New Garmin Zumo XT Review - Updated

[Shawn K]

Interesting.

My Zumo 396 LMT-S occasionally throws up a weird route, but it never occurs to me to be bothered by it; I just keep riding the direction I knew to go and it eventually sorts itself out.

I've never understood why people get so frustrated by GPS units making mistakes, but I'm starting to understand why. I'm coming at it from a completely different set of expectations.

 

[biquer]

I don't think expecting a GPS unit to route you from A to B without going to C as well is a lofty expectation from such an expensive unit in 2021.

 

[Auburn]

Interesting.

My Zumo 396 LMT-S occasionally throws up a weird route, but it never occurs to me to be bothered by it; I just keep riding the direction I knew to go and it eventually sorts itself out.

I've never understood why people get so frustrated by GPS units making mistakes, but I'm starting to understand why. I'm coming at it from a completely different set of expectations.

Same here with my 550, 665, and the XT. Usually they want to take you on the off ramp just to get back on the on ramp on the freeway. That’s why I run 2 GPS units. One is zoomed in for detail, the other is set 3 or 4 levels higher to see those anomalies so I know to ignore them when in unfamiliar areas. The only one that irritated me was the XT when the preference is to avoid U-turns which in rural areas will take you 100 miles out of your way so it can route you on roads to turn around.

Lesson learned, pay attention to the preference settings.

 

[Ledwardio]

My Zumo 396 LMT-S occasionally throws up a weird route, but it never occurs to me to be bothered by it; I just keep riding the direction I knew to go and it eventually sorts itself out.

I've never understood why people get so frustrated by GPS units making mistakes, but I'm starting to understand why. I'm coming at it from a completely different set of expectations.

That's fair comment in an area that you know, but if you are in a completely unknown area or different Country then it's good to be able have faith in the device to keep you straight

 

[Auburn]

I don't think expecting a GPS unit to route you from A to B without going to C as well is a lofty expectation from such an expensive unit in 2021.

Expensive? The XT is the cheapest Garmin I have ever bought. The 550 and 665 were well north of $600 each. The XT was $399. It has flaws as all GPS units do. The XT processor is much faster, and the screen is the best ever to read to date in bright sunlight. That alone makes it worth it over the previous models. It’s not perfect, but none are. The trick is learning how to operate them.

 

[kerrizor]

I just keep riding the direction I knew to go and it eventually sorts itself out.

Heh.. that's my response, too. Eventually the XT will give up trying to reroute me back to its preferred route, and recalculate from where I physical am at the moment.. often coming up with a MUCH fast route in the process.

...of course, one time, every 5-10 min would freak out that I was on a road that was "closed" and try to reroute me back it its original whackadoo route.

I kind of hesitated to complain about this, because the amount of time it works flawlessly FAR exceeds a few bobbles - I mean, seriously, for me, 2 or 3 "weird routes" is likely a data problem. The device itself is so much more useful, functional, and practical than a cell phone (yes, I know Brooke used one..) and I don't want my saying "this weird thing happened" to be extrapolated into "Kerri thinks the XT is garbage"

I've never understood why people get so frustrated by GPS units making mistakes

I suspect it is more the result of us relaxing into trusting a thing, so that when it fails, it isn't a practicality we've previously planned for (a variation of "the body can not go where the mind has not been") That trust comes from it BEING reliable and useful, to the point that we "outsource" responsibility to it.. which honestly, is a good thing - gives me that much more mental bandwidth for other tasks on the ride.

 

[armour783]

I don't know if I can make this observation without anyone getting twisted up, but...

Every GPS problem thread I've read (this forum and others) seems to center around people being upset because their GPS routed them through some area they didn't want to go.

It leaves me with the impression that there are a *lot* of people who have lost the ability to get from one place to another without a computer telling them exactly where to go.

Serious question - Are people genuinely losing the ability to navigate without electronic aides?

I'll take a crack at this. My opinion as to why people are upset with a Garmin GPS unit is that it is not functioning correctly as a GPS unit. It is a dedicated device. It has one primary job. To get you from point A to point B. And in 2021, it still can't do that reliably.

There is no reason that a dedicated device, designed around technology that has been around for over 4 decades, can't do what a free smartphone app can accomplish.

I can enter a destination on Waze or Google Maps anywhere in the country and be 99.9% certain it will take me the fastest way there, with the least amount of traffic.

The fact that a Garmin GPS unit in it's 4th-6th generation, can't do this, is unacceptable.

 

[biquer]

Here's a giggle to lighten the mood, this is a screenshot from a recent ride I was on. I was at a Photorally location and I entered the next destination, which was 32 miles away and the XT came up with this solution. I was intrigued as to where it wanted me to go, given that 11,000 miles in Ireland is a lot of going round in circles, but it wouldn't let me zoom out. I loaded the same waypoint into the Tomtom and it worked fine. I thought the XT might clear it's head en route but instead about halfway there I got a greyed out screen with the message 'cannot calculate this route'.

 

[kerrizor]

View attachment 7300

Here's a giggle to lighten the mood, this is a screenshot from a recent ride I was on. I was at a Photorally location and I entered the next destination, which was 32 miles away and the XT came up with this solution. I was intrigued as to where it wanted me to go, given that 11,000 miles in Ireland is a lot of going round in circles, but it wouldn't let me zoom out. I loaded the same waypoint into the Tomtom and it worked fine. I thought the XT might clear it's head en route but instead about halfway there I got a greyed out screen with the message 'cannot calculate this route'.

LOL I noticed that a couple times recently.. it was routing me through 0,0 (Null Island).. weird! An update to the latest firmware fixed it.

 

[Stephen!]

Serious question - Are people genuinely losing the ability to navigate without electronic aides?

Next thing you know, nobody will be able to drive a chariot or know how to use a buggy whip anymore...

 

[Shawn K]

I guess I come from a different background. I spent much of my professional life navigating all 48 states without electronic aides, so it's never occurred to me to blindly trust a GPS unit, expect it to be 100% infallible, or be upset when it doesn't match my expectations.

(Don't misunderstand me. That's not a dig. That's mostly me realizing that I'm on the outside on this topic.)

This all reminds me of earlier this year, when I met a guy who was gobsmacked that I rode 800 miles to Homestead, FL and didn't need my GPS until a few miles from my hotel exit. In his mind, he needed the constant situational awareness. In my mind, I only needed to remember the exit number for the Florida Turnpike and the Ronald Reagan Expressway, and didn't need a GPS for that. It didn't occur to me until fairly recently that I'm probably an anachronism.

 

[Auburn]

I guess I come from a different background. I spent much of my professional life navigating all 48 states without electronic aides, so it's never occurred to me to blindly trust a GPS unit, expect it to be 100% infallible, or be upset when it doesn't match my expectations.

(Don't misunderstand me. That's not a dig. That's mostly me realizing that I'm on the outside on this topic.)

This all reminds me of earlier this year, when I met a guy who was gobsmacked that I rode 800 miles to Homestead, FL and didn't need my GPS until a few miles from my hotel exit. In his mind, he needed the constant situational awareness. In my mind, I only needed to remember the exit number for the Florida Turnpike and the Ronald Reagan Expressway, and didn't need a GPS for that. It didn't occur to me until fairly recently that I'm probably an anachronism.

You’re not alone, I too fit your description.

 

[Steve Gallant]

Thanks for this, Rick. One of the most on-point responses I've seen in this thread.

I've learned well over the last few years that "you can't trust Garmin" just like most others have. I think the reason the XT is ticking me off so much is that it is my third generation of device (4th or 5th for other people I know) and like Rick is saying, it still can't provide a simple "fastest" A to B route reliably when you need it to. This is AFTER its predecessors have done the same job better (at least, more adequately), and after Google has pretty much mapped every pothole and tarsnake in the continental US.

It works just fine if you create a complex route with many via and shaping points to ensure it stays on the route you decide. It seems to mostly work just fine for long interstate rides like Greg's recently completed (and thoroughly impressive!) 48/6.5 ride, and on the long interstate stretches I rode on the IBR. But as soon as I hit the local roads, even away from cities, I began to look at my phone and even at my older Zumo 350 more than the XT.

FWIW, I absolutely LOVE maps, paper or otherwise. That said, I would probably never use a paper map on a long ride. The time has past and it's simply impractical, especially in rally mode.

I'll take a crack at this. My opinion as to why people are upset with a Garmin GPS unit is that it is not functioning correctly as a GPS unit. It is a dedicated device. It has one primary job. To get you from point A to point B. And in 2021, it still can't do that reliably.

There is no reason that a dedicated device, designed around technology that has been around for over 4 decades, can't do what a free smartphone app can accomplish.

I can enter a destination on Waze or Google Maps anywhere in the country and be 99.9% certain it will take me the fastest way there, with the least amount of traffic.

The fact that a Garmin GPS unit in it's 4th-6th generation, can't do this, is unacceptable.

 

[Marc11]

I think it is important to remember we are edge case users of these units. The vast, VAST majority of people who buy the XT want it to get them from point A to point B, period. If it adds miles or time or does not take the most optimal route, most people don't know nor care.

As long as it gets them to their destination, or follows the route they built in Basecamp or whatever, they are totally happy with it and all it's bells and whistles.

So these units aren't built for us, the algorithms aren't built for us, they are built for "them"...

Does it make it right, no, of course not, it should be better, but as a dedicated GPS unit, it's job is to get you to your destination, without the need for data or cell service and it does that.

Again, it should do a better job with routing, but the reality is, in Garmins world, it doesn't have too.

 

[Shawn K]

As I've stated before, I'm a bit on the outside on this thinking.

I believe the comparison between Google Maps and Garmin GPS's - while understandable - is a bit heavy-handed, as the technological access and constraints of the two companies aren't even in the same league.

The reason Google Maps has such a wide scope of information available is because your phone isn't doing the heavy lifting; you're availing yourself of the cloud computing power of one of the most powerful information companies on the globe. Your phone is essentially a display device, nothing else. (Don't believe me? Download a large region of information in Offline Map mode, put your phone in Airplane Mode, build a 10-point route, and see how long it takes your phone to do the calculation.) Google's ubiquity has lulled people into thinking that what Google Maps provides is no big deal, when in fact what you're accessing is the collective resources of one of the most powerful distributed computational networks in the history of man.

Garmin is building units that calculate internally, have weatherized hardware, are designed to take abuse, and are meant to carry the area data internally. Cloud computing is not an option. Powering your Garmin with Google Maps isn't an option, either, because Google's data licensing structure would make the cost of designing and using a Garmin so expensive as to be untenable. Plus, reliance on a data network removes the ability of your Garmin to operate... y'know... WITHOUT a data network.

I could go on and on, but I really think that people have unrealistic expectations sometimes about technology, and their frustrations arise partly as a result of not understanding what it takes financially and technologically to implement their demands.

 

[Factor]

Shawn, you are spot on with your assessment. If I weren’t so lazy, I’d have typed that up a day or so ago.

 

[Daniel]

have weatherized hardware,.

Really? Rain? A few drops and it starts to act on it's own. Or it is just mine?

 

[Shawn K]

Really? Rain? A few drops and it starts to act on it's own. Or it is just mine?

As I've already discussed, the XT has a capacitive touchscreen and is not as rain friendly as every prior Zumo series GPS (which all used resistive touchscreens).

It's a great example of what I've tried to illustrate before - consumers demand various this-and-that, without ever considering the ramifications. In this case, motorcyclists have been clamoring for years about wanting a hi-res screen like their smartphone ("It's ridiculous that Garmin has such a low-res screen! Smartphones are everywhere!"), but they never stopped to think that there was a reason that resistive touchscreens were standard fare in GPS's.

So Garmin caves to the demands for a hi-res screen, switches to capacitive screen technology (the only way to achieve the goal), and then people complain about the consequences of the change.

 

[Steve Gallant]

Shawn I pretty much agree with everything you said here. This is definitely a first-world problem, but since we're in Rome...

You're right, definitely unfair to compare to Google's resources and cloud-computing back-end algorithms and database, but we do get spoiled. So that aside, I'm still ticked that Garmins new product is WORSE at routing A to B than it's product from four years ago. I think it's realistic to expect the next gen product from the same company to improve upon their previous gen product at the primary function of the device. As Marc pointed out, they are catering to a less-demanding mass-market consumer and my feeling is they wanted a device that looks good and acts fast (i.e. more cell-phone-like), rather than something that actually produces better quality results.

Personally, I could stand it if the XT took an extra 30 seconds or so to really think hard and come up with a true 'fastest' route, rather than try to impress me with how quickly it calculates a route that may or may not actually be fastest (using the same mapset as the older unit, mind you).

As I've stated before, I'm a bit on the outside on this thinking.

I believe the comparison between Google Maps and Garmin GPS's - while understandable - is a bit heavy-handed, as the technological access and constraints of the two companies aren't even in the same league.

<snip a lot of true stuff here>

I could go on and on, but I really think that people have unrealistic expectations sometimes about technology, and their frustrations arise partly as a result of not understanding what it takes financially and technologically to implement their demands.

 

[Shawn K]

I think it's realistic to expect the next gen product from the same company to improve upon their previous gen product at the primary function of the device.

While I agree with you in principle, I think the slippery slope is at the definitions of 'improve" and "primary function".

You may believe that "improve" means "increasing the quality of the execution of pre-existing functions". The R&D department may define it as "increasing the number of included functions that the customer demands, so long as the execution is 'good enough'". So it's a quality vs. quantity debate.

You may define "primary function" as "A to B navigation with zero errors forever". Another person may define it as "self-contained information/ navigation/ entertainment hub that will get you there one way or another".

(I'm not singling you out individually, Steve. I'm just using your words as a point for illustration.)

I don't envy anyone who has to design navigation software. The average consumer demands perfection (defined as "I want it to behave exactly the way I EXPECT it to behave"), but no two customers expect the same thing. So no matter what you do as a manufacturer, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.