After several months and thousands of miles - and despite making a determined effort at trying to overcome the many niggles the EU version unit had 'out-of-the-box' - the 590LM was a disappointment. Here are a few of the major points…

Positives: Good, solid bit of kit; excellent touch screen; display layout pretty good; menu system OK too; well-designed mount/QR; good music player; can (with difficulty) custom colour maps; fast; some very useful forums.

Negatives: screen is difficult to see on sunny days (this is a major problem and there’s no cure); installed map display choices are limited both in number and variation; voice directions' verbosity (amount of info) is fixed; bit slow for route recalculation in cities; selecting the option to get a voice warning when you stray off route disables automatic route re-calculation (in a city this makes it pointless); no audio 're-calculating route' warning; music volume is only adequate; volume adjust disabled when Bluetooth connected (in fact some very useful functions are disabled depending what’s connected and what the unit’s connected to). I can add to that shortlist Garmin Help are 'very slow to stop'.

Now this is all very negative so I should stress that I really wanted the 590LM to work and went to a lot of trouble making enquiries, reading manuals, changing settings and above all 'testing, testing, testing'. But, all-in-all, the 590LM is merely adequate for motorcycle navigation, not brilliant. And it should be, given the price tag. My feeling is that many bikers (and car drivers too) just accept, as we all did with video players of old, that sat navs don’t work that well by design. Just compare how much better equivalent mobiles and tablets are.

Comparisons: I’ve used IGo Primo software on cheap tablets over a number of years. Leaving the hardware aside IGo Primo software is at least equivalent to, and in some areas better than, Garmin’s. If ever it’s offered installed on hardware as good as Garmin’s I’d junk the 590LM without hesitation.

Ratings:

Hardware: 8/10
Software: 5/10
Value: 2/10