Brace
I bought a 550 zumo 2 yrs ago, new , but from a cheap e bay seller. My history is one of pure sat nav luddism, brought on by several yrs of riding with idiots who couldnt use sat nav properly.I dismissed sat navs as pretty useless then, because of the mistakes their users were making. Today I wont go touring without it, its not 100% foolproof, but has proven itself so many times over on the continent. In particular -
1.finding fuel, lodgings. its great. Just watch out for petrol stations which have gone out of business.They will still be on the database.
2. navigating to a specific point in a big city- something its almost imposs to do with a map.
3. You can program a touring route from your PC and the unit will follow it , rather than just getting the sat nav to decide the route- invaluable on " biking roads" , as sat nav always try to avoid such slow meandring roads ! so if you are following a bike friendly route, you just concentrate on reading the road, the sat nav keeps you on track.Invaluable in mountain areas.
problems I have had are few. There does seem to be some " dead" areas , particularly in germany. In saarbrucken the unit just froze up going through the city. Inexplicable, as it worked fine outside the city ! It also went dead going through a village in central germany. Yet at all other times its never done this. Its possible its a glitch in the mapping database.I also now have a small amount of corrosion on the gold terminals at the base of the unit after several very wet days on last yrs tour.Its caused a couple of loss of power moments.I have tried to clean them up, and so far its been OK.I think if I had used a car type in such conditions it would have died completely .
I am not fully convinced of using car type navs in bags on bikes. Last yr lads on my tour had them, but found them really awkward to use, often couldnt see the screen, had to stop to do anything with them...and generally left me to navigate with my trusty zumo. Bike specific nav units are made for the job, I would get one rather than a cheap car unit.If its in ones budget.