Awesome! Really appreciate the comment, keeps us motivated too!

That’s awesome! We love hearing stuff like this. Thanks for the support, glad you like the videos and super happy irs inspiring you guys to get out there more!!! 🤙🏼

You bet! Now that they made some changes it’s definitely worth a look!

Thanks for the sub! We have some amazing adventures right here at home!

So glad you’re here and thanks for watching! Appreciate the heads up on the Lifetime maps - we’ll definitely check them out, sounds like a great resources for planning trips and riding. Keep in touch and let us know how you like the new General!

You bet! Glad it was helpful!

You bet! They both have their pros and cons. Ride Command is solid, just less customizable and fewer bells and whistles.

You bet glad it was helpful.

You bet!

You’re welcome! I think that is a really good way to sum it up.

That’s smart. Yeah you can run multiple profiles in it so why not. Good thinking…!

Thanks!

Awesome! Glad you found it useful. Happy riding!

Thanks Mark! I think you are getting the best scenario - great product with most of the bugs worked out.

You are 100% right unfortunately. I’ve run into this with a lot of products across a variety of industries. Glad you found the review helpful and thanks for stopping by!!!

Thanks Chris!

Thanks. Yeah there such a rush to get things out the door the quality often suffers at least at the beginning. I see it in other industries I’ve worked in too. We just used it on a longer trip and we’re glad we had it - but it certainly wasn’t perfect. Good luck and hope it works well for you.

You bet. Glad you found it helpful. In the SxS, I think if it was any bigger it’d start to get in the way. Maybe in my truck a bigger one would be nice where it’s farther way from you, or when planning the routes I suppose a bigger screen could be nicer, but actually using it in the machine I think it’s a really good size. I can read it just fine and it shows all the info I need.

So glad you like the videos and congrats on the new machine! Glad the review was helpful - both the Tread and the RC have some things going for them… and as I said it took a while for the Tread to be tweaked to the point where it is now. Anyways - great idea on the RC video. I’ll add it to my list. I had planned on doing a head to head comparing the Tread and RC too so now that Garmin has put some good updates out I’ll look at revisiting that too. Thanks again - looking forward to seeing you around the channel and get us an update when you get some time on the new machine!

I haven’t used the BirdsEye maps a lot, I just don’t have a need for them. I did download the surrounding area. When you’re riding it’s not laggy, but I recall zooming in and such, it was pretty slow. I do think they could up the processor speed on all of their units, I’ve heard that complaint many times before.

You bet glad it was helpful! I never figured it out… I’m assuming one of the software updates fixed it. As I said when we first got it, for the first year or so there were a lot of software things that god fixed. Haven’t had any crashing problems since!

Thanks. Yeah what you need to do is load the map by installing the memory card… then you have to go into your map preferences where all the maps you have loaded are selected and turn off the other ones… at least the main Garmin base map and make sure the VVMapping is selected. Running the Garmin base map and the VV at the same time doesn’t seem to work.

You bet! My guess is turning off some of the maps may help. When we installed the VVMapping maps we purchased, we had to turn off the standard US basemap that Garmin was loaded with. There’s some settings too as to type of machine, and route options. We run into this from time to time - I’m sure the core software is based on what they developed for cars on the roadway, so it often wants to route you along highways, and when you’re on trails I think it may get confused sometimes. That’s the best advice I can give. It’s not perfect, buggy from time to time but the best out there still I believe.

If you are planning on going out on forest roads and real backcountry rides like we did on our black hills trip - yes. We needed all three - both Nav systems and the maps to keep us on track since each had their own strengths. The one we use the most is the Garmin tread. On the other hand if you are riding where there is really no danger if you take a wrong turn (good signage, plenty of other folks riding the same way) this system would be redundant to the Polaris Ride Command. Hope that helps, good question!

Thanks! I think it would be good for dual sport use. The Tread itself with the USFS motor vehicle use maps does show designated motorcycle trails in the national forests, and the VV Maps we loaded for our state shows them too. Of course you can load any other compatible maps that show motorcycle trails. I think it would work nicely.

Someone has to have a file for those. We haven’t hunted it down yet since they don’t allow kids on those trails but that system is so popular now it must be out there. Best wishes and thanks for the comment!

@@TheNorthwoodsFamily yes kids are aloud on the trails but they have to be 6yrs old or order to be on them.Also when you do the tracking on the gps can you save your tracks for future rides

Hey Brian, the other half here. I grabbed the GPS - they are not there as part of the pre-loaded Garmin maps, as I expected. VVMAPPING has them - this is the same company that made our WI maps and we love them. Highly recommend to use with the Tread. www.vvmapping.com/orvtrailGPSAP.html You’re right about the age - we had heard 16 before, but that’s the minimum age I see for unattended kids. 6 is the minimum age altogether. I know where we’re going in two years now!

Hey Steve! Glad you enjoyed the videos, thanks for the kind words. Sorry it took so long to get back to you. I finally had a chance to look. It appears that Mexico has detailed pre-loaded street maps but further south than that, the only thing shown is major highways. Even city streets in big cities like Bogota don’t show up. Definitely no trails. I’m sure Garmin has maps you can purchase on their website for S. America… it’s usually just a download or a chip they send and they’re easy to install. Anyways hope that helps. Sounds like a super fun trip! I wish you good luck and safe travels when you go!

Yeah I think you make some good points! You may try playing with Garmin Basecamp for route planning. I loaded the VVmaps onto that, and then plotted routes there and uploaded them to the Tread. I think they changed some of the legend stuff the way the USFS maps appear now, and it was a little harder to read on our Idaho trip versus our Black Hills trip. We used to Tread less on our Idaho trip and relied on Ride Command more. I do agree the saved tracks just going into a disorganized folder is a mess. I wish they saved in a more organized fashion. I have a hard time finding them sometimes after the fact. Overall a good unit. They definitely made a lot of improvements over when it was first released but they could still improve some things as you mentioned.

Sorry I missed your comment and for the slow reply. Backup camera? The Garmin one works pretty good and you can mount it anywhere. You just hit a button on the Tread to activate it - doesn’t switch when you go into reverse like the Ride Command / Polaris camera which works fine too. Those are the only ones we have experience with however. Glad the video was helpful! The tread turned out to be a pretty good device once they updated it and the VV maps are great! Happy riding!

You bet!!! TN/KY is on our list for sure. Not sure how far you’ve done from Mountain but there are trails that connect Lakewood / Crivitz / Pembine / Dunbar and they’re all great. We have a video on a winter ride there. Harrison Hills / Enterprise Trails are good south of Tomahawk. We did a video on that too. Iron County around the Mercer area is supposed to be excellent. We haven’t made it up there yet.

@@TheNorthwoodsFamily Thanks for the reply. We've been up through Lakewood, Leona, and out to Crivitz. Marinette County has some nice trails near Athestane too. We will have to check out your videos on the winter ride. We have been talking about riding in the UP too. We'll keep an eye out for a video from you in case you make it up there before we do. If you go to TN and KY, VVmapping is great but MapBallz has some great waypoints for things to see.

Appreciate that! We’ll take a look before we head out there. We haven’t done the UP yet but looks like plenty of great trails!

Yes. Absolutely. They’ve been really good at updating them and fixing errors.

I don’t have any experience with the Overlander, but it looks very similar - and I’ve seen it on lots of Overlanding channels. In a Jimmy you don’t need the same waterproof and dust proofing of the Tread….

We run 3 GoPros - a 9,10 and 360. Haven’t bought the 11 yet but when it’s time to upgrade I will. The loaded maps in the National Forest are the same motor vehicle use maps the USFS publishes, so it shows all the fire / logging / forest roads that are numbered which are generally all of them. The detail is actually pretty impressive, it shows the different spurs or branches off the main forest roads and it will show UTV / ATV / MC trails by type and often size restrictions. We’ve used it for A to B trips frequently.

That’s a great question - it’s not very reliable on time. There is a setting I believe you can change these speed of your vehicle which helps somewhat, but it all depends on the trails, some of our road routes have lower ATV speed limits. You really have to look at your route and you can kind of get a ballpark but it’s not like a Google map where it’s almost always right on.

I’m sure the big screen would be nice to see more, but I figure in the UTV it would take up a lot more space and be kind of a pain. With how close you sit to the windshield, I feel this one is plenty big.

I think we downloaded the medium sized satellite maps for most of our state. We didn’t use them a bunch though. You can add a micro USB card… I forgot what the size limit is. Maybe 32 or 64 gb

@@TheNorthwoodsFamily actually, after doing some research, I found out that their smartphone app “explore” does the same thing. So I don’t need to buy a separate device for offline maps.

Thank you! I’ll try to answer all your questions: 1) yes, you can and we have used Basecamp. However, we saw some route shifts, and if we had too many shaping points or waypoints, the Tread didn’t like it. So I would keep the route legs short to start… less than 30 waypoints and go from there. You can definitely do multiple trips, or legs. If you watch our Wisconsin Overlanding videos, I created some of those routes on Basecamp, but a couple the Tread rejected or didn’t want to read for whatever reason. I have to do more research on it. But you can upload as many legs or trips as you can fit on the memory card. Part of that could be the maps too that we have loaded on the Tread. We did have better luck, or at least it seemed easier when we created a route with GPX.STUDIO (online), but you are limited to the maps they have available. 2) now that I see you use VVMapping too lol - yes, you can take their microUSB card and load it onto the Tread. That’s what we do and it works great overall. Same with Basecamp, we loaded the VVMapping maps onto that as well. Like I said, some routes the Tread didn’t like and I haven’t figured it out yet but I think it’s just too many data points. The one thing I did notice is once you load it on to the Tread with the VVMaps, you should be able to add or modify “shaping points” to make minor changes to the route. It won’t let me do that for some reason. Not sure why. So… it works good, but it’s not perfect. Honestly, I think the Tread and VVMaps are the best setup for riding in Wisconsin. Being able to see accurate road routes is amazing, and on some trail rides, I’ll take a couple minutes to plot turn by turn directions on the trails we want to ride. The one downside I’ve found, is the VVMaps on the Tread don’t show the “big picture” very well. When you zoom out on the big screen, the cities or town names don’t show up great. So I use the Ride Command App (or unit in my machine) to look at the general route, and then use the Tread for detailed route planning, turn by turn stuff. There’s a bit of a learning curve, but overall the Tread / VVMaps is our top way of navigating in Wisconsin. Hope that’s helpful! Feel free to reach out on our website too Northwoods.family if you have more questions!!

Thank you very much for this helpful info. Will probably pull the trigger and order this GPS. VVMapping has yet to come up with a card for the Black Hills/SD Natl. forests, hence, the reason for having a GPS with a majority of maps downloaded already. I'm a simple guy when it comes to wilderness navigation (compass/paper maps). Technology is wonderful, until it's not. The system we use now, works, but not as well as I would like. My wife has the unit mounted in front of her, so she tells me where to go. (even in life. LoL!) I want to get out to SD, hopefully this coming summer, and I've watched your videos in that area and thought it would be a great place to stay and ride. We go there once a year and stay in Deadwood, so kinda know the area and love it. Again, thank you very much for the fast and helpful info. Good riding to you and your family! Mike M. @@TheNorthwoodsFamily

Yes. All the maps are preloaded. The WiFi is just for updates and being able to take calls and such through your headset.

😄 💯

It is pricey! The answer is convenience. It’s a small unit, mounts out of the way, weatherproof, it’s always there, all maps are preloaded so we don’t have to worry about signal or downloading maps ahead of time. I tend to agree, for normal weekend riding it may be overkill, but we figured embarking on long trips, it would be worth the investment. Plus we didn’t see any videos on it so with a new channel we figured we’d give it a review. I believe now you can just buy the base unit without the radio. When we bought it, it was new and we didn’t have that option so it hurt the pocketbook a little bit 🤕

Sorry! I haven't used the radio much. I did test it with some handheld radios we had and it worked a mile away. my guess was the handheld radios were the limiting factor.

@@TheNorthwoodsFamily that answers that! Thanks buddy !

Lol that doesn’t surprise me. And it’s unfortunate because as a consumer, if that was a $5 cost (I doubt it would be that much) and they wanted to pass it on to me, I would have happily paid it to have a modern connection port, not one that is frankly obsolete. Definitely not a decision that put the customer first, but as I said in the review, my experience indicates they rushed this out the door, and then fixed it with software updates over the next year. I like it now but I sure won’t be the first to rush out and buy the next newly released Garmin product until it’s been out a while.

Yeah, I’m not an expert on the radio side but I believe you are right with the limitations. I have been told the range on them is pretty limited. We have a more powerful GMRS radio we use which we’ve gotten several miles without problem even in hilly terrain. I have been told not to expect a lot out of the Garmin radio.

The radio worked up to 2.5 miles on original software, now no more than 500 ft. This is an area the SW updates have degraded the experience. It also sends data (location tracking for group ride) over MURs, so comms and tracking are very bad.

Thanks for the info and the correction! The radio is one part of the system we haven’t used much. Anyone we see doing serious overlanding with multiple vehicles is using an independent radio system.

You make a fair point. It was pretty disappointing for the first year as I said. The product was obviously not ready for market when they launched it. I would tell people in general, probably with any product especially electronics, not to be the first to rush out and buy something. This strategy of “finish it after the release” unfortunately seems to be the trend in a lot of industries these days 🫤