Mio C520 4.3-Inch Widescreen Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)==== UPDATE October 2, 2007 ====
I bought a Nav-Mat Portable GPS Dash Mount for use in trips to California, where it is illegal to attach a GPS to your windshield. The Nav-Mat bean bag mount simply works great with the Mio C520 and is very stable. Check out the picture under customer images.
==== UPDATE August 21, 2007 ====
The following statement was in my original review and has been removed: "If you plan to use it in Europe, just Google "MioMap V3.3 Western Europe for Mio C220 - C320 - C520" and you should find some UK vendors who sell the SD card."
The fact is that although there are vendors in UK who sell the Europe map, the current Europe maps cannot be used in US/Canada models of C520 due to a license issue. Sorry if this caused confusion. Please read the forums at mionav dot com for updates on this issue.
==== UPDATE August 16, 2007 ====
I updated MioMap to the July 5, 2007 version, still v3.3, following the directions in MioNav dot com, which is linked to the Mio topics in the gpspassion dot com forums. (Search for the topic "Updates for miomap V3.3 are available" and you will find a link to download "MioMap V3 Updater for C320 and C520" from Mio's European website).
This update cures the stuttering problem reported in some earlier versions of MioMap. It also adds a Mute button on the map screen under the Bluetooth button. It does not update the maps or POI data, and leaves the History intact.
==== END UPDATES ====
OVERVIEW:
After doing tons of research to find a competent GPS navigation system under $350, I narrowed down my choice to two models - the Magellan Maestro 3140 and the Mio Digiwalker C520. I would have also considered the Garmin Nuvi 250, but it lacks both text-to-speech and Bluetooth capability which I wanted. If ease of use is most important, I would say the Magellan Maestro 3140, which is a huge improvement over its predecessor, the Maestro 3100, would have been an excellent choice. But since I was not gadget shy, the Mio Digiwalker C520, with its widescreen form factor and advanced capabilities was the unit for me.
The Mio C520 packs in US and Canadian maps with text-to-speech routing instructions, Bluetooth, an MP3 player, a video player, a picture viewer and a contact manager that synchronizes with MS Outlook. The installation is pretty painless. The suction cup holder, which is precision made in Germany, works very well and easily installs onto the windscreen of any car (contrary to what the previous reviewer claims). The Mio works right out of the box with instructions in the tiny manual. If you are willing read the full manual located in the supplied CDROM, and go through a very minor learning curve, you will find the user interface most satisfying and will profit from its awesome capabilities.
It has some cool features, like the ability to display map coordinates and altitude, and has the ability to automatically synchronize time and date with the satellite. It's signal pickup is lightening fast due to the state-of-the-art 20-channel SirfStarIII receiver. It actually picks up the satellite signal from inside my house. If you are further geek-inclined, visit the forums in gpspassion dot com - which show you how to unlock the GPS operating system (Windows CE 5.0) and install custom applications and utilities.
Now consider that the street price of the equivalent widescreen Garmin (the Nuvi 660) is $300 more than the Mio C520, and you can understand why the Mio tops MobilePlanet dot com's current popularity list. The Mio is perhaps among the best GPS' out there at any price!
EXPERIENCE:
On a recent trip to San Francisco with my wife, the Mio turned out to be a real trip saver. It listed our hotel in its point of interest (POI) database and got us to all our destinations without ever getting us lost. Needless to say, it saved us about a couple of hours each day on the trip, even though we were pretty familiar with the Bay Area. Not once did we have to stop for (or argue over) directions! The POI database listed all the major and minor points of interest, including museums, concert halls, gas stations, car rental agencies, seven-elevens, hospitals, etc. It also included hard to find, hole-in-the-wall restaurants. It has restaurants categorized by cuisine, which includes "Japanese", "Greek", "Indian" and so on.
While the routing capability is excellent, it is not 100% perfect. (None of the portable GPS models are perfect). While driving on 101 southbound to SFO airport, it asked us to "bear left on Bayshore freeway southbound" seconds before asking us to take the San Bruno exit to the airport on the right. While this was not a navigational glitch per se, it did have the potential for causing confusion. (Of course, I later understood that "bear left" meant the freeway bears left, not "get on the left lane", duh!). A couple of times it asked us to take left turns in downtown San Francisco that were not allowed. When we ignored it, it recalculated the routes in a matter of seconds, without forcing us to take U turns (which some other GPS models make you do).
Now lets put that in perspective and take, for example, a day trip to Monterey, Pebble Beach, Carmel and back to San Francisco (consisting of, say, 100 routing manoeuvers). On such a trip, the Mio would give confusing instructions perhaps two or three times in total, which meant it was perfect approximately 97% of the time. This is excellent performance in my book. I am perhaps looking at this with a more critical eye than warranted. The important thing is that Mio C520 recalculated the route the moment it realized we were off route, and always got us to our destination quickly.
By considerably reducing the planning chores, the Mio immensely improved the satisfaction of our holiday. We will never go on another trip without it!
TEXT TO SPEECH
The text-to-speech (TTS) feature, which causes the Mio to speak the street names, turns out to be valuable, especially when there are a lot of quick turns to make. The TTS ("Samantha") voice on the Mio C520 is perhaps a bit brusque but pleasant enough. There is a chime before each voice instruction, which alerts you to an upcoming manoeuver. (The TTS voice is in no way "HORRIBLE" or "VERY" chatty as described in the previous review. With all due respect to the previous reviewer, his review is pretty opinionated and unfair). The TTS voice did not stutter even once. The version of Mio Map on my unit is dated May 18, 2007. Note that some earlier versions are reported to have a TTS voice stuttering problem.
SCREEN:
The the 4.3-inch touch screen with 480x272-pixel resolution is vivid and sharp. (The screen is not washed out, as the previous reviewer claims). And it goes without saying you can easily adjust the brightness to your desired level. The touch-screen keyboard is in QUERTY format and has a predictive function, making it easy to enter an address quickly. The automatic night mode feature is pretty neat and wow inducing. It switches to night mode based on time of sunset for the current date, time zone, latitude and logitude!
NAVIGATION PERFORMANCE:
On the subject of navigation mapping data, the conventional wisdom is that in North America, Navteq data is more accurate than Tele Atlas - which the Mio uses. However, the recent buzz is that Tele Atlas has significantly narrowed the gap with Navteq, especially with its latest map versions released after the fall of 2006. A recent comparison of Navteq versus Tele Atlas in gpsreview dot net actually shows the Tele Atlas' mapping data to be slightly more accurate than Navteq's, while another study in gpsmagazine dot com has the results the other way around.
In my own tests, which included comparing the Mio C520's routing with online maps by Yahoo, Google and Mapquest, showed that none of the routing engines were perfect, with Google coming out perhaps slightly better than the others. To my delight, I found that the routes chosen by the Mio C520, which uses the latest Tele Atlas data, is pretty close to those chosen by Yahoo. Rest assured, the navigation performace of the Mio C520 is indeed excellent.
ROUTING FEATURES:
Typically you would enter an address or POI around the current city. Or you can change the destination city, state or country and enter an address or select a POI for that destination. The Mio also has the ability to route to a contact (an address you entered in the contact manager, under Tools->Contacts).
There is a peculiar way you need to enter North American addresses into the contact manager in order for the "Route to Contact" feature to work. For example, consider the address: 111 FIRST STREET, APT# 101, FREMONT, CA 94533. You have to enter 'CA, 94533' in the 'State:' field, 'FREMONT' in the 'City/Postcode:', 'FIRST STREET' in the 'Street:' field and 'Apt 101, 111' in the 'House number:' field. (Note that you need to enter the state and zip code separated by a comma in the 'State:' field). Once you enter the contact address as the Mio expects it, it creates the route to the contact address super fast (usually in less than 10 seconds).
The Mio has a decent job of position error filtering, which attempts to accurately estimate your car's position on the map. Even when driving at 70MPH on a freeway, the Mio is off by no more than 10 yards. It also estimates the car's speed within 2MPH of my car's odometer reading. When driving on regular streets at around 30MPH, the display of the car position is spot on. There are several split-screen views which you can cycle through, giving you the distance to the next manoeuver, the current time, the estimated time...Read more›

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