Garmin zūmo XT, All-Terrain Motorcycle GPS Navigation Device, 5.5-inch Ultrabright and Rain-Resistant Display

I'm not sure exactly how many GPSs (almost all Garmin) I have owned and used on a motorcycle. Somewhere around 10 I guess. This is the first "motorcycle specific" Gps I have tried though because until recently, the motorcycle ones were simply too small for my liking. At the time of this latest review revision I have had it for about a year. However, between the pandemic restrictions/concerns and the lack of appeal to ride in our Florida heat and humidity, my actual use has been somewhat limited. A few observations: The screen is killer! Very bright and readable, even in direct sunlight with polarized sunglasses. Way better than any of the GPSs I have used in the past. BIG PLUS! The data fields are very easy to read, and the speed indicator glows an impossible to miss pinkish red when you are speeding. The GPS has a glove friendly screen. Maybe this year I will be able to escape Florida to try it out. The 5.5” screen seems a perfect size. The last 3 GPSs I used were massive truck/RV 7 inchers. Big, easy to read (except in direct sunlight), and extremely competent, but way bulky. The brighter screen on this easily trumps the larger, dimmer screen on the others, and the much smaller overall size fits into the dash area so much better. Another plus. The Zumo XT is Rain resistant. The automotive/truck GPSs I have been using were not. It has never been an issue, but it's nice to no longer worry about the GPS getting wet. Amazingly, Garmin finally made a GPS with a standard 1” ball mount. No special cradles or adapters necessary. I didn’t use Garmin’s bar mount and arm though, instead opting to use the previously installed Ram clamp-on ball and a 6” arm I already had in a big ole’ box of extra Ram stuff. When locked in place, the GPS seems to be very securely attached to the included dock/mount. You can remove the GPS in a split second by simply pushing a button on the back and lifting it off. No plug to contend with as the cable stays with the mount. Garmin has even included a nice little rubber cover for the contacts when the GPS is not installed. Installation is just about as fast. Simply clip it back on and go. This is all great as long as you have somewhere to securely store the GPS. Some may think not so great when you consider a thief can push the same button and walk away with your $499.00 GPS. Wiring was straightforward and simple. Just a negative and positive wire you need to hook up somewhere. Mine is wired to a hot-all-the-time circuit so that I don’t have to have the ignition on to mess with the GPS. Another huge thing I really like, and believe will make this GPS more useful when compared to any of the newer GPSs I have used, is that the map retains detail when zoomed further out. Unlike in a 4 wheeler or RV, on the bike I don't generally follow a pre-determined route. On the bike I often tend to just kind of wing it, with only a general idea of where I'm headed, using the GPS more as an electronic road atlas than just blindly following a route. With the map detail turned all the way up, you can still see secondary roads with the screen zoomed all the way out to the .8 mile scale. Most disable secondary roads anywhere above .3 or .5 miles. On this GPS, If you want to know where that little road you are thinking of exploring goes to, you might be able to see by just zooming out instead of having to scroll around and in the process lose all perspective to your location. Usually when underway I disable the auto zoom and prefer to adjust the zoom level myself. So far the auto zoom seems to automatically operate at a useful level. I will try it for now. Time will tell… UPDATE: Yeah, I got tired of it zooming in and out on it's own and just set it manually now. For the first probably year that I had this GPS, I had a big issue with how this GPS handled custom POIs (Points of interest). For the uninitiated and non-geeks, custom points of interest are lists of locations that may be of interest to you that would not normally be included with a GPS’s factory installed POIs. They can be compilations of a particular chain of resturants and/or retail stores, or they could be a certain type of attraction. The lists can be downloaded through a website like the POI factory, or if you want to really geek out you can make up these lists yourself. On the Zumo XT, the custom POIs seemed to load OK with Garmin's POI loader, but they were only accessible by digging into the menu system (where to/categories/custom POIs). A top level "where to" search did not seem to include custom POIs. I could live with that, but the worst for me was that there was apparently no way to make this particular GPS display custom POI icons on the map. Whether it's a Harley dealer, a covered bridge in New England, or the all important Taco Bell, it's always been nice to just look at the map and see if one is close. Luckily, after a system update in mid-2021, the unit started showing custom POIs! Note that on the Zumo XT, "Up ahead" in the map settings menu must be checked to show your POIs. This also will show Garmin's less than worthless system icons for fuel, restaurants, and motorcycle related POIs, and it can make the screen a little busy, but hey, I'll take it. Speaking of POIs..... In the not too distant past I have found Garmin's pre-loaded POIs to be extremely inaccurate and frustrating to use. Way too many times, they have sent me on a wild goose chase to a business that was either somewhere else or nonexistent. A frustrating annoyance on a motorcycle, way more of a big deal in a large RV. Because of this, a couple of years ago I stopped using Garmin's POIs altogether and now always use other alternatives when searching for fuel, food, etc. HEY, REALLY.......THEY COULD BE BETTER NOW.......I don't know. I have been burned so many times, it will be a while before I attempt to use them again, if ever. UPDATE: Against my better judgement, and for the first time since I have owned it, I let the GPS show me the nearest gas station. It showed it to be .5 miles away, so off we went. I passed a gas station on the way that the GPS didn't know about, and it took me about 5 blocks further up the street to a run down old building that was probably a gas station in a previous life, but obviously had not been for a long, long time....Perfect... Later on that day, we were checking out an RV park for a future trip, and while sitting in the parking lot just for kicks I let the GPS search for nearby RV parks (A category this GPS claims to know). It did not know this massive, well established RV park existed. Bottom line....If you need to find a place, do yourself a favor and forget about using Garmin POIs. Just search Google Maps on your cell phone, then enter the address into the GPS. The weather radar overlay gathers data through a Bluetooth connection with your smartphone. I haven't had any showers chase me around yet to require street level, minute by minute updates, but it all seems to work well assuming you have a good wireless data signal for your phone. This is really a cool feature. I have only routed a few short trips with it, but if it is like any of my other current Garmins, they will almost always find the address and you can be pretty confident they will get you there eventually, but will also sometimes choose some rather bizarre routes. Always take a quick look at the proposed route and please.....Always choose common sense over what any GPS is telling you. This thing is pricey. Painfully pricey...... In fact, it is the most expensive non-marine GPS I have ever bought. So far, I have no regrets, and would buy it again in a second. Update: After owning it for a year, I still think it's great and would not want to be without it. I will probably update this review as time goes on and I learn more about it.

Another reviewer said the power cable isn't long enough; I found it plenty long on a Street Glide, as indicated in the image. The red/black wire coming from the bottom of the plastic channel holding the wiring harness is the end of the power cable, with a good 10 inches of extra wire. The wart that does the USB regulation fits in the channel with ease, and a quick run to Harley to get an Accessory Plug makes it all weatherproof and run off the ignition to boot. Another reviewer also said it registers a press before you touch it. This is the case with me as well, but when I'm wearing my gloves, riding, it doesn't happen. It makes me wonder if it's super sensative in order to allow it to work with any old glove, as mine are leather and not touch-screen capable, yet they still work. [edit: I've used it with guanlets and it works perfectly as well. It's clear years later this was made to work gloves-on, and when used in that manner I have absolutely NO problems with it what-so-ever.] Yet another reviewer said route planning is a PITA with the Zumo XT, and *were* spot-on, at least for what should be a handy loop route feature. This is supposed to plan a route with the same start and end point, so one may plan a less-than-day ride in a big loop. Getting that loop created is super simple. [edit: One of the numerous updates in the last few years seems to have fixed the loop route shaping function. It use to be the most horribly frustrating experience with this device. Now it's simply ungainly, but that's not because the software is still buggy. If one plans an 8 hour loop, that covers a lot of area, and shaping that route takes lots of zooming in to be able to place the route shape point in the correct place, then zoom back out to find the next region to shape, then lots of zooming and panning to get that one in the right place. But it WORKS now, where when originally purchased, route shaping a loop was only slightly better than getting sucker punched. Given how well it works I've bumped this to five stars.] But once a route is planned it works superbly. The mount is insanely strong, which is good, because the handlebars on my bike shake like mad at idle, and I was more than a little worried, when ordering, that this would fail that test. But it doesn't budge a fraction of a millimeter that I can tell. [edit: I've ridden entire days in the rain with this and it shows absolutely no sign what-so-ever that rain affects it in the slightest. I may as well be riding on a clear sunny day for all the difference it makes. The unit easily pops off and a snug-fitting rubber cap covers the power terminals. That leaves the somewhat ungainly mount on the bars, but it's possible to fold that back along the handlebars so it's not all that, and I simply leave the mount on the bars all the time.] The "Drive" app is a complete was of life, if one doesn't care to have weather or traffic. It's even more difficult to plan a route on that than it is on the actual unit, because Garmin put so much crufty junk on the display that the map is a tiny fraction of what's visible. What fool thought I wanted entry boxes more than a map, in a mapping app? They'd do a better service by jettisoning the map part and just call it a cell data integration app, which is all it's actually good for. Since I don't care to have cell data integration I can't say if it's good for that or not, but it's possible I may try that at some point just because I can. (shrug) I can say my test foray getting it hooked up with BT was also not that straightforward, and while it claimed failure, it actually worked. Persistence seems to be the key. [edit: This is hands-down flat-out no question the absolute best biker-specific GPS I've seen. I've ridden thousands of miles in every weather condition imaginable from torrential downpour to brutally hot, humid summer days. With the new heated gear it's been subject to not quite freezing temps as well. This Garmin has never once failed to perform.]

When I bought a 2021 Can-Am Spyder RT Limited, a touring-oriented trike, last July, I wanted a GPS for trip navigation. I've owned maybe six Garmin units, and I like the user interface, so I bought this Zumo XT when it came on sale for the holidays. I had to do some custom machining to make a mount that I liked, but that's now done. See the photos. My trike has a USB cable in the front, so I used that in lieu of the supplied power cable. I had no trouble pairing my Galaxy S9 and my Sena helmet headset to the Garmin. Using the Drive and Explore apps, I can get weather, traffic, updates, and satellite views quickly and easily. This unit has all the functionality of Garmin's other top-end navigators, so there was little learning curve. I usually use BaseCamp for route planning, and that works fine with this unit, too. The display is crisp and bright. I found the touch sensitivity to be a bit high, but I guess that's so it will work with riding gloves on. I wish they had put a brightness control that was accessible without drilling down through several levels of menus. I can balance the audio levels between the phone (for music) and the navigation instructions easily. It's easy to record a track with a single click, and it can be named and saved for future use. You can ask the unit to design a ride for you and set a level of "adventurousness" that will preferentially take twisty roads. You can specify a mileage or a duration, and up it comes. I haven't really tested this feature, so I don't know if the algorithm will be to my liking, but I can always fall back on the old method - guesswork - if I don't like the results. You can also manually construct routes by placing waypoints between the starting and ending points, and saving them for future use. Map updates are free. It's December in the Pacific Northwest, and I've only had the unit for a week, so no actual rides yet. So far, it seems to do everything I need, but time will tell. Garmin's user interface is an old friend, so I don't think that there will be any significant shortcomings. Construction is rugged, and the attachment hardware looks like it will keep the unit where I want it without wiggling or changing position with vibrations. It's a pricey unit, but quality is always worth it to me. I'll revisit this review after I get some mileage on it in the spring. Stay tuned.

Is this thing perfect? No. Does it feel like there are wasted features and that "apps" could have made this better? Totally. However, there is still nothing else on the market that works this well. Physically and functionally it is near-perfect. The mounting system is a bit annoying and the little snap feature that allows you to pop it off is worryingly tight. I literally thought it was snapped in until it tried to eject itself on the highway! It feels like you're going to break something when it finally clicks into place. The touchscreen works great with all gloves and the thing is pretty bulletproof, in general. While it links up to both my Sena 50R communicator and my phone, the integration is a little annoying. There is a notable volume and quality loss when music is being played through the Zumo to the headset. My 50R allows me to switch media to play directly from the phone and this is much better. Also, I cannot, for the life of me, stop it from giving me social media notifications. All of that is turned off, but it still wants to let me know that uncle Mark still thinks I'm a libtard while riding. The only real issue I've ever had with this system is its translation of .GPX files, specifically those from Gaia. I had a ~50 mile mixed surface GPX file uploaded and the Garmin seemed to make straight lines for MILES in certain sections rather than following the route. This happened to occur on one turn off to go from asphalt back to a small gravel road, which I promptly missed. I had to have my phone mounted with Gaia running to confirm that the Garmin was following the plan... it did about 95% of the time. I think the solution is to break a GPX file into smaller chunks so that the resolution is better. I haven't had a chance to try this out again. Now, things that could have taken this from a 95% perfect product to one that I love to use rather than need to use due to lack of a replacement: Google/Apple maps location integration would make my life SO much easier. I hate typing out the name of the place I'm trying to find just for it to think I'm trying to go to the Advanced Auto 50 miles away because it doesn't recognize that there's one in the same town I'm in. So, I look it up on my phone, copy the address, paste it into the Drive app, THEN send it to the Garmin. This works fine, but it's 2 or 3 too many steps, once again. Why... WHY do they call their own features "apps"? Apps like Gaia or Onx would be a real game changer, but I'm sure Gary and Min are too proud of their 2nd rate navigation to let better companies work with their product. Anyway, as I said, it's a very good product but it feels a bit like those comically large pens that restaurants make you use while signing the check... it works fine but I wish I had something that worked better.

I haven't used a dedicated GPS in years, it does everything that it claims and works great with my motorcycle gloves. Screen is bright and easy to read. However I do have to mark it down for one reason and it only has to do with the fact that Garmin provides a charging cable to allow you to charge it when it's not mounted to the bike; however unless you have the charging block specific to this device it will bot charge or turn on. This may just be my experience... but I tried charging it with the supplied cable and a Samsung cell phone block for 5+ hours and it would not turn on. Contacted Garmin support and the informed me that it may not work with certain charging blocks and that I should use there's. After installing the mount to my bike I connected it and and worked great, however I do not understand why they provide a charging cable without the power adapter since it does not like other power blocks. Seems like they could include this at the price point to allow charging when it's not mounted. Will update later after more use.

I had a old Zumo, one of the first. 20 years of use. Buttons broke finally. The new one is a much better screen both brightness and larger. It mounted on my OLD Zumo mount making placement easier. I did have to run the power cables of course as it had a different power plug. The Old Unit had a LOCK and I left it on the bike (Motorcycle) , The new one does not so you have to "Pop" it off and take it with you when you leave your bike. Not to bad, but it should have come with a proper protective case like the original Zumo. App ? I read so much bad press on Garmin's APP's that I did not install them. Pro's ... Very Nice screen size and brightness Fair Price All that you would expect from a GPS for maps and navigation lots of storage (Memory) Unlike Garmin's old GPS units. like old Zumo, you can put music or books on tape on unit to play to your headset Hooked up to my motorcycle COMM device (Bluetooth) for directions sent to my helmet It says it can hook up to your phone, I did not do this. My headset does this its self. Con's No On motorcycle locks so must remove when leaving your motorcycle No carrying / protective case come with the unit (and yet it has not lock/anti theft on the bike) Reports of Garmin App's being intrusive so bypass using them. All in All I would (Will) by another for my wifes motorcycle.

Even a non-techie can use it! Simple to use, works well, love the “round trip” and “go home” features. I can intentionally get lost if I want to, then find my way home easily. I know a gps sometimes steers us wrong, but generally, they are helpful and this one is very nice.

Picks up satellites quickly. Map updates are relatively quick. Screen is bright and easy to read. Searching for addresses or location names is easy. The on-screen keyboard is easy to type with. It's not bad enough to deduct a star, but I have to note that the power cable could've been better designed. It has a proprietary connector on one end to connect to the device, and a voltage regulator box a few feet away from that that is permanently connected. The distance between the connector and the box is about an inch shorter than ideal for my 2012 Harley FLHTK. When I turn hard right, the cable is tight. Another inch would've given me the slack that it really should have. But with the power under the seat and the GPS on the grip mount, it just barely makes it. The voltage box is too big to tuck under the backbone cover with the main harness, so it had to go under the seat. It works, but it could be better. Update: I purchased a second mount and power cable to install on my 2018 Harley FLHCS. Same trouble with fixed cable length. I was able to make it work, but a couple extra inches between the device connector and voltage box would make things soo much easier. I've only used it for a couple of local rides that I've done without nav a million times. In comparison to the factory GPS units in my 2015 RAM truck and 2019 Dodge Challenger, it's way easier to use. It's also far more accurate than those built-in automotive units. It's almost as easy to use as Google Maps. It pairs consistently with my iPhone and Cardo Pack Talk headset. I have to agree with most other reviewers though. Their Base Camp and Explorer programs are terrible, and their documentation is pretty useless. It's quicker for me to just randomly explore the device UI to see what happens than to read either the PDF or on-line manuals. But overall, I love the unit. It does what I need it to do very well. Get me where I need to go. I normally just use my phone in my cars, but on a motorcycle I need weather resistance and glove friendly. This unit is everything I need for both my bikes.