also take my picture with the front camera and send it along with the coordinates. Later in the trip I added another script which would take a better picture from the rear camera and put it on the map with one click. This way I could take pictures even while riding. I want to make a tidy app with these functions which I could give to someone else, but it it might be beyond my programming skills.

By the way, most, if not all smartphones have ability to automatically geotag their pictures, and there are plenty of way to geotag camera pictures with special smartphone apps.

Garmin used to have a waterpoof Nuvi with routing and most, if not all, Zumo functionality. IIRC it also was fairly expensive, and once you factored in the RAM mounting hardware, the price would be close to Zumo.
Zumo software makes it different from Nuvi. And you can't easily put price tag on it. In my line of work we routinely pay $30k for certain software features, and all we get in return is an e-mail with the unlock code
I looked for Androif navigation software with routing and tracks display and couldn't find nothing matching Garmin functionality.
Besides, all these justifications are besides the point. The price is not determined by the manufacturing costs, it is set by the market. If the market can bear $700, this is what it is. iPhone 5 and iPad mini cost roughly the same to make, one is $700 the other is $350.

Back to the original point... I don't think the average ADVRIDER will throw out $700 on this unit. I am tracking with a 60CSX and road traveling with the Iphone5 in a waterproof case.... Sell for $450 and I would buy it... $700 ... I will keep what I have.

They could catch more fish at $450 and make more money in the long run!

You do realize that the average ADVRIDER is just a small percentage of a small market of motorcyclists right? It's becoming obvious that Garmin is changing their market strategy. With the new Android based Monterra coming out, and the foray into the action camera market. I seriously doubt there will be much future development in a multi-line of motorcycle GPS's. So either you buy the high dollar "Motorcycle" specific unit, or you come up with alternatives like using a cheap handheld and a smart phone.

Garmin really is taking the piss out of us. It's a good unit with interesting MC features but not $700 good.

For that, they'd better also make the screen about 6". Sorry, but 4.3" takes me too long to focus on to register the info. By the time I've digested the info, I will have covered a couple hundred feet of road that my eyes were not on...provided I'm still on the road.

Plus, it would be nice to have more detail on those larger screens. Having the detail disappear at certain zoom levels, even on the most detailed setting, still doesn't do it for me. A larger screen would allow more detail.

I don't use voice, music, BT or XM so if they offered a lightweight version, I'd contemplate it.

Until they start offering larger screens and less fluff features, I'll keep using paper maps.

I still don't mind printing out the detailed areas I need off Google Maps to supplement a fold up road map. Been working for me since Google Maps and Mapquest have been around. To find the dirt not on a fold up map, I still use Google Maps and just use a pen to draw in and label the missing dirt sections.

Advrider to me includes anyone outback on the trail..2-wheeling, 4-wheeling..., anyone tracking an existing route... huge market...

All of the big online motorcycle superstores now have an Adventure Gear section... the market is large and growing...

Always the first choice out the door...

Can't wait for this puppy - for Colorado and Utah! This will be cool!

http://www.benchmarkmaps.com/products-page/mobile-apps/california-atlas-for-iphone-ipad/

The motorcycle market is TINY compared to Garmins marine and aviation market. And most of the units for those applications are a hell of a lot more expensive then a ZUMO;

I had one of the original Zumo's that recently died, so I'm paying attention to this market for the first time in years.

The feature I can't live without and can't find in an Automotive unit isn't waterproofing or vibration resistance or glove friendly touch screens, it's a dang headphone jack! All I want is to be able to plug my headphones into my GPS.

That said, Before I spend the bucks on a Zumo, I'll be buying a Sena and a Bluetooth capable Nuvi (And still have scratch left over).

the Montana rugged mount comes with a headphone jack.

$4.99?! vs $22 for print?!!! Beam me up. Oops, I don't have a smartphone. (I'm a cheap ass).

I understand the business reason of why garmin charge the way it does - to make a killing on us and make a smaller profit on those who are only willing to pay $100 for nuvi - it's perfect pricing and product differentiation - any first year marketing student would tell you -and i do this for a living- i advise business clients to do the same every second day.

But lets not kid ourselves by the main reason for the price hike is additional software cost or even how much the additional mount would cost. The basic Nuvi contains all the same basic hardware that are in the zumo and more expensive nuvi. All it has to is to turn certain function in the software on or off to give you track recording, route planning etc....

Get this, the main reason for the price hike is to squeeze every possible dollars out of motorcyclist because we want waterproofness and bluetooth functions.

This is all great for the capitalist and of course not so good for the thrifty consumer who has to pay through the nose for those additional functions even though the additional manufacturing cost is incremental.

BTW, i ride to see my clients as often as possible using my Zumo GPS and it is one of items i use to demonstrate that simple marketing theory in practice

I think the other side of the pricing issues is Garmin knows that a motorcycle specific GPS is still a small market and will only sell a limited amount of units compared to their more main stream models for cars and hiking. They need to make more per unit to make it profitable.

Another factor is competition...only Tom Tom has a competing unit and it doesn't have the same features as the Garmin..

they would have done the price matrix, and work out the optimum price it needs to be to make it profitable to themselves and their resellers. They can do that until another competitor establish themselves or copycats catch up- at the current rate it would take a looong time - in the meantime, why not rake it the profit and make it into a premium (priced) product.