Garmin zumo 220 announced
UPDATE: Check out our Garmin zumo 220 page for links to reviews, etc.
Garmin has announced the zumo 220, a somewhat less expensive unit in their motorcycle-friendly zumo product line. I say somewhat because the list price is still $599.99, although that’s $400 less than the recently announced zumo 665.
Still, this is a fairly nice device, with features such as lane assist, Bluetooth headset compatibility, multi-destination routing and on-road/off-road travel options. Its also got a nuvi-like thin design. The bad part is, the screen is only 3.5” in diameter, which could make it quite a bit less “glove-friendly” than its larger siblings. The zumo 220 is expected to hit store shelves in March. Here’s the full news release…
Garmin International Inc., a unit of Garmin Ltd. (NASDAQ: GRMN), the global leader in satellite navigation, today announced zūmo 220 – a rugged and affordable touchscreen motorcycle navigator that includes text-to-speech guidance, lane assist, Bluetooth headset compatibility and on-road/off-road travel options.
“zūmo 220 streamlines the design – and the price –while keeping the most popular motorcycle-specific features at your fingertips,” said Dan Bartel, Garmin’s vice president of worldwide sales. “Compact and waterproof, zūmo 220 makes two-wheel navigation as stress-free as possible for riders on any budget.”
Whether you’re riding under a blazing sun or a tranquil moon, you’ll benefit from years of hands-on experience and countless miles of motorcycle expertise of Garmin’s zūmo team. With a 3.5” color touchscreen that’s both rugged and responsive, zūmo 220 provides the information you need at a glance in an easy-to-read format as you travel down the road. zūmo 220 displays speed limits on most major roads and articulates turn-by-turn directions through spoken street names, such as “turn right on Main Street,” via the built-in speaker or through a compatible Bluetooth helmet or headset. Built to withstand the demands of the open road, zūmo 220 is waterproof, glove-friendly and resistant to fuel spray that can wear away at similar devices.
For spontaneous road trips or detailed route planning, zūmo 220 makes life easier with preloaded street-level maps of the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico and more than six million points of interest including gas stations, lodging, restaurants and other locations.
Complex interchanges come into focus through advanced routing capabilities such as lane assist with arrows that indicate the proper lane for efficient navigation. And zūmo 220 features HotFixTM, which automatically calculates and stores critical satellite information and can use that information to quickly calculate a position.
While riding, it’s also easy to access trip information directly from the zūmo’s motorcycle console page such as speed, heading, altitude, and a customizable fuel gauge that can be modified to the motorcycle’s maximum fuel range. In addition, with the zūmo’s powerful trip planning tools, zūmo owners can create and customize routes via computer and then transfer the saved route directly to the zūmo before they begin their journey.
With an expected availability date of March 2010 for an expected suggested retail price of $599.99, zūmo 220 is packaged with a motorcycle mount and an automotive mount for an easy transition between bike and car or truck. zūmo 220 is the latest breakthrough from Garmin, which has spent more than 20 years developing technologies and innovations to enhance users’ lives, making Garmin a household name in the automotive, aviation, marine, wireless, outdoor and fitness industries. For more about features and availability, as well as information about Garmin’s other products and services, go to www.garmin.com, www.garmin.com/pr and www.garmin.blogs.com.
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garmin does not get it….by the time they figure it out it will be to late for them….you can no longer continue to charge these prices, with almost every smart phone capable of doing turn by turn directions and improving on that everyday.
yes, someone will buy these systems, no doubt, but not enough to sustain there momentum…
My boyfriend uses on his motorcycle, the NUVI 200 with a Ziploc!
Makes 1 year .. the only thing that was replaced 3 times was the ziploc.
I use a tom-tom 720 also with a zip-lock and bring a nuvi 255 as a backup on long trips. I have Motorola droid that gives me all the other pertinent info I need on the road (traffic weather, etc… the fact of the matter is, you don’t ride your motorcycle when it rains (locally) and when you are on a trip it only rains 5% of the time and when it does it is an average of 15 min.
so I take $1000 for a zumo 660 subtract $200 for a real good GPS take the $800 left over and pay my cell phone bill for a year.
They claim that the GPS was designed “for bikers by bikers” – I can tell you now that those “bikers” obviously haven’t ridden for very long.
As far as I see it, the 220 doesn’t have the fuel warning and has a smaller screen than the 660 has. Probably more battery life, who knows, but I have a 660 and can probably predict the 220 will be just as impressive, maybe less. Which is not very.
I do not think that it justifies the price – the processor speed is so slow that by the time you are at the corner, it wants you to turn at THAT corner in the “next” 15m – and then it decides to recalculate because I overshot.
Trying to store trips based on the log is actually not so easy as you have to reset the log every time.
And in addition, why should you have to select the avoidances in the Settings panel, and not before the trip? Tomtom does this; if it finds a trip with the toll roads or what not, it asks you if you want to take Toll or Non-Toll – this is so handy.
In addition, I often wonder if the software ever gets tested before they release updates to it, because the last few updates have had one bug or another.
Oh yes, and that integrated cabling that you have to SOLDER inline to the power supply – I’m sure that having the cable too short was a fantastic idea!
As for the ridiculous idea of requiring a “weather cap” – how stupid is that? You have to order replacements in too, and they can get stolen. I consider myself lucky that mine hasn’t been stolen.
Also I am now having problems with the touch screen (AFTER THE WARRANTY EXPIRED?!) and it requires more force (which can eventually lead to damage) and it requires calibrating every 3-4 weeks.
If this is the best set of “improvements” they can do, I am not recommending it.
I think the next GPS I’m getting may well be a Tomtom because clearly Garmin has no idea what they are doing.
I could think of SO MANY improvements to their GPS too.
Thanks Crocodile. If you’re having touchscreen issues, I’d contact Garmin even though the warranty is expired. They’ve been known to cover things like this in the past. Could be a shot in the dark, but you might want to try.
I’m a little surprised TomTom hasn’t updated their RIDER series more often. It seems like they’ve ceded the market to Garmin.