Just finished a 2700 mile road trip on my great 2015 SGS to Florida. On this trip I had plenty of occasions to test the BOOM Box-GPS. My buddy used a Garmin-Zumo on his Yamaha Raider S. We didn’t use a trip planner, but used the GPS to find places, such as hotels, restaurants, or HD-dealerships. We also used it to orientate our self where we were.
If you want to know my verdict upfront, here it is: This GPS is absolutely USELESS. I am stunned that the MOCO put such a piece of $...t in such a superior bike and thinks we, the buyers, will accept it. I sure hope that HD would read our complaints and eventually improve their shortfalls. I would like to mention that I did not purchase my SGS because of this built-in GPS. No, I bought my SGS because it is a fantastic touring bike with lots of great features.
But back to my GPS-test and the things I complain about:
The graphic is the poorest of all the GPS-systems I have used in the past. It simply sucks big time. If the unit is used in 2D mode the roads are shown in a pale yellow on a greyish background that makes it really hard to see, unless you zoom in. But then you lose the ability to see where you are, relative to the area you are travelling. Also the road numbers are so small that you’d need reading glasses, unless you are in your twenties and your eye sight is still sharp. The 2D map is very crude with a very large (motorcycle)-icon that indicates your position. The 2D map is by far not as detailed as a Garmin, or Tom-Tom map. When you zoom out the roads disappear and the names of towns become very sparse. To use this GPS as a 2D-map, it simply falls far behind compared to any other GPS. To use the 3D-mode without any destination input simply doesn’t make any sense at all. If you zoom out in 3D-mode, it looks almost identical to the 2D mode. But here are my biggest complaints: The POI (points of interests). When we came close to Daytona Beach, I searched for a HD-dealership. Bruce Rossmeyer came up three times in the list. I picked the one that was located in Daytona Beach and the closest one. So we followed the highlighted route and stopped when the nice voice said “you have reached your destination”. Problem was we ended up in front of the “Indian Motorcycle” dealership. No HD-dealer nearby! Pretty embarrassing for HD to guide you to their competition, isn’t it! We then picked the next one on the list and it was nine miles outside Daytona. At least now the GPS found the largest HD-dealership in the country. When we were searching for restaurants, or hotels we had to use the Zumo, simply because it would give you the distance and the direction to the restaurants of your choice in an instant. With the HD-unit all you get it a list in alphabetical order with no directions or distances. You have to scroll down an endless list and then pick a certain name. Once you click on that name, only then would it give you the distance and direction to your choice. The list gives you places up to forty miles away! Who in the world wants to travel forty miles away to have breakfast at Denny’s? The Garmin gives you any POI, regardless of the name, by distance and direction upfront. That I call “user friendliness”, which the HD-unit certainly does not exhibit. I would like to stop here, although the list of my complaints goes on much further.
I know this report may contradict the opinion of many here who think this GPS is the best since sliced bread. I don’t want to change the opinions of those riders at all. May they think whatever they want, but it simply won’t change the impression I gathered about this piece of crap. It is very obvious that a certain Hungarian Software company won the competition with the cheapest bid for this BOOM Box-GPS. Harley Davidson should be ashamed to have made this choice. It certainly will impact my future plans when it comes to purchase another bike from the MOCO.

 

I do have to agree that the only real shortfall of the new Rushmore bikes is the Boom system. I have actually found a system that is worse than the old Porsche nav systems. Every single trip I have taken and used the GPS has routed me off course and rarely are addresses even within a few hundred of feet where it says you have reached your destination. Coming from using Zumo for so many years I was accustomed to user friendliness and efficiency. Also miss being able to come up with great routes right on the GPS and update the maps to the latest version every few months. If I ever see a clean double DIN kit I may jump on one just to get rid of the Boom system.

 

I love my '15 RGS. The absolute best motorcycle I've ever owned.

The GPS system is an effing joke. Decades out of date, crude, hard to use, hard to see, piece of crap. The best $20 I've spent on the bike so far is a handlebar mount for my Galaxy S5, which I Bluetooth to my SENA headset. Don't get me started on Harley and Bluetooth.

I was talking to the regional MoCo rep about it, and he asked what I use the BOOM system for. I said: "It's a $24,000 clock".

A guy I ride with is a PhD in chemistry and a professor at the local university. He just bought a brand, spankin' new Street Glide. I asked his opinion about the GPS. He burst out laughing..."It's effing TERRIBLE".

I know, I know, there are Harley riders who love their GPS. I assume they have a black and white tv and a rotary dial phone at home. There can't be any other explanation, because if you've actually used a modern GPS system...there are no words.

Total POS.

 

Funny, I have a stand alon Garmin I used on my previous '11 Street Glide and still use in my truck.
I find that the new built in GPS on my Limited works just as well.

I have never had a single issue finding anything, importing routes, navigating routes, etc.

The only thing I really miss that my Garmin did was display the speed limit on the road I was traveling.
Everything else about the new HD works.

 

It's raining here so I went down in the garage and turned the bike to Accessory and checked my POI's. I've only used this feature a few times and it's worked OK. My POI's come up closest first, give the distance and direction. If I touch the center, (between the scroll arrows) the list will change to alphabetical but I still get distance and direction.

I use Tyre and download our trips to the Boombox and I've been happy with the results. I put each days route in as a separate trip and each morning choose that trip. In the beginning I did have some of the screen lock ups and problems that everyone else had but keeping up on the new downloads I haven't had any issues.

I had the Garmin 550's then we upgraded to the 660's and loved them, do I wish Garmin were on the boom, YES. I still have one on the shelf in the garage but I don't see any reason to change.
Just my 2 cents
Bill

 

2016 RGU. Not a big user of GPS prefer maps. Used it once sense it was new that was 7,000 miles ago. Not afraid of them either. Friday night last minute Granddaughter has a softball game 2 hours from here. Wife wants to go. I have no idea where the field is. Web search the address go out stick in the bike and take off. It got us there, I knew some of the roads and may have chosen a different route at times but it worked.

 

RollaMo, I never said it doesn't work. I complained about the inaccuracy finding certain POI, such as HD-Dealerships. Happened to me on three occasions. Think about it: HD doesn't even find its own Dealerships!!! Leads you to their competition instead! And your eyesight must be better than 20/20 to be able to read those small road numbers. Oh, I almost forgot. The arrival time to my home destination was off by "only" 30 minutes. My Garmin is always dead nuts. If you state your GPS in your Limited works just as well, then there is either something wrong with your Garmin, or you are simply easy to please. To compare this POS to any Garmin is an insult against Garmin. There is no comparison to Garmin. Garmin is the standard in GPS-technology, period.

 

Have to agree, more than once I've had the Boom GPS taking me to the wrong destination. I've got to shame Harley for putting such a poor system on their expensive motorcycles. But I didn't buy my Harley for the GPS, I bought it because it's one awesome bike. Still, they could have easily sourced a better GPS system.

 

I agree, the gps has a lot of glitch's, Had the same Dealership finding problem, one time i could see the dealer, and it told me to go the opposite way, when i pulled into it, it was rerouting lol, is what it is

 

I like it, does what I need it to do.