Found a refub Garmin unit on e-bay. Still nearly $500.00. I've been using GPS since it became available to consumers. Before GPS, I used Loran in boats, then GPS came along and everything changed. My first GPS was in a boat. The first one I used on land was a Navman unit in the mid 1990s in my Jeep. It was purely an early adopter's toy. You downloaded the route & map to the unit via PC before you left, and there was no going off plan unless you had the PC with you. Big Luggable Laptop. Remember printing paper directions from Mapquest? It was like that only on the dash, easier to read, and it read the directions aloud (sort of). I've used other GPS units from Magellan (boat and land), Navman (land and boat), ICOM (boat), TomTom (MC and car), Teletype (MC and truck), Northstar (boat). And I've tried many GPS apps for iPhone and Android (phones and tablets), Google and Apple Maps, and apps that store the map and routing software on the phone when you are out of data range. Plus whatever junk Chrysler, Mercedes, Ford and Toyota and Nissan put in a dozen cars over the last 20 years... I got to play with a lot of toys.

What do I think? The Garmin units designed for motorcycles are the best. Period. But I especially think that phone GPS using data can really really suck. Sure you can do it with Google and/or the few OK GPS apps that download the map and routing software to your phone. But these things are kludges. And especially unfortunate you will be if you decide to vary your route with one that depends on downloading detailed map and routing data as you go out of range of your data plan. And guess where that's most likely to occur? On the best motorcycle roads on the planet: in most of our big National Parks. Even Shenandoah NP near DC. Hell, even NYS's Adirondack and Catskills Parks still have huge land areas of of cell free zones. So forget the data based apps for phones if you want to really travel in rural areas. The few GPS apps that download both the detailed maps and routing software to the phone are barely ok. But make sure you have lots of empty storage space for a long trip and be flexible b/c they still don't reliably give you the best M/C friendly route on the fly. They over promise on the routing options. Most annoying? Turning around when the road in Utah turned to unpaved mud b/c I was trying out a phone app. Otherwise it was OK, even though I told it to give me the fastest route, with paved roads. So we could meet a plane home. Recently I played with an app that has all sorts of MC routes imbedded. But I also found that when I went off route, the thing tried to update the route and it failed to get me back on the route going the right direction.

It helps that the Garmin m/c units are built to take a m/c beating. The have a good list of MC features too.

I've had a two TomTom's. They are cheaper, fairly well built, but they aren't as well built as Garmin. Both of my TT's suffered mounting failures after 5 years or so. They are better than any phone based app on the market. So if cost is a big deal, and you don't care about having traffic and other apps that Garmin offers, the new TomTom is a pretty nice unit.

There are no other makers. Magellan is gone. Teletype tried a few years ago, they make a truck GPS, their M/C version was too slow to update routes.
For What It is Worth.
Garmin or TomTom