That is a great point and follow up question: How much would you be willing to spend on GPS hardware?
I bought my first zumo 550 new for ~$700. I forget what the US msrp was at the time. I then spent an additional $70 for the lifetime maps upgrade (msrp was $100). I've been running that unit for 5 years and ~100k miles combined (on several bikes). Yes, I had to replace the touch screen once (so far) and that cost me < $20 including shipping of the digitizer from China. And I have had to seal all of the rubber buttons (with RTV from the inside) which is a common failure point of old zumos. I feel like I have got my money's worth from that unit.
I later bought a zumo 660 and was not impressed. Did a
full comparison here. Sold off the 660 within a few months and bought a second zumo 550 (for my son's bike) and that one has always run fine too.
But, my zumo 550 's are getting long in the tooth. The old 550 doesn't have A2DP blue tooth, which would be nice feature to have. It doesn't have the "curvy roads" feature, though I have learned how to make that happen by pre-planning routes on Mapsource. It can't be used as a TPMS, won't interface with my iPhone to do weather and traffic. Although I have learned how to load and use the 24k topo maps on the 550, having the ability to rotate the screen to vertical portrait format will be a huge benefit to me when running topo maps while dual sporting. And the new GPS comes
with the lifetime maps feature already, 5 years later, at the same price I paid for my $550.
If it works as well as my old 550's have, with all of the added new features, I would say this could be well worth the price even at the full msrp.
