Hi Chris - I've been hunting around the HUBB for someone who has actual experience of using a 'car based' Nuvi on their bike - and it would seem you are indeed the fellow!

I currently use an aging Garmin 2610 on my dirt/travel bikes, as it is pretty much indestructible and I like the way it works... however, I'm tempted to buy something a bit smaller and neater (and with battery back-up) for a road trip around Europe this summer - and when you can buy a wide screen Nuvi complete with current Europe maps for pretty much the same price as a City Navigator upgrade these days, I thought that would make sense as it would also be a better 'everyday' in-car unit too I imagine?

So what was your experience of the physical reliability of the Nuvi on your trip to Morocco? - I'm presuming the power lead was the mini USB type, did it come loose or have any problems? What about general vibration - both from the engine and off-road riding too? Did the Nuvi ever glitch or reset itself/need resetting?

As I say, I intend to use the Nuvi for an on-road trip this summer (albeit on a Ducati V-twin, so vibes might be an issue!) - but it would be nice to know it is also robust enough for use on the dirtbike/s too?

Many thanks in advance,

Jenny xx

PS. I also have the Olaf maps for Morocco on my 2610 and 60CX - I presume you can load them into the Nuvi too using Mapsource? - can they sit in the memory in conjunction with City Navigator (ie. selectable) or do you have to load one set or the other?

Chris,
Thanks for that steer; I have now bitten on that bullet and bought a second hand Nuvi 205W for just £40 with full european garmin mapping included in the price.
Early days in playing with it, but for £40 who cares how it performs, compared with my Tom Tom, or anything else, for that matter?!

Ref the questions in the last post; you can answer for yourself, but certainly the 205W has a slot for a SD card, so any maps can be downloaded to a SD card and then used in the GPS; apparently it is just a matter of putting the card into the slot to use the maps on that card, or simply using the maps that are in the inbuilt memory of the GPS.

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Dave

Hi Dave, sounds like you got a great deal for £40.
I admit that after Morocco my £80 Nuvi died on me one wet evening near Huddersfield. Could have been from trying to protect it by putting it into a jacket pocket that turned out not to be waterproof.
Anyway, got another - new this time - for the same price off ebay and will try and take better care of it or get one of these.

Jenny, sorry missed an email about your reply months ago.

... I'm presuming the power lead was the mini USB type, did it come loose or have any problems? What about general vibration - both from the engine and off-road riding too? Did the Nuvi ever glitch or reset itself/need resetting?

I had none of those problems or any at all, but on the piste I stuck it under a net and on some foam on the tank (see pic below) as the garmin mount would have failed for sure. The 76 was in my proven TT bar mount. On the road I used the Nuvi on a bar mount for better viz.

I think it was selectable so both can be loaded. In Morocco I used Olaf - better than anything Garmin offers for the roads and as good as anything on the piste. back in Spain I selected whatever was in the Garmin. Both in Morocco and Spain, assuming the mapping is up to it these satnavs are so handy when it comes to negotiating big towns or cities - and of course used Nuvi is so much cheaper than any Zumo. Just keep them try and mount them well on a moto.

(More on Morocco maps here)

Ch

Edit. Let me switch that around and add: "better than anything Garmin offers for the piste and good enough on the road for something that's free and easy to load compared to other free mapping I've tried.
I don't use - or perhaps don't fully trust - the routing function in Mk, preferring to be more engaged in the nav.

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I've just finished a 3K mile road trip with my Nuvi 205W stuck as high as possible to the windscreen of my Kawasaki Versys. It was a process of almost constant experimentation, but only because I know nothing about Garmins.

Located on the screen, it was easy to see within my line of vision and I thought it would be quite well protected from driving rain, but that wasn't proven because there was really good weather in the south of France/northern Spain.
Fixed at that height, it vibrated quite a bit, and I believe it would have been better fixed to something more substantial, such as the bars - but, I wanted it in my line of sight. Also, it may be that a non-wide screen GPS unit would vibrate less, being lighter in weight.
I taped over the sd card slot and the speaker on the back of the unit (which was muted anyway) to protect from moisture - as I say, not proven to be effective because of the lack of rain.
Yep, the micro- USB plug into the back of the unit did tend to work loose when used on it's own, but more electrical tape held that in place - it all looked a bit of a bodge, because it definitely was, but it worked.

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Dave

Sorry to hear good weather spoiled your holiday experiments, Dave ;-)

I also found that tucked up as far forward as possible in the curve of the screen worked amazingly well with a bare Nuvi in an 800-km day of downpours across Spain. Not certain it would work so well for stop-start city riding so better a plastic bag to pop over it. Like you say, high in line with vision helps greatly - like a Dakar racer's road book.

It may have helped that I glued the Garmin mount to a long RAM arm that I happened to have, and mounted off the bars. They're solid so no probs with vibration on the road, even with longer arm. On the dirt I put it on a tank mat, as shown earlier.

Ch

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Thanks everyone... just to add to this thread, I bit the bullet on a Nuvi 2445 in July for my trip around Europe, and I have to say it works faultlessly on a bike, especially if you use a waterproof Arkon case:



The touch screen still works well though the plastic cover, and mounted between the bar clamps (using a short RAM arm) meant no vibration...



Also, I had no problems with the USB power connector, and the case helps here as it has foam inserts to support [different thicknesses of] GPS units, and the power cable routing means everything stays nice and snug in there.

I'd certainly recommend this combo to anyone looking to upgrade/replace an aging 2610 for example... and the nice thing about the 2445 series Garmin is you can upload/create loads of routes (50 I think, or even 100?) and just select them day by day...

Hope that helps anyone asking a similar question!

Jenny x

ps. The Arkon case also works with an iPhone or similar should you wish...

Having read through the relative merits of smartphones v dedicated gps, I'm going to go for the cheap Garmin car unit. I'm not going offroad, just navigating Europe/Eastern Europe so no need for anything special.

I've been looking at the 2xx series Nuvi, as they seem to be the cheapest on a certain auction site. The feature I would really like to have is the ability to add multiple points along a route, within the unit itself. i.e without hooking it up to a pc. I've been using Google maps on my phone and, aside from always needing a data connection, the most frustrating thing about it is only being able to navigate between two points.

I've read that certain Nuvi models have this feature but others don't. Any pointers as to which is which would be appreciated...

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Beware the dark, mechanical bird.

Hi Crusty - see my post/info above - the 2445 does everything you'll need (see note below - 2455 has full Europe maps) it has a 100 programmable routes, and 1000 waypoints! - and if you want to add via points it's as easy and entering an address or scrolling around the map and marking a via point that way. You can even do it on the fly, although I wouldn't recommend that on a bike of course... ahem.

The 2445 comes with all the Western Europe maps pre loaded - if you need full Europe mapping, the 2455 is just £10 more - and you can even add a card for more memory or extra maps... the RRP is only just over £100 too - I'd say it is perfect for what you (or pretty much anyone!) need!

Jx

Hi Jenny,

Having re-read your post, you had of course answered my question before I asked it..

It sounds perfect, but what do you mean about full Europe being £10.00 more than the 2445..:confused1:

Probably me just being thick again...

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Beware the dark, mechanical bird.

No problem - based on the RRP on the Garmin website, the 2445 (western Europe maps) is £109.99 and the 2455 (with full Europe maps) is £119.99.

Jx

As I suspected, me being thick again..!

Thanks Jenny, hope the recovery and prep for 2014 is going well....

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Beware the dark, mechanical bird.

Having played around with my second hand 205W, more/less as posted in here and other threads under this forum, I would say it is best to go with the latest version of the Nuvi, now that you know that you want one of them.

The 205W will accept additional directions "on the move" but I haven't established clearly for my own level of knowledge what this does to other data in use at the time - I think it just adds the new location as an intermediate destination, in addition to the final destination, but I am not fully sure if there are any secondary effects. In any case, it seems to be very rudimentary when dealing with routes that I have added by means of basecamp.

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Dave