3 reasons why the Connected Ride Cradle is better than a Navigator Sat Nav 

Opinion and experience of the connected cradle after a 3200 mile euro tour. It was a truly awful experience. When it was warm the phone would overheat regularly and shutdown, usually when you needed it most. It was useless at following a preloaded route and I will never forget trying to get out of Mulhouse in the rush hour. Bad enough on your own but cringeworthy when leading a group. When it rained, it had to remove it from the cradle after getting water in the charging port. The cradle was sold immediately upon return to the UK. If you are going to buy one of these, use it either with a cheap phone or an old one. Do use it with your primary phone as this very expensive device is best kept in a safe location out of harms way. Also in the same amount of time it takes to remove your phone from the cradle and put it back in its case, you can remove the satnav from the holder.

I just completed a six state 3200 mile trip. Used the cradle with my iPhone 13max. Used Scenic motorcycle mapping software. Fantastic combo. Worked flawlessly. I paid $229USD for the cradle.

i liked because of the sound of the stand. but now i also liked because of the info. i'm getting my cradle tommorow

been using the iphone with the app and I love it. Had problem getting volume at first until I realized the bike must be on to adjust. Like having phone in front of me to see messages.

You're right about the odds of upgrading one's phone--chances are you will. And when I did, my new phone didn't fit any more. The work around was to remove my phone from it's case each time I went for a ride which was an enormous bother. Second point is that one's phone is held in place on the cradle by a lower plastic lip (bracket) that flexes by means of a small spring. When the bracket breaks (as mine did after 18-ish months) the $300+ cradle is useless. That aside, the BMWs Connected software does not compare to current Sat Nav hardware/software functionality. I'm investigating the CARPE ITER device with the DMD2 OS and the various Android tablets available to display the system--all of them are lightyears ahead in terms of function and usability.

I have a 2016 GS TE, I bought the connected ride cradle, the jog wheel does not work with the BMW app, anything I am missing here? any help welcome!

The problem you must address is that although mg iPhone is water proof for these conditions, if water gets in the charging port you will not be able to charge it via wire for many hours. Many. Depending on the environment. If you are in a tent in November, forget about it. Once it dries it will charge again. The other suggestion, and I have yet to do this, is to find a protective case that protects the edges without too much relief on the back side (so that the inductive charger will work. The power of a force field falls off inversely proportional to the distance between the transmitter and receiver. A little increase distance is a significant decrease in power.). I’m going over to Best Buy.

I hqve the same GSA 2017 model but when tried my fiend’s cradle it did not work not even the green charging lamp was on. Any idea what the problem could be? Thanks !

Wow your garage is tidy! Thanks for the video. I think you missed a big reason the phone holder is better, the Navigator VI has massive reliability problems with thousands of people online reporting faults with their extremely expensive device. I think BMW will move away from Garmin and good riddance as far as I’m concerned.

I thought the cradle worked great with the bike and wizz wheel only problem was after 12 months it buggered my phone up with all the vibrating. Pitty it doesn't have a form of dampening on their.

Can sat nav and music be used at the same time?

Warning. While the Cradle worked well for me, the bottom arm just broke last week. This is a very thin piece of plastic and it snapped at the base of the U shape, on both sides simultaneously. I purchased it less than a year ago, used it maybe a total of 12 times (not needed for daily commutes). With this piece broken the phone is not secured and the whole device is useless.

Does it show bike information, tire pressure, voltages etc, like Nav V would?

It is not. This is very much like the Navigator 6 and 5: Overpriced underperformance BMW GPS devices. Cost me SGD480 (USD346 or EUR327) to hold my phone in place and charge it wirelessly--very slowly. Nothing else. You can't use Google Maps!!! You must use the BMW Connected's downloadable maps. I use the bike in Japan: they don't provide a map for Japan. If you want a GPS navigation, use your phone`s Google Maps: always up-to-date, reliable and fast... If you want a dedicated GPS navigation device, get something else and stay away from BMW Navigator 5, 6 and this cradle. For about USD50 you can get unbranded Chinese-made cradles that do the same thing and are compatible with the BMW docking (power source); they will allow you to use Google Maps, hold-in place and charge your phone. Perhaps in Europe and USA the downloadable maps are high in detail and timely updated, but still, it is something of 20 years ago. Nobody download maps nowadays, they use Google Maps. The bike info feature? It's the same as what you get on the Navigator 5 and 6... on your phone. Yeah, now you have the bike leaning angle indicator...Cool but uselese information. The operation with that BMW counterintuitive scroll doughnut and up/down arrow switch is awkward at best, and is horrible with the cradle and the Connected app.. At the end you have to do things when you are stopped, not while riding. It is frustrating to buy another BMW expensive device that delivers nothing. Once you start the Connected app, that is only what your phone can do. The app takes over, and you can`t get other apps or functions to work unless you shut down the BMW Connected app. I had 6 bmw bikes so far, I loved each one of them, but BMW is terrible on the GPS navigation department. BMW:please give-up and focus on the wonderful bikes... Or get someone to do it right for you, like Google.

I removed the oem sat nav cradle, its ugly, old tech, and useless. Mounted my iphone 13 pro on a Quadlock, in its place. I have an Iphone 14 pro max on order, which now has emergency satellite function. BMW is comically behind the technology curve with Garmin.

A bit of simple explanation there are many problems 1 the app from bmw is a pain you must make sure it's correctly open you can't use your phone display on the move. 2 The things the wheel controls is limited 3 I think there's a lot of vibration going through the cradle my steps shown after a ride is mega high. 4 You will not be able to use a phone case. 5 My gs is the tft screen version so shows more than this bike so just leave your phone in a normal phone mount with vibration damper. This device is a very expensive phone mount. Ps iPhones are very prone to vibration problems I hear. Unless you are addicted to bmw genuine parts don't bother. If you are desperate for one mine can be had for a very reasonable price.

I find my Tomtom Rider is better than both of these options.

Got a cradle.. Awful... almost killed my phone when it rained through charging port. Also nearly lost my phone when one of the holding lips broke off after 2 months. Yes, the Nav 6 may be clunky.. but my god its been proved and tested.. Dumped the cradle... will keep to nav 6 for now. Not sure what you mean about have to use thier software.. I use many apps and upload gpx files.

You’re wrong about not being able to use your phone if you use the NAV6. I can control my phone with my NAV6 for phone calls, listening to music or podcasts or any audio output from the phone, and I naturally can invoke Waze or OSM or any program directly by tapping on the phone (I have the no arguments accepted best phone holder. QuadLock.). Yet, the user interface of the NAV6 is pathetic. And the Byzantine mystical mushroom programmers who wrote the thing appear to have been broken into three teams who, like the American FCC commissioners, are not allowed to speak with each other. So each team tried to solve every issue and you suffer the consequences. To wit: try to command the thing to take a fast route. Where do you go? Wrong. If you thought of a single place. There is a place that lets you choose fastest route. But it does not deliver the fastest route. Which you only find out after you have more local knowledge in your head than in the device. It’s not taking you on toll roads! The toll roads are faster and you chose fastest route. Wait! Maybe there’s a place where it says avoid toll roads! Avoidances! Yes! You open the screen. There it is. “Avoid Toll Roads”. But it’s unchecked. It’s not telling the routing code to avoid toll roads. You’ve chosen fastest route and you have not told it to avoid toll roads but it’s avoiding all toll roads. You’ve already guessed two places, rather than one. You see, a non-neurotic programmer (they are few and far between…the good ones are incorrigible idiot-savants who think users are the problem) after you choose fastest route would have told the f’ing thing to calculate the fastest route. Or, to compromise between the obvious thing and the programmers need to win, he would TAKE you to the screen where you could wound the fastest route by avoiding all sorts of things. Here the programmer could let his imagination run wild. You could choose to avoid number streets! But no. He just lets you choose fastest route and then does not take you there. So now you think, Should I call support? No. I’ll interact with every link in the program until I find something that could possibly relate. An hour later I notice the status line on the top left. It has a picture of a motorcycle. Is it a link? Yes! Up pops a selection list. You can choose automobile. Why would they have a pop up selection screen for just some branding aesthetic. Might the choice of an automobile be a value for a switch in the fluting software? I flip to Automobile. It now routes on toll roads! Fastest route is NOT the fastest route. It’s the fastest route of the vehicle you use. Automobile fastest routes include toll roads. Motorcycle fastest routes do not. What else does a motorcycle profile affect? Don’t know. I have a life beyond trying to reverse engineer neurotic programming. I did that for 40 years.