Customer Ratings & Reviews

I've owned quite a few Garmins over the years. The most recent was the Garmin 590. Although you pay the price for these style units for your motorcycle (or vehicle) the quality of the unit, and amount of features are worth the cost. Lifetime maps, large screen, waterproof, ability to synch with bluetooth go a long way in making those long rides on the super slab enjoyable. Only downside is at certain times, depending on the angle of the sun to the screen, it can be hard to see clearly. Garmin needs to work on this. Naturally, the rider must consider that the route on the GPS isn't 100% accurate when it comes to the small back roads and whether or not they're paved or gravel, but overall the routing features of the 595 work really well. One thing I would like to see is for Garmin to add features to their Basecamp software and their phone app. Considering Garmin can charge almost $700 for a GPS, I'm sure they can afford to update their programming software, and phone app. Overall I'm satisfied with the purchase, and would recommend to others looking for a high quality GPS unit for use on their motorcycles.

Love this Garmin and can’t wait to mount it on my motorcycle. Was very disappointed yesterday when I put it in my car and the car cable cord has the wrong connection for the Garmin!!! Ugh..... Not such a big deal but now I have to make a trip back to Best Buy. :(

Too pricey, the screen clouded up, was returned. Replacement does not always turn on without battery removal resets. But no good alternative!

I have had several Garmin and other GPS's in the past (the last being a Zumo 660lm) and this is by far the best to date. It starts quickly and seems to find satellites quickly as well. If you run all of your bluetooth through it it works as described. Add an addition SDHC card and you can even load all your music on it as well. My only complaint is that when it is not on a power source I cannot turn the brightness up. I guess it is to save battery life but I do not like that feature. Other than that... thumbs up.

Great GPS, it is exactly what I was looking for. I am very satisfied.

I bought this about a year ago to check 3 boxes 1. Have stored maps (google maps relies on internet connection to load maps continuously, GPS units store maps so can give direction without cell service) This it does ok, but much slower than google maps at calculating routes. Finding destinations is tedious. I often google the address on google maps, then enter it in Zumo. 2. Have glove friendly always on display in a weather resistant case (this it does well except it is much less responsive than a modern smartphone) 3. Interface via bluetooth with my phone and helmet com system. This is what I find most frustrating. The good; -The hardware seems robust, very well built. Been on day long rides in the rain, freezing, heat, never missed a beat. The mount is well built and has a nice release mechanism. -The adventure routing is great if you have an dual sport or adv bike and love dirt roads, not so great if you have a cruiser and don't want to go off pavement (I don't hold this 100% against the unit as it would be impossible to see which roads are dirt or not). The Bad; -As others have said, the battery life is laughable especially for such a large heavy unit. You wont be hiking with it unless you plug in a portable battery pack. It's just enough battery to go from bike to wall charger. -The mount is fine, i like that they use ram mounts, giving endless options to mound and position, but the cable is silly, has like 4 extra cords hanging out of it. I understand that they can be useful, but 95% of riders will just use the power and have to stuff the extras where we can and hope they don't melt or short out. If you have multiple bikes like me, additional mounting kits aren't cheap. -The software is awful. It just seems sooo dated. Apps are preloaded, can't upgrade, just stuck with spotify, pandora, or just generic "media player" which I've found is cpmpletely unusable at worst and slow to react 50/50 at best. The settings options are extremely limited. I find this infuriating as I stream music or download it into thr amazon music app, so putting it onto a card to use the unit as a mp3 player isn't an option for me. This also means you can't get other apps you might want like weather apps, or whatever. -Navigation, I'm an adventure rider, I like turning down dirt roads, kinda just going wherever, and this unit does that better than a phone using google maps. I've found google will always route you to the fastest route no matter what you put in. This unit will at least ask if you want redirected and never loses reception. My only complaint is when you miss a turn(say your in the wrong lane and can't get over) it takes forever to recalculate on the fly, I've had it recalculate, take too long, then miss the next 2 turns because it can't update fast enough. This is very dangerous on a bike, and even more so with a group behind you. Get used to pulling over. -Price. It's ridiculous. It's a standard car unit in a fancy(albeit quite robust) case, some half baked "motorcycle specific" software and they're charging 2/3 the cost of a flagship smartphone that has 1000x the computing power, battery life, screen resolution, software, any app you can imagine, cameras, etc.... -Phone to GPS to intercom. I've just switched from sena 20s to Cardo pactalk bold, which wasn't seamless, I'll update on that once I get some miles on the pactalk. With the 20s, the zumo was terrible as a middleman. Intercom or directions would pause music or outright crash the app. Also volume balancing was impossible. I always found navigation at 10% or 200% and wherever it was, music and com was opposite. I don't know how much of this was the Zumo, and how much was the 20s. I'll find out this year with the cardo. I usually found myself turning off the gps bluetooth and just connecting my com to my phone, where it worked fine with the intercom. But you'd lose gps voice prompts and the ability to see messages, media controls, etc... and if I was just going point to point (no adventure riding or out of cell reception) I found myself just using my phone gps. So all and all, it seems overpriced,but the only show in town, so your kinda stuck. I put that I would recommend as it does still have the largest screen out there for a universal motorcycle gps, and it is pretty beefy. Choices are limited. BMW and KTM units are sweet, but are bike specific and like 2-3x the cost of this. Garmin, if you read this, please just make a phone interface screen. You can charge me the same crazy money, I'll buy it. You can't compete with the computing power and quantity pricing of a modern smartphone, so just make a screen interface that will display my phone screen, and let me interact with my phone, but is waterproof and glove friendly like your current box. Then make a great GPS app with saved maps like the Zumo unit with the adventure routes, and let the phone do the work. People like and are used to how our phones are setup, we don't want to learn how to use outdated proprietary software especially while going 70 mph on our death machines. Spend some of the money from the processors you can eliminate in the gps unit and make a better brighter screen, and put a hood on it. We ride in sun and rain, don't have roofs, a hood will help. Thank you.

This is an amazing piece of kit. It does everything and is build like a tank. I feel like I could use it instead of frame sliders! I also have a Sena bluetooth headset in my helmet and it connects perfectly. It took a little bit to understand how it works to connect to both my phone and my headset at the same time, but once I figured it out it works great. Key is to not connect your headset to your phone directly. Which for the Sena 10U is a little bit of a let down as then you can't use the Sena remote to control your music. Navigation is spot on, and the female voice that tells you to turn left at Starbucks is pretty cool. Didn't think I would like that as I am generally really good at direction and judging distance but its a nice feature. The only thing I would say I don't like is the battery life is really pretty short. Doesn't matter too much as it comes with the wiring kit to wire it to your battery. I would have actually preferred to be able to remove the wiring loom from the mount (you can't without cutting it) and just using the battery. That would then allow you to not have to worry about running any wiring and would be a cleaner installation. Also would be nice so that you could just buy a couple cheap mounts for your other bikes. Which I think you can find mounts that don't power the device but then it would be nice if the battery lasted longer. I was very excited when I saw BestBuy was picking up the 595 and waited 2 weeks for it to become available. Ended up giving up and buying it elsewhere.