Customer Reviews

Garmin zumo 660 4.3-Inch Portable GPS Motorcycle Navigator

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I just got back from a 7 day motorcycle trip, so I have enough useage of the Zumo 660 to give a fair review.
-The screen is bright enough to be read under almost all conditions, even when wearing sunglasses on a sunny day. The only time I could not see the screen properly was in direct sunlight with the sun shining straight onto the unit from over my shoulder. This was seldon an issuee. Screen=5 stars.
-The MP3 player was generally good, but lacked an equalizer. This is especially an issue on a motorcycle where wind noise drowns out bass. An equalizer is surely just a software issue, so there is no excuse for it not being on an $800 unit. MP3 player=3 stars
-The mapping software that comes with the unit is generally easy to use, and routes are easily loaded into the Zumo. Mapping software=4 stars
-The automotive mount that comes with it works well. I have used the unit in cars almost as much as on my motorcycle. Automotive mount=5 stars
-Routing, directions, etc. are good. It will occasionally direct you down a goat path, or tell you to go right, then make a u-turn a half mile later. I can only imagine the complexity of writing this software, so I won't ding the score too hard. It is as good as any unit I have used (which isn't that many), but not perfect when the roads are a bit tricky. Routing=4 stars
-Lane assist doesn't seem to do anything. In all the miles I have covered with this unit, it never once told me which lane to be in, and I could have used assistance on more than one occasion. Maybe it only works in certain large cities. As far as I can tell, it is a totally useless feature, if you can even call something that doesn't exist a feature. Lane assist=1 star, zero stars if zero is a legal rating.
-I really like the fact that there are two user-selectable fields that show up on the main map screen. This is one of the features that prompted me to buy this GPS. For example, when I am driving in the mountains, I like to know the elevation, so I can set one to continuously show elevation. All told, there are perhaps 20 different items to choose from, such as speed, time to next turn, arrival time, etc. User-selectable fields=5 stars
-One thing that REALLY annoys me is the fact that cities do not show up on the GPS. You can be rolling down the road, and all of a sudden you are in a town, without even knowing you were approaching one. A GPS is a moving map, and when people look at maps they look for basically two things: roads and cities. How can you not have cities show up? This is truly amazing how Garmin could have made such a basic blunder. Didn't any of the software engineers, technicians, marketing people, etc ever just get in car and try it? Heads need to roll over this. There is no excuse for this kind of defect on an $800 GPS. I have used a $100 el cheapo GPS from Nexstar that shows towns. If you touch the screen, then zoom in or out to just the right zoom level, towns will show up, so with some effort you can find the information, but you should not have to do this. Hopefully this will be corrected with a future firmware upgrade. Lack of Cities=0 stars, even if 0 stars is not allowed.
-I did not use the bluetooth feature, so I cannot comment on any of those features.
-I purchased this through Amazon and, as usual, they did an excellent job.

Overall, I am quite happy with this unit, but Garmin really needs to fix that city problem.

I have a Zumo 550 and it was with interest that I helped a friend install his Zumo 660. After taking two road trips in the car and working with the 660 I have some comparisons to make to my 550.

Let me predicate my review as it is based on the 660 Firmware update 3.20 that came out towards the end of July of 2009.

1. The 660 doesn't display all street names when browsing the map. I found my friends house using where to? button and it showed the house but none of the street names (including his street name) surrounding his house. The zoom level didn't matter.

2. Won't follow the route you specify in MapSource custom route download. The 660 will recalculate the route you download so there is no guarantee that the route you enter on your computer will be followed by the 660. You have to really get into the habit of using waypoints.

3. Construction of the 660 is like a nuvi. In fact, I think it is a modified nuvi. The USB connection on the 660 can only be accessed by removing the battery cover (which then causes an annoying message to appear that the battery cover is off) There is no tether for the cover, so if you loose it, guess what? All GPS functions are disabled! The 660 only works in GPS mode with the battery cover attached. The screen feels like soft plastic when you touch it. In comparison, the USB connection on the 550 is behind a hinged door, and it doesn't matter if the door is open or closed. So even if you break the door, the 550 still operates as a GPS. The 550's screen feels more like glass to me. In my opinion - for fit and finish - the 550 is built like a brick house, the 660 - not so much.

4. The 660 doesn't come with a 120v charger adapter like the 550 does. Both the 660 and the 550 will recharge with the USB connection but if you are planning a trip with your 660, you have a limited amount of battery power because if you plug in the USB cable to recharge it - it enters the USB Mass Storage Mode. The 550 will operate as a GPS plugged into a 12v source (cradle in car or bike) or the 120v adapter (like at home or your hotel room.)

5. The 660 utilizes a micro-sd card. Geeze! have you seen how small these are? About the size of your pinky fingernail. The 550 uses a easy-to-handle standard SD card. The SD card in the 550 can be plugged into your pc's card slot and read like a disk drive. Easy and convenient to do. The micro-sd card is so darn small, and inconvenient to get to, (you have to remove the 660's battery to get to it) it's hardly worth the trouble.

6. Never saw the lane change notice feature. Apparently none of the freeway interchanges we went through were programmed into the 660.

7. Even at maximum volume in the car, the 660's internal speaker was barely audible. This is a serious problem. You have to have all other music in the car off in order to hear the 660 through its internal speaker when using the car mounting. The external speaker in the 550's auto mounting gives you plenty of volume and can be heard over other noises in the car.

8. 660 doesn't have the screen change/flip/page button like the 550. You can toggle between screens by hitting the box button on the side of the 550 repeatedly. I find that a very useful way to navigate around the system. I could not find an equivalent key or process on the 660 to do the same thing.

9. On the 550 - touching the turn in xx miles portion of the nav map screen, the unit repeats the last verbal instructions again. I could not find an equivalent key or process on the 660 do do this simple task.

10. It may not matter to you, but the 660 is not integrated to work with XM radio and weather. One of the few things it doesnt support. The 550 will support XM and Weather if you get the GPX 30 antenna receiver and pay the subscription service.

CONCLUSION:
I still feel that after handling both units, the 550 is a true motorcyclists GPS, it does everything I ask of it. The 660 can be, but as stated elsewhere, it got released before all the bugs were worked out of it. It needs work.

It is interesting to me that Garmin is playing the field with the 660, the 550 is still a cataloged product, and is still for sale at most dealers. I don't know if they plan to phase out the 550 if and when more 660's are sold.

I do know that I'm very happy with my 550 for now and will watch Garmin to see what firmware updates they provide to address the shortcomings for the 660.

As of 07-15-2009 Amazon does not have this unit listed for sale as new. There is only one seller of this unit and it is listed as refurbished.

As of 7-31-2009 Amazon has taken this item out of the product catalog. It is not currently available.

Garmin has released software version 2.80 for the Zumo 660. The update states the issues brought up in the previous reviews and corrects them. Kudos to Garmin for acknowledging the previous shortfalls, and concerns, then addressing them in a software update. It is always good to point out shortfalls to a company that responds, otherwise they don't know if there is anything wrong.

I presently own three Garmin's, a street pilot purchased 4 years ago, a Nuvi purchased 6 months ago, and now the Zumo 660 for my motorcycle. The Zumo is obviously one of the most expensive GPS units a consumer can buy. It is by far the fastest screen updating and most accurate GPS I own. Beats the 6 month old Nuvi by a long shot. I recently drove (haven't mounted the 660 to the bike yet, wanted to test drive the unit) from central NJ to Baltimore. If the Garmin display was the windshield, I could have used only that screen, it is that fast and accurate. The lane assist function takes all thought out of figuring which lane one should be in for the interstate lane crossover. It was as if the 660 took a snapshot of the overhead signage in front of me and had it on the screen. In checking the accuracy of the unit, I found that I was looking too much at the Garmin and not the traffic, because I was amazed at the accuracy of the river crossings, the bridge crossings, the parallel service road vs. the interstate, to see if the Garmin picked up the subtle differences, it did 100%.

I will now use the included software to plan a route with POI and see how well it performs. With the software update, I'll let Garmin if there is any shortfall because I know they'll listen.

So far, I would recommend this unit and am thinking of adding the traffic cable for the next road trip.

This was my first GPS. MapSource was very confusing to get up and running. You receive a CD with what I assumed was Mapsource but no where on the CD did it say that. It also said that you have to enter a 6 digit code from the CD sleeve which I never found. After emailing Garmin tech support several times, I figured out you actually download the latest MapSource and map as a one time freebee and the 6 digit code is given to you at download time. It was a large 2 gigabyte file. Once downloaded, the software was very good. It updates the GPS with the latest map also. I was able to start creating routes and waypoints very quickly. I planned my entire Arkansas trip within a few hours. The GPS itself is great. Very user friendly. It installed beautifully on my ElectraGlide.

Update- I went on my Arkansas trip and Custom Routes did not work at all. I talked with Garmin several times before they admitted there was an issue with Custom Routes. Basically, this feature was useless on my trip. I had to resort to taping direction on my windshield. As far as traveling to a city/state or address/city/state, it worked great. I cannot believe Garmin did not field test this unit before putting it on the market.

Update 7/14/09 - Garmin released a firmware update (3.10) for the 660. It appears it fixed all the issues with routes. I don't know of any issues I have left. It is a very good unit. One note, the USB ports on both the auto and cycle cradle is not for downloading to the unit. You can only use the USB port inside the battery compartment for interfacting with a PC and MapSource.

I am going on a 10-day motorcycle trip from the Bay Area to Colorado and back. So I decided to get the just released Garmin Zuno 660 to replace my TomTom Easy Rider. I received the unit last week and started using it in my car while I got the wiring done for my 1200GS. The unit is well built, the touch screen very responsive and the user interface easy understand to navigate. I also downloaded the latest mapping software, a free, one-time upgrade offered by Garmin.

Set up was straightforward and downloading the updated North America map was fine, other than the fact that it is a 2.7GB file! I use a Mac and the mapping software for the Mac works well, very similar to the PC version. Creating custom routes on the Mac and downloading it to the Zumo is straight forward. So far so good. I spent the weekend exploring the Zumo, including browsing the map. That was when I noticed that the Zumo does not show any city names, no matter what the zoom level. Not the largest cities, and not the smallest ones; just road names. I called Garmin tech support and they confirmed that the Zumo does not support city names on the maps, saying that you can find cities by doing a search by name if you want to find any city. Garmin could not say when or if this feature will be supported! Unfortunately, I like to look at a mapI I like to see where towns/cities are relative to each other and other points of interest and selecting the appropriate routes. So a map without city/town names is not a map!

Garmin Tech Support pointed out that cities can be located by doing the search function. Unfortunately Portland Oregon or Portland Maine, or Portland anything came back "no matches found"! Small towns like Gypsum CO came back "no matches found".

Finally, I tried creating a custom route, which turned out to be straight forward. I created waypoints on my Mac, downloaded it to the Zumo and created a custom route. Again the Zumo let me down; it was not able to complete the route calculation, just hanging at less than 100% calculated.

I do believe the Zumo has the potential to be a very good motorcycle GPS unit. I also believe Garmin did a disservice by releasing the unit before it is fully baked! Hence the one star. Actually I would give it a zero star rating as this unit is not yet ready for commercial release and review.

05/08/09 Update: Must have been "pilot error" on my part; searching by "Cities" works for Portland or any other city/town, contrary to what I first reported (I have no idea why or what I was doing wrong the first time) . Also, Garmin does now acknowledge a problem with maps not displaying city/town names. According to their tech support, they are working on a fix but do not have a release date.

Creating a custom route on the unit works well except for a quirk: I cannot make the unit compute a route that goes over Tioga Pass Road (I route I am planning for an upcoming trip to Colorado), hanging up while calculating the route and never finishing. Another quirk: the unit will not allow me to add Ely Nevada to a custom route via "Cities", only giving me Ely Twp, MI as the option when typing in Ely. Just happens that Ely NV is also on my planned ride to Colorado.

Just received a nice shiny new 660 to replace my old 550. I like the new wide screen, the lane change feature seems to work pretty good. I live in Atlanta, GA and it has kicked in several times. Most times are very appropriate although once or twice I had already made the lane change and passed the signs when it came up. Also really handy on the 6 and 8 lane interstates as it shows which lanes you should be traveling in which is a great heads up. I like the posted speed limit sign on the screen. Very handy reminder to avoid those costly speeding tickets. I like the configurable left and right positions and it is also handy to have the time on the main screen when on the bike. Not really useful in the car so it would be nice to configure it just for use with the bike and disable when in the car. I usually use my Zumo 90% in the car and 10% on the bike. I agree that the speaker is a bit soft and a little too much bass for some reason making it hard to hear in the car. This is more noticeable with the Bluetooth feature for my cell phone. On the 550 people complained that there was a lot of echo and they seem to not notice it as much with the 660. Like some other reviewers I also am not thrilled with the little door on the back to access the USB connector and the miniSD card. Although I found on the 550 that once I had things going I really did not plug it into the Mac at home very much if at all. Also I had a 2GB card in the 550 and don't think I really ever used it. The door could use a redesign in my opinion, this is where the 550 was definitely better. I really don't like the cheesy plastic cover for the bike mount when the Zumo is not in place. Not being tethered like the one on the 550 I can see it getting lost. Not that it will be on the bike as whenever I am driving I have the Zumo and the rest of the time it is in the garage. But those times when I am on a walkabout it would be nice to have the cover on to protect the mount. I had a hard time getting my favorites over from the 550 as I use a Mac but once I got Roadtrip loaded everything came over fine. I really like the thinner design and I like the fact that the speaker is built in and not in the mount like the 550. I also like the "Where am I?" feature as I travel all over the US and this is super handy. The maps seem a heck of a lot clearer than the 550 and I like the way it kind of zooms in and pans around on its own. I got to see the 3D building view when I was downtown the other day. Also a cool thing when I am traveling in unknown cities (pretty much every week). Overall I think this was a good upgrade from the 550.

Most of my opinions have been posted as a reply to another review ([...]) but I wanted to actually give this GPS a star rating so I'll summarize some thoughts here.

First, this GPS was not replacing another GPS. I've never owned another motorcycle GPS and the only other device I can compare it to is what's built in to my Civic. But this won't be a comparison review, this will be a straight review of the Zumo 660. This also won't be a review about how it performs in a car, because this is a motorcycle GPS and that's what I use it for.

Overall I love this GPS. The first thing I notice about it is the wide screen. I have looked at other GPS's in the store and a lot of them have nearly square screens with not a lot of information on them. I'm an HDTV kind of guy and I appreciate the wide aspect ratio and larger view of the map when driving. I have a modestly sized bike (BMW F800ST) and it fits nicely on the left part of the handlebars without hitting the windscreen or otherwise getting in the way. In my case, though, I had to face the main clamp of the mount straight forward so the cradle didn't sit to high. Still, there is plenty of space for it.

Outside my house the unit syncs up to satellites pretty quickly, usually in less than a minute. It actually can sync inside my garage with the overhead door open so it's always ready to go before I am.

The buttons on the main screen are minimal in number but large in size so it's easy to hit them with gloves on. Navigating to a location starts with an easy press of the 'Where to?' icon. Once there you have the standard ways to find a location: address, pre-programmed 'home', points of interest, recent destinations, favorites, intersection, cities, custom routes or longitute/lattitude coordinates.

One big thing I like about the GPS is that when you ride it poops out a virtual popcorn track which you can then use to re-trace your route later. Like finding your way home when you're last in a forest. Ha ha. You can also 'record' trips/routes and compare them later for distance and time. Say, for instance, you want to find the fastest way to get to and from work. You can basically turn the GPS on when you drive to work for a week or two, load the routes into some software on your computer, and compare them to find the best way to get to that destination. You can also save the popcorn track for use as a custom route later.

The map display has a few modes, the best of which is the 3-D mode. The wide screen gives you a good perspective of the roads ahead which my brain has an easier time wrapping its head around. You can also turn on 3-D buildings that show more of your physical environment when you're in certain areas. This is more convenient that you might think until you experience it. You can also manually zoom the view in and out.

You can do many things from the main screen, too. You can hit the top bar and get a listing of the turns you have ahead. Tap one (not while you are driving) and you will see a smaller overhead view of the turn, so you can get a feel of how the route looks prior to driving it.

The lower left and right corners have programmable information areas where you can choose to display any number of things, such as the time to the next waypoint, the distance to the next waypoint, the estimated time of arrival at your destination, elevation, etc. You can also hit the menu button and cancel the route, request a detour or otherwise monkey with the settings.

One great feature is that the display has an icon that indicates the current speed limit. I paid attention to it one time and it seems to update that display within about 30 feet of a posted speed limit sign. This is hella convenient when you are driving an unfamiliar highway. It's one of my favorite features that I never knew I wanted until I had it.

The menu has a 'Where am I' button that will tell you where you are, including the city, street, address and nearest intersection. There are also buttons to find the nearest police stations, hospitals and gas stations. That last one saved my butt at least two times on a long trip I recently took. You can also hit 'Save Location' on this screen, which was convenient one time when I was in a big city I was unfamiliar with and had to park the bike and walk several blocks to another location. It was cake navigating back to the bike on foot!

The unit has many built-in languages, and you can download more. I currently have it set to the Australian English female voice. Very classy, and I feel like Naomi Watts is giving me directions. Awesome. I don't have a headset and I can't really hear it on the freeway but it's plenty loud when you're driving on city streets. Although I haven't tried it yet, you can download an application and record your own voice and use it for navigation. It kind of sounds creepy but it might be fun.

This unit comes with some Garmin software to make custom routes, but frankly, I don't use it much. It's okay, but I'm a nerd and use a different method (mentioned below.) The software, as mentioned in other reviews, is kind of weird. You basically make a series of waypoints and the software will map out the shortest distance between each pair of them. Although on the PC this doesn't always happen correctly and the unit might make slight adjustments to your route. Even weirder, there is a 'recalculate route' button on the PC software that will do this re-routing for you, then it will match what the GPS thinks the route should be when you load it. Why it can't just do it right in the first place is beyond me. So it takes a little while to get used to the software but it works good enough for simple routes.

I think I've figured out why it re-routes, in general. Basically, as I mentioned, the routing tries to guide you to the next waypoint using the shortest route. I planned out and rode a long trip (San Francisco to San Diego and back) and decided to take a couple detours. The GPS re-routed my course when I originally turned off of it, but it continued to try to get me to the waypoint, not on my original path. This turned out to be very convenient and in one instance allowed me to easily take a short cut. It continually routed me forward instead of trying to make me turn back and get to the original route. In one instance I decided to skip one waypoint altogether. If you do this, it will pick up your original route once you pass through any of the other following waypoints. This was pretty convenient and really lent itself well to someone like me who plans a route and changes it on-the-fly as I travel.

I'm a Linux nerd so the Windows software is not entirely easy to run in my environment (using wine.) Plus, something feels dirty about running Windows software on a Linux laptop anyway. So I poked around the Internet and found an alternative way to build routes to load into this device. Here's a quick primer since I want to get this information out but have nowhere else to put it:

1. Use Google Maps to map out a route. Google Maps is awesome and I love the way you can just drag a route around and it will snap into the nearest road(s).

2. Download the route by going to the 'link' link in the upper right, copy and paste the URL into a new Web browser window then append "&output=kml" to the end.

3. Use GPS-Babel to convert it to a GPX file.

4. OPTIONAL: Load route in Viking (or other Linux-based GPS mapping software) to verify the route.

5. Load the GPS to the unit and let it do the import.

Using this method it actually loads a 'track' rather than a 'route', so it traces the route you planned out exactly, no re-combobulating of the path.

Lastly, I didn't get to monkey with the bluetooth very much. I don't have a headset but a buddy of mine does have an iPhone it it hooked up to this thing the first time we tried. I then called him from the back seat of his car (he was in the front) and it worked flawlessly. Ha ha.

So, enough shenanigans. This is a solidly built, quality, eternally useful GPS unit for the Motorcycle. As noted in other reviews, it has no XM, but the new 665 does if that's important to you.

Most of the negative reviews of this unit compare it to the more expensive 550, which I kind of think is kind of a cheap shot. Of course the units are going to be different, but different does not necessarily mean better. Both units have their merits but being a new motorcycle GPS owner with nothing to compare to, I fell in love with the Garmin Zumo 660. And after reading the actual 550 reviews, I still concluded that the 660 is better and I have not regretted this purchase for one second.

I have had the 660 for a little over a week now and found that setup and hookup of the unit is very easy and straightforward. Making routes on the unit and following them is ok except the pronunciation of some of the street names has a lot to be desired. So far, I have found 2 major (for me) problems... the unit does not label the towns and cities on the unit, and when a route is made in Mapsource and transferred to the unit, it shows as "Off Road" (straight line). You have to go into the menu and switch the route to either "faster time" or "shorter distance" to make it re-calculate. Then when it does the re-calculation it doesn't always follow the route you had designed in Mapsource. To me, since I design most of my routes on the PC, this is a huge problem. As for the first problem I mentioned (not labeling cities/towns), it's hard to believe other Garmin units have this capability and the 660 doesn't. I've called Garmin about the routing problem and they didn't know about it until they checked one of the units while I was on the line. They said they would be working on a fix for it, but it might be 2 or 3 months. As for the labeling problem... they were unconcerned.

Bottom line = I shouldn't have given away my old 2610 and waited another year or so. Probably should only get 1 star, but I'm betting on a fix for the problems.

This is basically an ordinary Nav unit. That is the reason for one star. If this were a review for an "ordinary" Nav unit I would give it more stars. Garmin wants you to believe that it is designed by bikers for bikers and somehow special. Based on that, I gave it the single star. Other than the fact that the touch screen will work with gloves, is waterproof, and it is supposed to be vibration proof, it is no different than an ordinary Nav unit. The "Custom Routes" categorically do not work. You can create any route you want on your computer but the only thing that transfers is the waypoints you selected. The Nav unit then calculates the fastest or shortest route between waypoints with total disregard for your route on the computer. When you use the "where am I" to find fuel, the distances are as the crow flies. The driving distance may be ten times this distance. When I used the POI for fuel, it found totally different stations. I was just disappointed that it had all the same shortcomings as an ordinary unit. Why not the ability to calculate other than shortest or quickest? I am touring after all.

Just came back from my first road trip with the 660 and though i would share a few things...


Installation: Grade A
I have a Yamaha Roadstar and installation went was easy. the U-Bolt needs to be about
1/4 inch longer to five some more room for handle bar mounting. The threads barely make
it to the nylon lock washers in the nuts.

PC Software: Grade C+
Setup of software on the mac was normal, works with no big issues. Software is ok but a bit primitive for whats out there these days.
What could be better:
a) when you upload data from the GPS, if you previously uploaded a custom route or waypoint, you get duplicates. It does not seem to do this with the tracking crumbs showing you previous paths.
b) you cant tell it to "stay on this road". It definitely has a mind of its own as to how it thinks you want to travel and will give you very odd pathing. Example, i wanted to stay on the Blue-Ridge and ended up with more then 30+ custom way points to keep it from taking me on/off the oath every intersection.
c) I found i had to keep going to google maps to "see my path" and then back to RoadTrip to set the waypoints. I had detail set to max, which helps, but you need max++ setting if you plan to be very specific on your path


GPS unit - Grade D-
OK, this is my biggest gripe. For a $700 unit i expect a lot, and this one does not deliver.

The Good:
o) Love the auto zoom as you approach intersections. A++ feature!!
o) Nice screen size
o) Entering waypoints on the road is straight forward. I created one for each of the overlooks on the Blue Ridge. Length of the name ampule and never an issue.

The Bad:
o) Leaving the map screen is a bit of a pain to get back to when riding (like looking for POI).
It would be nice if there was a "show map" button at the bottom of each screen you traverse to
o) You should be able to configure your own primary POI. The presets are "Police, Hospital, and Gas". of this, the only one i care for is Gas. I would like to be able to have the others be more useful - like "Food"
o) VERY chatty. No biggy, but its so much so i wound up muting the thing. It needs a setting to tone down the amount of information.
o) Touch Screen is problematic. Dont get into any kind of hurry entering information as it often miss your touch. I have an iphone, and the GPS in my truck is touch, and all of these are very responsive
o) if you established a custom route on your computer, the GPS will not always show it routed on the GPS - you get straight lines. To get it to route, you have to change the nav setting to shortest, then fastest, to get it to show turn by turn.

The Ugly:
o) if you add a waypint to a Custom route, forget it. you path is trashed and it will take you off your custom path at every intersection - see complaint about software
o) Forget reading it with the sun anywhere but behind it. On a motorcycle, this is a killer. You have to constantly shade it with your had just try and see the screen. Unforgivable for a unit targeted at bikers.

Summary... I love GPS units. I have had them for over 10 years in my autos. Garmin pioneered GPS - but seems to be stuck in 2004 compared to the ease of use and readability.