Which Zumo (or GPS)

The old 550 has been deemed dead...

Looking at new models and seeing the 396 LMT-S for a very reasonable price. The only real difference from the 595 LM that I can find is the screen technology and size. Anyone seen both? How much difference in the screen is there? What else is different between these? Anything else I should consider? Is the 396 LMT-S missing any important features?

I would be pairing it with my smartphone in either case.

If you expect to create routes etc. using Basecamp, and then load those onto the GPS, I'd want to know the devices's capacity, i.e., how many routes, tracks, waypoints/via points/shaping points can you load onto it. I'd also want to know how many waypoints/route points each route can handle, and how many shaping points can be included between waypoints/route points. Is any of this spelled out on Garmin' s website? Whether you even care about this will depend on how you use a GPS.

I checked out the user manual very quickly. I looked at both the sections on how to use the Trip Planner app, and also the one on how to navigate a route. Neither section even mentioned any capability to create routes off the device and then transfer that GPX file to the device for import into the Trip Planner App so you could then open that route and navigate it. The manual, as far as I could tell, only talked about searching for a destination on the device, and then navigating to it. Presumably, you can access a “saved” location as well, and navigate to it, but that's not like creating your own route on your PC, and including a sufficient number of route points to force it to follow the roads you want to ride. That said, just because I didn't find a reference to this in the manual (or specs) doesn't mean it can't do it. But, I'd want to know whether it can, or not.

Yes, I would expect to be routing primarily on basecamp. Garmin does not supply such specs on any model at this time.

Questions and reviews on Amazon indicate that routes from Basecamp can be downloaded. Reviews don't seem to indicate any issues with insufficient memory/space. You can add a micro SD.

Does anyone know:

Will the 396 both receive smartphone audio output and use the same smartphone for it's audio output, or do you need a separate bluetooth headset to receive the GPS' audio output?

You will need a Bluetooth headset

Yes, I would expect to be routing primarily on basecamp. Garmin does not supply such specs on any model at this time.

 

Questions and reviews on Amazon indicate that routes from Basecamp can be downloaded. Reviews don't seem to indicate any issues with insufficient memory/space. You can add a micro SD.

Yes, you can transfer a large number of routes, tracks waypoints etc. to an SD card, so that's not a concern, and you can also transfer that sort of data directly to the device's internal memory. However, before you can use any of those transferred routes, you must first import them into the Trip Planner App. There will be a limit on how many you can have in the Trip Planner (on my Nav VI it's 200). There will also be a limit on the number of route points in any individual route. On my Nav VI's it's 30 "via points/waypoints", but I can place something like 150 silent "shaping points" between each of those waypoints, so the total number of allowable route points in any given route is in the order of 4,300+. This makes it very easy to shape the route the way you want it. It's too bad Garmin doesn't make this clear for its Zumo models. Maybe you can ask them, or someplace like GPS City, if you care. You may not. It would also be nice to know how large the device's internal memory is. That stuff is easy to find out for the BMW-branded Navigators.

Looks like it's about $15 for a bluetooth receiver these days. I can plug my S-Plugs into a Bluetooth Receiver and put it in a pocket. They are advertising 13-15 hour battery life and look to be half the size of a phone, or less. Receivers pair with two devices simultaneously, so then I suppose the phone can directly send music to the bluetooth receiver if I have any issues with the Garmin pairing to the phone.. some reviewers say the GPS loses pairing to the phone, but this seems to be across all models...

A car mount is not included with the 396 (but is with the 595). Garmin sells one for $44.

Lets see, that $60 work of accessories and a $300 difference in price... net savings $240.

At this time I can report a few things about the 396 LMT-S:

It comes with an old style USB cord and you can charge it from more or less any USB wall charger. It hooks up to the PC by USB also.

I gave it my wifi password and it updated maps and software without further ado... a few, "I agree" screens. Not sure how long it took, as we started it and went out. It estimated 1:45.

When I hooked it to PC and launched Basecamp, Basecamp pulled the updated map off the gps in about 2 minutes. Not sure if this will need to happen every time, in which case the 2 minutes might get annoying, or if Basecamp now has the map set.

I downloaded SmartPhone Link and made a quick route and got instant weather on my route. Nice.

From PC I looked at internal memory. With the latest North Am. Map loaded, it had 10GB free. 14GB total available. I have an SD card coming tommorrow.

Pairing with the phone was not intuitive. The device paired awkwardly after a few attempts, then I had to separately pair SmartPhone Link functions.

Hardware and Mounts: Wired to the BMW supplied power on the steering head. Works great. We are using a ram ball mount in the mirror mount hole in the handle bar control. We had that lying around. Just need to route wires tomorrow.

I haven't figured out how to get it to play music from the smartphone yet....

Controls/menus are super straight forward so far... although of course I haven't explored all the apps yet.

All in all, the honeymoon is going well.

Apparently the map pulled from the gps to Basecamp is temporary. Downloaded Garmin Express and now have maps installed on PC. This bit of software can keep the GPS and PC synced on the same mapset. Fairly painless.

Sounds like the direction that Garmin is going with their vehicle style GPS units is more

toward the Nuvi style and less toward the style of the old Zumo or chart plotter series (276, 376)...

This to me is sad, for a lot of the reasons mentioned previously that refer to software routing ability with direct download to the GPS.

This is and was a primary function for me anyway. Well that and getting you home eventually from wherever you get lost at....

One of the pet peeves with the new offerings from Garmin is the lack of the ability to hook up a puck antenna to receive XM/Sirius...

I believe the last one to do this was the Zumo 665...

Not a great policy for those of us with lifetime subscriptions to XM.....