4.3-Inchglove friendly zumo 660 features lane assist, 3D buildings, and lane junction view. The zumo 660 comes preloaded with US, Canada, and Puerto Rico mapping. It comes equipped with stereo bluetooth hands free technology for pairing a phone and headset or helmet. The zumo 660 has a advanced trip log which features the ability to save multiple trip logs and comes with a rugged mount with wire harness for integration into the motorcycle power and audio system.

5 Responses to “Garmin zumo 660 4.3-Inch Portable GPS Motorcycle Navigator”

1. R. Bliss says:

   May 29, 2010 at 12:00 am

   This is the THIRD Garmin Zumo 660 I have owned. I returned the first two (see below). The first unit wouldn’t allow me to extract the micro SD Card due to a defective extractor spring. The second unit had two flaws:

   1. While in the middle of a 2,000 mile motorcycle trip, I kept getting a full-screen message “OUT OF MEMORY” with a big “OK” button to acknowledge. I would hit the OK button and between 15 seconds and three minutes later the same message would reappear. The unit would show streaming mapping info (in-between the annoying messages) but it would not allow me to plot any more waypoints. I cleared the first half of my trip to free-up space (which really put me off), but that didn’t help.

   2. Since the GPS was malfunctioning, I decided to use my $800 (retail) unit as a very big and expensive MP3 player. This was fine for approximately a day until the unit just shut off and wouldn’t come back on. I thought I had a problem with the wiring harness that recharged the unit, so I attempted to charge the battery with my AC charger (sold separately). The unit still didn’t power-up.

   I called Garmin Technical Support. After a 40-minute wait, I finally spoke with a technician. He attempted to walk me through a reset, but the unit wouldn’t allow me to do that. The technician advised that I had two problems: A bad battery and some kind of program problem with which he was unfamiliar. I asked for his advice. He advised I exchange the unit for a new one since it was still under warranty.

   I would like to add that I own a Garmin Nuvi 650 and it has performed beautifully for the past two years. That is one of the reasons I stuck with Garmin. I would also like to add that Amazon.com immediately replaced both defective units within two days (both times) and it didn’t cost me a dime to return the defective units. Garmin advised they could do the exchange, but it would take a minimum of 15 days.

   I would have to say that after spending all this money – I’m VERY disappointed with Garmin’s products AND customer service. Five stars to Amazon.com for THEIR customer service. I haven’t tried-out the THIRD unit, yet. Stand-by for another scathing rating on this product that promises a lot of features but delivers little.
2. kznny says:

   May 4, 2010 at 12:00 am

   I cannot speak to the shortcomings in other units, because I just bought mine last month. I purchased a 99 Kawasaki Concours in Indiana (I live in New York) and wanted the GPS so that I could have it on the drive back. I purchased the Zumo so I could wander off the beaten path and still make it home while playing my favorite tunes and allowing my wife to call me and check up on my progress. I paired it with the BlueAnt Interphone F4 installed in my helmet. I am not in the mood for a long review, so I will just say that the setup worked almost flawlessly. Twelve hours of straight steady rain had no effect. I have not been able to pair it with my Nokia phone, but other than that I have been satisfied. I use it for routing for work, and combined with the Mapsource software it has greatly increased my efficiency. I like the different modes (motorcycle and automobile) as well. This is my fourth Garmin, I have two Nuvis – an 850 something for my wife, 760 for my car, and older Streetpilot 550 for the old pickup, and this is the best yet. Using the Mapsource DVD makes complex custom routing very easy – as well as synchronizing favorites and routes between units. I saw some negative reviews, but I am happy I did not let them deter me – although the fact that I have more recent version/ firmware than early adopters could explain some of the performance differences. Highly recommended.
3. MattyJ says:

   April 12, 2010 at 12:00 am

   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.
4. Gene says:

   April 10, 2010 at 12:00 am

   This is my 2nd GPS I have purchased for use on my motorcycle and there is no comparison between this one and my first. The first was a Lowrance… too small, no features, no computer interface… mistake. But this one is great. Easy computer access and route / trip planning. Mounts nicely on the bike. Like others have said, I wish there were some alternatives to the lengthy wire harness, but a few tiewraps later and it is hidden well out of sight under the handlebars. I synced a bluetooth headset to it and it took with no problems. So now I can listen to some tunes and directions at the same time. Screen is a nice size and easy to see even in sunlight. I do wish they would have given you access to the USB port without having to remove the battery door. It is a bit of a pain and I can see me breaking this sooner or later. Or loosing the door, dog might eat it. Very nice unit.
5. Patrick St Jean says:

   April 7, 2010 at 12:00 am

   I moved up from a GPSMap 60C to this and am extremely satisfied with it. The bluetooth integration with my phones worked flawlessly, if a little slowly for the initial pairing. I’m able to receive calls while riding, which is important for me due to the type of work I do. I simply cannot miss calls while I’m carrying the on-call phone, and short of driving during my rotation, this is the best solution.

   Mounting the GPS was easy, though they could have included a U-bolt instead of just the brake/clutch mount because my bike, a BMW, does not have screws in the right places to use it. I re-used the old GPS’s mount so it wasn’t a big deal, but including that would have been nice…

   The maps are great, and being able to update them regularly is a nice thing. They’re much more accurate and up-to-date than the previous unit’s maps, though considering the age and storage size differences, that’s not surprising.

   The Zumo also works well with my Mac. I’ve been able to do everything, including map updates, using the Mac software Garmin provides, so no worries there. The only caveat is that you really should use Garmin’s Web Updater app instead of trying to update via the website. I couldn’t get it to work period, while the update done via the Web Updater worked perfectly the first time.

   I just finished my first long-ish one day ride, using a custom route that I designed and transferred and had no problems. The voice nav prompts were extremely helpful because of all of the back roads I chose to ride over.