Review Garmin Zumo XT: Convincing travel companion

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Review Garmin Zumo XT: Convincing travel companion
Michael Schroder

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Navis, communication, apps

Review Garmin Zumo XT: Convincing travel companion

Review Garmin Zumo XT
Convincing travel companion

Can you convince a motorcycle travel professional who is in love with Michelin cards to use a GPS? We gave our colleague the latest generation of Garmin devices to take with us.


Michael Schroder

09/30/2020

Navis have always had to put up with the reproach: They may guide you safely and without errors to the right destination, but in order to get there on the most beautiful paths, an intensive study of maps is still indispensable. Correspondingly lengthy and time-consuming (and for one or the other analogue both laborious and error-prone) is the preparation to finally program the tricky route into the navigation system without errors.


Review Garmin Zumo XT: Convincing travel companion


Michael Schroder

For this test, we asked our colleague Michael Schroder, who has experienced long-distance travel, to ignore the much-loved Michelin cards for his annual Alpine and Provence tour and only to the new one Garmin Zumo XT to put. Reise-Schroder was correspondingly skeptical as to whether the navigation system could even come close to impressing him in the well-known travel area. Especially since he had an ambitious plan: to tour from Orange in southern France to the border in Mulhouse only over tiny, but all the more beautiful streets. What normally costs him tens of hours of preparation to map out the road book with hundreds of directions in a detailed map study.

Convincing route planning

That should now be done without planning the “Adventurous routing”-Take over the function of the new XT. And she solved the given task with flying colors: “You can always readjust the suggested route on the device using the slider. If I had set it to the maximum, I would have been on the road two days longer than estimated!” But above all – so his conclusion – the Garmin led him over such winding paths that he could not have chosen better himself. For the map junkie, the new feature of the pre-installed topographic maps, which helped Michael with his off-road expeditions, was also perfectly successful: “Mountains, slopes, the structure of the terrain – everything is represented as if on a good topographical paper map. A perfect support for my detour over the wild Col du Parpaillon. If necessary, I could also have loaded satellite images – but unfortunately I didn’t have the time in advance.”


Review Garmin Zumo XT: Convincing travel companion


Garmin

Even the usual standards such as menu navigation, input functions and response time can be used by the self-confessed “Digital grouch” to convince. Just like the bright display, which is easy to read even in blazing sun and which can be mounted either vertically or horizontally. That leaves Schroder’s final conclusion: “Makes traveling very easy!” The Garmin Zumo XT is available for prices starting at 499.95 euros.

Plus: 5.5 inch HD display, track recorder, map updates included, live traffic & -weather

Minus: short battery life

MOTORCYCLE Rating: 4.5 stars out of five

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