Garmin Zumo 350LM

You'll never keep pace with upgrades: Zumo 350LM.

Fred

Bandaid.

I'm sorry, but at $700 I think Garmin are taking the piss. That functionality would be $200 in an in-car unit. How much does it cost them to add waterproofing? It sure as hell isn't $500.

No MP3 player, no XM Radio. They just added a maintenance log, as if anyone wants to track maintenance with a GPS.

Greedy Bastards.

It's a free market. You have the choice of not buying it.

I just ran the comparison chart of the available Zumos on Garmin's product pages, and I have to agree the price doesn't make much sense, even with lifetime maps.

Frred

I'd guess we are such a small market, or they just lost their effin' minds. Who is going to buy this at that price?

They'll sell... some people have (much) deeper pockets than others.

I bought one today (delivery 2 july), and of course they will sell a lot of it. The 660 and the 220 are a bit old now, but the prices are more or less the same. (my pocket is not deep but i don't care too much about the price. I'm looking for something to have for some years) It has all the functionality i need but is quicker and more good looking and has some new features as Exit Services and most import, the small roads don't disappear when zooming out. will fit perfectly on my 800GS!!

How do you know this?

I also was turned off by the lack of XM weather/radio but the more I think about it, the more I think I would be ok with it.

I don't really want them to make me a better radio, I want a better navigation device. Faster Routeing and off-road track / routes then this would be great. XM is one more thing I have to pay for, when I could just set up some good playlist on my iphone and have it go to the headset.

I heard it from a reliable source that had a hands on experience with it for a professional review. Compared to the 660 this was better in handling the overview when zooming out.

A quick hands on review would be appreciated

It's a bit bulkier than the 350LM and the screen of the LM is slightly larger but the 550 does what I need it to do. I spent the same amount on the 550 and don't plan on spending it again. Especially when I can spend $150 for a replacement unit if mine goes out.

#

Just got off the phone with a Garmin Support person who had one in their hands.

If you like to have detail of small roads you will find that this one isn't any better than the 660 in that regard.

The back roads I love to ride will disappear above a zoom level of .8 and if interested, you can read my thread about how to let Garmin know if you would like this detail to show as you zoom out a little further.

Also, the 350LM uses a different mount, so if you currently have multiple mounts for an existing Garmin this one will require you replace each of them (after the first, included) if you want to use it on a number of bikes.

I sent off an email to GPSCIty about track display capabilities on the 350.


"My old 550 can import and convert a track to a route. Can the 350 import and display an old track (not current on the unit) or 3rd party track as well as convert it to a route?"

The Answer.

"The zumo 550 has a few more features than the zumo 350. You will not be able to send a track to the zumo 350 at this time. You can create a route from a track using Basecamp and send it to the unit though.

In the unit you can take your daily trip summary and do a track back (turns it into a route and reverses it)."

With the cost of GPS's getting higher and higher with less and less features, I sure hope my old 2730 and 60CX last a loooooooooooooooooooooooong time.

NO way will I ever give Garmin another dime after the horrible job they did on the 660/665... especially now hearing that the 350 is really no better. My biggest beef is the lack of map detail -- the pixel-doubling that they DON'T do on the car units.

Rob

What does your remark about pixel doubling mean?

It's now their maps are rendered on the Zumos. If you put a Nuvi and a Zumo side by side at the same zoom level, you have 4x the detail on the Nuvi. Both units have the exact same resolution -- 480x272, but they "pixel double" the maps so it effectively cuts the resolution in half (in each direction), resulting in it basically being 240x166. My suspicion is this was done for "readability" but at the expense of detail. Another STUPID idea by people who claim to be making us a motorcycle-specific GPS but are instead dumbing it down and making it so the 70+ year-old Goldwing riders can still read it.

Rob

Interesting. Thanks for the explanation.