Any suggestions?

Battersea · Occasional Visitor Joined: Dec 14, 2004 Posts: 3

I have been looking at a navigation system for use in my family cars and on my Harley. This will be my first sat nav and quite frankly I am at a loss. It would be much appreciated if some of the people on here could give me the benefit of their experiences.

The system needs to be portable, i.e. between car and motorbike, have a socket for external ear piece (for bike). I tour UK and Europe, particularly France and Spain, and need street level mapping for all. Would be happy to insert cards for each country if required.

Up to now the favourite has been iCN630-650 range but I dont think they have an external earpiece socket (have emailed Navman on this, as yet no reply) and the mini hard disk in the 650 is a bit of a worry for use on the Harley. Mounting and water problems when used on the bike are not a real problem as I can make a secure and waterproof enclosure if necessary. Have also looked at the Garmin StreetPilot 2610.

Any suggestions please?

Dave · Posted: Tue Dec 14, 2004 10:21 pm Post subject:

Personally I would go for the Garmin StreetPilot 2610 or 2620. Mainly because these are rugged and waterproof where the Navman range still isn't which is a mortal sin for bikers!

The 2620 Garmin suggest isn't made for bikes, mainly due to vibrations. I suspect the Harley gets quite a bit of vibration, but if it doesn't you could try a 2620. The main reason why Garmin suggest not using the 2620 on bikes is because it comes with a 2Gb hard drive and the vibration can cause problems.

Failing that I would go with a 2610 with a 2Gb Compact Flash card. This will enable you to load the complete Western European maps to the StreetPilot and give you pretty much what you need without having to try and keep the SatNav system dry.

Battersea · Occasional Visitor Joined: Dec 14, 2004 Posts: 3

Thanks for the prompt reply Dave.

After posting this topic I found the reviews on both StreetPilot and iCN630, also read the follow-up comments on the iCN. From some of the views expressed, the 630 seemed to have quite a bit more going for it, i.e. recalc speed etc. How does the 2610 compare with the StreetPilot, is it a different model?

Do you know if the 2610 has a socket for an earpiece?

Dave · Posted: Wed Dec 15, 2004 6:59 am Post subject:

The StreetPilot III Deluxe did have slow re-calc times, but the 2610/2620 is very fast, and I would say on-par with the iCN630 if not faster.

I'm not 100% sure about the ear-phone socket, but doing a search on Google there is a bike lead that apparently does have a headphone socket to connect an ear piece or intercom.

Pocketgps · Posted: Wed Dec 15, 2004 8:39 pm Post subject:

Hi Battersea,

Have a look here for the specs on the Garmin:

http://www.garmin.com/products/sp2610/

And you will find that there is a motorcycle mounting kit and speaker system, so head-phone/s must be possible.

http://shop.garmin.com/accessories_for_product.jsp?sku=010-00273-03

Regards,

PocketGps

Battersea · Occasional Visitor Joined: Dec 14, 2004 Posts: 3

Thanks for the help.

I have looked at the sites suggested plus, others and; as always with these things, opinions are varied and at times conflicting. However overall there were more positives than negatives and the Garmin is the only system that is suitable for M/C use (it would seem). Having no previous knowledge I have found the decision making process somewhat daunting thank goodness for forums such as this on.

On a more general note, can it be assumed that an alternative to using a large memory card i.e. 2Gb to down load all the maps onto, it would be ok to say use 256Mb cards and download each country seperately. What would be the pro's and con's to this theory?

Lastly, I am going to America next year and will be travelling by road a lot, the thought was it would be a good idea to take the Garmin with me but from their site I gather that a European version will not work with American maps, have I understood this correctly?

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