Garmin 550 Review

By Henry Butz

It took me a while to understand the different between the Nuvi 500 and the 550. Look no further. Only the base map is different. The 500 comes with the lower 48 states with topographical information while the 550 includes all of North America (Canada and Mexico) and no topographical information. The units are identical otherwise.

First, the good stuff. This GPS is quickly becoming an invaluable tool for long drives. I have been able to enter a street address as well as many restaurants, hospitals, and businesses then just click on “go.” On one trip, it correctly navigated reversing direction on a double-cloverleaf turn. A pleasant voice guides you and alerts you of upcoming turns. Miss the turn and the unit will patiently wait for you to realize your error. Then, after a while it will just recalculate your route automatically. It is also possible to tweak the routes by manually entering points to divert the automatic routing or pressing “detour” on the fly if you find yourself stuck at a railroad crossing. Custom routes can be saved. Waypoints can be sorted by category and new categories can be added. Photographs can be added, although I haven’t done much with this feature. Clicking on the top bar will display the route turn by turn. I found the routing quite intelligent and much prefer this unit over my last human co-pilot (but I hope that she never reads this review). This particular unit has a rechargeable battery and the unit can be mounted on an optional bean bag mount to just throw it on the dash instead of messing with cables. This makes it perfect for rental cars as well. It has four modes for driving, walking, boating, or bicycling.

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By de0ris

So, finally I got my nuvi. It was a tough choice: many GPS carriers are available, and each has many models that come in vast variety of flavors. I’ve narrowed it down to Nuvi 550 for the following reasons:

1. Text to speech to me is really annoying. I want my GPS to tell me when and where to make a turn, and not worry about spending extra time looking off the road to confirm street signs.

2. I wanted my GPS to help me out more than just driving directions. I hike, I camp, I travel all over, and not just North America. I wanted the versatility of being able to navigate and pin point my location on the highway, in the mountains, offroad, and not just be able to locate nearest gas station. Before Nuvi 500/550 I would have had to purchase 2 GPS units: one for the car, one hand-held (e.g. Colorado series).

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By Michael A. Aron

For my motorcycles, I’ve had a Garmin Quest and later Quest 2 for years. I loved their small size, long-range battery and that they were water proof. But the time it took to recalculate and ability to lose satellite signal even in light tree cover became unbearable. So I began to seek an upgraded unit.

It came down to the Zumo and Nuvi 550 units because they are water proof, a requirement for my bikes. The Zumo clearly has several features the Nuvi does not, but was lacking in one critical area for me - battery life. The Zumo is rated at 4 hours, virtually requiring hard wiring. Since I use GPS on all my bikes, I did not want to go through the hassle, and the Nuvi comes with an 8 hour battery.

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