Purchased the 55 and within 2 days failed to work. For someone new to dashcams from Garmin there is alot to know, as I learnt. I had a HP-210, very simple unit, never failed. I decided to upgrade and purchased the 55. It came with a 8GB memory card and worked well out of the box. I decided to put in a 32GB memory card. Worked fine until the heat came. Over temperature errors occurred and cam never booted back up afterwards. So for those that have terrible support from Garmin (as I have had) and believe this should not happen out of the box, this is what I have found. If it helps one person, I will be happy. By no means am I a professional but wanted to throw this out there to those who may benefit.
1) I highly recommend using Garmin Express to update the device before even using it. Apparently, the heat threshold was set too low and the newest software (3.7+) addresses the issue. Certainly helped me after the fiasco, more on this later
2) Make sure the SD Card is Class 10.... Never knew this was a thing. Apparently it matters. My Class 9 32GB got messed up after being used in the camera and longer is detectable by any device. The card supplied works, but some may need more storage.
3) After the over temperature alarm occurred, the unit would not get past the Garmin screen. Just Garmin. No version, no anything after that and just hung there. Let unit cool down and fully charged and it still happened.
4) Holding the power button down for 12-15 seconds to reset unit (as Garmin Support suggested) resulted in the same issue. I do not want to take unit apart to disconnect battery for a hard reset for warranty reasons so I decided to eliminate all possible reasons for the unit to not power up. For the record Garmin has never contacted me back for support but used the support website....
5) Now the fun part, 3 SD Cards. One that was provided should work (8GB), 1 32GB Lexar, 1 32GB Kingston. After the Lexar was put in the dash cam, it's never work since. Who knows, doesn't work in any device now at all. Maybe never work out of the box. The supplied 8GB card only worked after formatting on a PC. The Kingston was formatted also on same PC. This is after the heat error.
6) What I ended up doing was formatting both SD Cards (8GB supplied and my 32GB Kingston) on my PC. Once one of the cards were detected then the device was able to be detected by using Garmin Express. This was awesome after a week of messing around to get this working. Then I was able to upgrade the software. Both cards would let the DashCam 55 boot up!!!!!! If you don't have a SD Card it would some times boot. Highly unreliable. If in doubt for troubleshooting, format the supplied card. Boot camera, use Express and get that dang software updated.
7) Once software was updated to the newest version via express, I decided to use the Class 10 Kingston 32GB card and reboot. It works now and has been for a few days. It has been much cooler in the vehicle so I am not sure if the over temp will happen again but that's supposed to be fixed.
In conclusion, I apologize for such a long, uneducated process of my progress but I really like this camera and I would really like to have it work. So far so good. There is a really good chance that if you bought this unit and are reading this post you already have the issue.
Quick summary: update software first! Chow
1) I highly recommend using Garmin Express to update the device before even using it. Apparently, the heat threshold was set too low and the newest software (3.7+) addresses the issue. Certainly helped me after the fiasco, more on this later
2) Make sure the SD Card is Class 10.... Never knew this was a thing. Apparently it matters. My Class 9 32GB got messed up after being used in the camera and longer is detectable by any device. The card supplied works, but some may need more storage.
3) After the over temperature alarm occurred, the unit would not get past the Garmin screen. Just Garmin. No version, no anything after that and just hung there. Let unit cool down and fully charged and it still happened.
4) Holding the power button down for 12-15 seconds to reset unit (as Garmin Support suggested) resulted in the same issue. I do not want to take unit apart to disconnect battery for a hard reset for warranty reasons so I decided to eliminate all possible reasons for the unit to not power up. For the record Garmin has never contacted me back for support but used the support website....
5) Now the fun part, 3 SD Cards. One that was provided should work (8GB), 1 32GB Lexar, 1 32GB Kingston. After the Lexar was put in the dash cam, it's never work since. Who knows, doesn't work in any device now at all. Maybe never work out of the box. The supplied 8GB card only worked after formatting on a PC. The Kingston was formatted also on same PC. This is after the heat error.
6) What I ended up doing was formatting both SD Cards (8GB supplied and my 32GB Kingston) on my PC. Once one of the cards were detected then the device was able to be detected by using Garmin Express. This was awesome after a week of messing around to get this working. Then I was able to upgrade the software. Both cards would let the DashCam 55 boot up!!!!!! If you don't have a SD Card it would some times boot. Highly unreliable. If in doubt for troubleshooting, format the supplied card. Boot camera, use Express and get that dang software updated.
7) Once software was updated to the newest version via express, I decided to use the Class 10 Kingston 32GB card and reboot. It works now and has been for a few days. It has been much cooler in the vehicle so I am not sure if the over temp will happen again but that's supposed to be fixed.
In conclusion, I apologize for such a long, uneducated process of my progress but I really like this camera and I would really like to have it work. So far so good. There is a really good chance that if you bought this unit and are reading this post you already have the issue.
Quick summary: update software first! Chow