TomTom 550 ride

[thinwater]

I'm about to go with the TomTom 550 Ride, wanted to go with the Garmin Inreach Explorer + alone real bad.  I don't have a smart phone and don't care for one ???.  The TomTom 550 Ride seems to connect to wifi all on its own without a support device and download / upgrade, have plenty of memory, and talk to my Bluetooth headset and generate a route if need be.  It will even connect to a smart phone I don't want. :o  I don't plan to use a lot of fancy devices and options, therefore Id just rather lots of options I'm not going to use be in my way in the menu selections.  I know other GPS units will do more, I think TomTom 550 ride will do all I want without the clouding of menu options and settings to wade through.  Back road Dual Sport Rider, future TAT is the purpose.

  I haven't found a lot of reviews on it so if anyone knows I'm about to mess up and would like to be kind and steer me away please give it a shot to steer me away.  I will not argue, because I don't know enough to.  Otherwise I'll let you know how I like it or not after I get it and have used it awhile.

[klaviator]

Check out this thread: https://advrider.com/f/threads/new-tom-tom-550-rider.1323790/

[DonJuan]

I'm in the market for a GPS, too. From what I've read, including the link below, the TT550 Rider seems pretty solid.  Anyone have some first hand experience with one?

I haven't owned a gps in about 12 years, and I've never used one on a motorcycle.  My rationale is that while dual sporting,  I'd rather drown or destroy a $300- $500 GPS Unit than a $1000 smart phone.

The curvy elevation chooser feature and maintenance journals seem pretty appealing too.


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[kylepeterson]

I'm in the market for a GPS, too. From what I've read, including the link below, the TT550 Rider seems pretty solid.  Anyone have some first hand experience with one?

I haven't owned a gps in about 12 years, and I've never used one on a motorcycle.  My rationale is that while dual sporting,  I'd rather drown or destroy a $300- $500 GPS Unit than a $1000 smart phone.

The curvy elevation chooser feature and maintenance journals seem pretty appealing too.


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if i ever break a $50 rugged/waterproof (i won't pay more than that for a phone) phone, I'll just pull the backup out of my pack and order another $50 unit when i have service again. you really don't have to buy new, or pay a premium price, with the -millions- of units available on eBay/amazon/swappa every day.

[thinwater]

I like mine, the mydrive webpage is slow where you store your tracks on my landline internet, but works.  I've created and saved routes on the mydrive page as instructed by tomtom and successfully, the tomtom within wifi range had the then saved routes in its menue ready to pull up.  I have not had tons of experience yet, but am satisfied with my purchase.  My Cardo headset picks up the voice commands from it, and it has an easy to get to mute for the voice commands on the gps unit (how I roll).  It will record your drive for gpx share, but I haven't done it.

[Lee R]

I've been using one of these over the last year, three of us used them on a recent long trip to Alaska and back, I've used plenty of garmins and smartphones for navigation in the past.

It's weatherproof, glove friendly more so than a phone and the screen is better in bright sun.  The right hand column for fuel stations is extremely handy on long trips. You get the twisty road routing function with 3 settings for twisty and hilliness.

Mydrive (tomtom's web based or app based mapping) is easy to use to plan a route at home then it automatically syncs the route to the device via wifi. This also works by planning on an iPad and then syncing to deceive via hotspot if your on a long trip.  Alternately you can also transfer routes via micro sd card which worked well amongst the three of these we used going to alaska so we always had the exact same routes which was nice for situational awareness for turns etc.

It's much less expensive than Garmin, @ 300 dollars.

If your in the market for a bike specific GPS I would go with one of these over a Garmin.   

[DonJuan]

I've had two significant unplanned rider ejections (SURE), and it has held up well, no damage to the mounting or the unit. Still not sure about forest road and off road compatibility.


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[thinwater]

Just got off of the TAT, mine was the main navigation and still working.  I had a problem with it after Cinnamon Pass, CO.  It was due to being low battery and the charger I had it in all night didn't charge it, caused it to not boot up right.  After a full charge actually working the next night it came back up and works as it always has now.  I wasn't using the powered mount, I have a 2 flat plug to either run the TomTom 550 rider powered mount, or switch it over to an accessory power plug that will charge two other usb charged devices.  I would charge the TomTom every night and power USB stuff off the bike as needed on the fly.  I used a Garmin Inreach Explorer as backup while I had the problem with The TomTom.  The Inreach will not route, but I had the tracks already downloaded, it wasn't as friendly to use and needed the phone synced to it for the larger screen to be usable.  I was glad I had it in the situation I was temporarily in though.  :o  I incorrectly thought that off road vibration had gotten it at Cinnamon Pass, it was just a failed charge block and it trying to boot up on less than adequate voltage. ;D