Customer Reviews

Mio C220 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator

5 star:		(54)
4 star:		(49)
3 star:		(17)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(28)

 

 

Pros:Preloaded US maps, decent POI database

Cons:No text to speech, very low volume, usage not intuitive

Recently purchased the MIO C220 from Staples. They had it on sale for $199, with an additional $25 for a two year replacement plan. I bouth this unit for my trip to Southern California. My heart was stuck on the the Nuvi 360 for its text to speech, but couldn't afford the price tag.

The MIO actually surpassed my expectations. It's very accurate and route recalculations were right on. The device came with a 1GB memory disk that has the US map and POI database pre-loaded. The POI database is decent and well categorized.

The feature I found most useful and that mitigated the lack of 'text to speech' was the display of next maneuver on the top line. So when the voice says, "Take right in 100 yards", you can glance over the top line and know what street is being referred to.

Not the best GPS out there, but definitely the best GPS for that price.

I've had this unit for about a month now and have taken it to one major trip. As many have said, this is a great unit for the money. There are a lot of things to like about it, so I won't list out TOO many pluses. However, there are a few quarks that I don't quite like about it. But once again, at this price point, this is unbeatable. Also, every GPS unit out there will have certain faults in one area or another. So here goes my list:

Pluses:
- Extremely fast: fast route (re)calculation, fast POI and address searches, fast map refresh rate.
- Very accurate. Knows my exact GPS location within a few feet.
- Small unit, making it very pocketable. Garmin is supposedly a better GPS, but their units under $300 are a lot bulkier.
- Directions are generally pretty good, although I sometimes have to switch between the fastest and economical route to get the route that I want.
- POI database is pretty good, as I can find almost every store I am looking for (3.5 million). TomTom is still better in this area though, at 5-6 mil POI.
- Multiple via/destination points are supported. Many Garmin's only support one via point.
- Hackable: You can access the file system of this unit and add new applications to it, like a video player, MP3 player, additional voices, etc. Who knows what else people can come up with.
- Suction cup mount is very stable and strong.
- Regardless of what people are saying, screen and volume is good. With all LCD screens, it is difficult to see under direct sunlight, but if you just give it a little shade with either your hand or make a paper shade for it, it will be just fine. With the volume, it is a little soft with the English male voice (Jason), but if you load the English female voice (Amy), which you can obtain by downloading OCN6_Voices.zip from the Internet, it will make it a lot easier to hear.

Minuses:
- Unit alerts you of freeway changes only half mile ahead. Freeway exit alerts come in three miles ahead. Wish there was a way to configure this.
- Does not show which direction of the freeway I need to turn into (sometimes). It does say "I 10 - Los Angeles", but it does not say "I 10 North", which is much preferred. After getting onto the freeway, THEN it tells me that I am on "I 10 NB" (north bound).
- When I navigate to a POI, it does not show me the address when I arrive. It just shows that I have arrived at Togo's, but does not show me that the address of Togo's is "123 Broadway St.". This is especially problematic if I saved an address as a POI. I need to know the address in order to find the right house.
- Sometimes can be a little too chatty. For an exit, depending on how slow I am driving, I can be alerted 4-5 times on the same manuever. I think 2-3 times is plenty.
- Does not have a quick way of adjusting the volume. You can mute it with one click, but to adjust the volume, it takes about 5-6 clicks to go into settings and come back.
- Sometimes takes a while to obtain a signal. Usually, it's pretty fast (1-2 mins), but one time, it took about 15 minutes to get a signal at the beginning of a day in a new location.
- Many streets are split into two: north/south or east/west. This makes it difficult when you want to look up an intersection. Let's say I want to find the intersection of Broadway and College. Is it N Broadway and E College, or S Broadway and E College, or the other two permutations? So sometimes, it takes me four tries to find an intersection.
- Does not have a good way to toggle between cockpit and map view. It takes three (sometimes two) clicks to go from these two views, which can be frustrating, because these two views are probably most often used.
- Speed limit alerts do not work. I read somewhere that it works with an older map version (2005.1), but with the current map version on my unit (2006.10), it does not work.

With all that being said, I will still buy the c220 any day of the week. Now, for a sneak preview, the Mio c230 (replacement model of the c220) just got released! There is one VERY important feature that it is "suppose" to have that will make this the killer GPS unit. I said "suppose", because it seems like not all websites are agreeing that this feature exists, but based on a Mio marketing paper that Semsons & Co sent me, this is indeed true. The c230 will have TTS (text-to-speech)! If this is really true, then it will make it the only GPS unit out there under $370 (not counting the Mio c520) to have TTS! Absolutely amazing! Watch out! Mio will dominate the GPS market very soon!

Amazing little unit for the price. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles of more expensive units but then it doesn't cost as much either. I was looking for a small, stand alone unit that was actually big enough to use (unlike the H610 which is so small you could never use it in a car) and this fits the bill. It is small enough to fit in my purse or pocket and has no bulky cable on it. There is no MP3 player but then I have an iPod for that. The instruction booklet doesn't explain everything at all but after you play with the unit for a while you can figure things out. The display is easy to read and the voice is loud enough to hear. I also like the pedestrian mode. All in all, I love this thing!

I like most of the users here, thought this is was a great device at a great price. That's until I started to use this a bit more and this thing started to crash very frequently. Yes, crash just like a Windows application. When this happened, the system display a chain of the miogps.exe and mioutil.exe application fatal error messages, of which you can't close or click the "X" mark. Since this system does not have a pinhole reset button like most other GPS that uses Windows CE, this crash crippled the OS enough so I can't even shutdown the system or perform a soft restart. The only thing to get out of this mode is to let the battery drain and force the system to shut down on its own. This is a major problem if you are visiting an unfamiliar area and relying solely on this device for direction. I find the lack of a hardware/pinhole reset capability is absolutely unacceptable for a device so prone to crash. It really puts your safety at risk!!!

The Mio C220 is a no-frills GPS navigation unit. By no-frills, I mean that it doesn't include bluetooth, an MP3 player, etc. But why would most people need such a combination? Isn't that kind of like a toaster oven with a built in modem?

As far as getting you where you need to go, ostensibly the purpose of a GPS navigation device, the C220 is just as good as many of its more expensive iPod- and coffeemaker-including cousins. In the US retail version, the entirety of the US atlas is contained on the accompanying 1GB SD card. You can buy additional maps of Europe or the UK if you plan to travel there, but those may cost you almost as much as the GPS receiver itself. The GPS locations are spot-on (about 1-2 yard accuracy), and in my (admittedly brief) experience so far, even the street address numbers are accurately represented on the maps.

The maps are exhaustive, even including the nameless alleys here in Boston. However, though the date stamp on this version of the maps is January 2007, there are a few outdated elements that should be reflected. There are also instances where I've been steered wrong because the system didn't know where left turns or U-turns are prohibited, and there are PLENTY of those types of intersections in Beantown.

Fortunately, you can customize your routing by telling the system to never include any U-turns. You can also edit a specific route to avoid a certain maneuver, like a left turn, or a particular segment of road, if you know it to be under construction or congested. However, except for the U-turn part, you'd have to set that up every time the GPS routes you through those trouble spots. But if you're that familiar with that part of town, you probably don't need the GPS to get you around it. And you can always just miss the turn if it's illegal, and the C220 will recalculate your route to reflect that in about 2 seconds.

The screen is very easy to see, and automatically adjusts its color scheme for maximum visibility based on whether the sun is up or not. It actually computes sunrise and sunset and programs itself to change modes around those times. The touchscreen is sensitive and accurate, although the letter keys are small and a bit hard to hit precisely when the full alphabet keyboard is up.

But I had a problem with the screen 3 days after I bought the unit. When I was removing the GPS from its dash mount, I noticed a giant crack had formed in the clear plastic cover over the screen from top and bottom. The LCD display seemed undamaged, but with the crack on the surface, the touchscreen was thrown way off. I took it back to the Best Buy where I got it and convinced them that it was in fact a defect and that I had at no point dropkicked the GPS against the wall, as they seemed to be insinuating. The only theory I have about why this may have happened involves the dash mount itself. It grips the unit pretty tightly by pressing against the top and bottom edges. It's possible that this pressure, which is greatest when you squeeze the mount open to put in or remove the GPS, caused a small mechanical defect to expand into a crack. So now I'm leaving the unit in and taking the whole mount out of the car, at least until I'm convinced it was just a fluke before. I have not read any other reviews expressing a similar problem, so this is probably nothing to worry about.

This model does not take voice recognition, so you can't simply say "Go to 123 Fake St." Well, you can say it, but it won't do you much good. It also does not have text-to-speech, meaning it can't pronounce the names of any streets. However, it does announce with perfect clarity when you are supposed to turn where, as well as show you the maneuver on either a map with a highlighted route or a 3D perspective. In either case, it's usually obvious where you are supposed to go.

There are only 2 voice choices in English: a generic American male voice and a very high-brow British one. Use the latter to mainly to impress your English friends, but try to resist the urge to drive on the left when you use it. There are a dozen or so other languages available, all of them European. These may also come in handy for impressing friends, or rather tricking them into believing you speak French or Norsk. At least, until you miss your turn because you don't know what "Tournez a gauche" means.

The point of interest (POI) database is comprehensive. You can search among millions of entries for the nearest hotel, gas station, Chinese restaurant, or hundreds of other categories. It even includes most of the small hole-in-the-wall joints, which impressed me.

What about ease-of-use? I found it fairly intuitive, although there are 3 different settings menus, which is a bit cumbersome, because I can never remember which properties are configured in which menu. But anyone who has used a computer before will probably figure out the basics in minutes. However, if you are considering this device as a gift to your technologically-obtuse grandmother, she will definitely come running to her technologically-adept grandson or granddaughter for help.

Overall, for the peace-of-mind and ease of navigation that the Mio C220 provides, it's difficult to believe it costs less than $200. It will probably save me that much in print cartridges alone, since I will never have to print out Mapquest or Google Maps again. And if you're concerned that using a GPS system while driving would be a distraction, I think it actually has the opposite effect. The GPS allows you to focus on the road rather than scanning around for signs and fumbling with maps or printouts for directions. In the 5 short days I've owned this device, it has already become an indispensable tool that I can't imaging driving without. And all it cost was about 5 tanks of gas! For the value alone, the C220 merits 5 stars. But when someone says "great value," it usually means it's cruddy, but at least it's cheap. That would be completely unfair to the C220, as its performance is top-notch, but just happens to be inexpensive.

I have been using this unit for several hours a day over the last week to make many short (1-6 hour) driving trips in a new region. The paper instructions that come with the unit don't describe the detailed features, but there is a little '?' icon on most screens with detailed help info. Getting everything to work took 5 minutes, it's very intuitive for a gadget of its complexity. Most importantly we found the basic functionality easy to use right away, and over the course of several days we slowly found additional advanced features and parameters that can be used to customize the unit to our preferences. This lets you get started without frustration, and gives you more to think about once you're familiar with the basics.

As far as navigation and maps, the unit reroutes very quickly. The TeleAtlas maps are supposed to be one of the best, but there were a couple of places (3 over many many hours of driving) in which information was not up to date or was incorrect. I bought the unit in May 2007, the maps for where we are are from November 2006 according to the unit, so pretty recent but still containing a couple of mistakes.

We've also taken the Mio on a hike by using the pedestrian mode, marking the location of the car, and turning on recording of our walked route. On the way back we were able to see where we had been and where the car was. The battery lasts about 6 hours if you turn the screen backlight down.

As far as sound quality, the instructions are easy to hear and understand. Unfortunately this unit is not able to read the street names, it can only say "turn left in 100 yards", which is less useful. But it does display the street name on top of the screen, so you can always look over quickly and read it.

Compared to other products, it's of course missing the mp3 and video functionality, as well as the text-to-speech I just mentioned. I feel that these features are less important, and having a unit for under $200 was great. I like the interface, it's pretty intuitive and contains a lot of features. And I've also used the Nuvi and I like the Mio just as much!

Overall, this has been a great buy, it has greatly reduced the stress of driving in a new place and has allowed us to do more enjoyable things than staring at a map.

My wife and I had been considering a GPS for a while now. We had put it off due to the high cost. I came across a recommendation for this unit on a sportbike site and decided to check it out. Glad I did!

First off, let me say that I have used higher end units that friends have and in rental cars. GPS units are all compareable regardless of cost. They all have fairly current maps and will steer you to the place you're going eventually. So what you are really paying for is extra features and fast draw/calculation.

The mio is light on other features, it is a GPS, not an MP3 player or a PDA. It focuses on that goal and gets it right! You need to understand the user interface but once you do you will discover that it is actually better than some more expensive units. For instance, the indicator in the upper left tells you the next direction change via icons and arrows. So you know if you're going right, left, merging, etc... well before you do. The garmins in most rental cars just tell you 'turn right in 100 feet' or whatever, sometimes too late for you to make it. You won't have this happen with the MIO. This simple fact actually makes it superior to a lot of other units. It draws quickly and recalculates quickly.

It is small and light. Since it does double duty in our family for a car and sportbike it needed to be compact and have a headphone plugin. Fits the bill. It goes nicely in the clear top of a tank bag. I don't know that mio makes a bike kit, but others have made simple mounts using the factory mount and some clamps.

What keeps it from being a 5 star instead of 4? The points of interest database is limited and doesn't have some things you might want. (like motorcycle dealerships!) It does have plenty of landmarks, restaurants, etc.... You'll never be kept from finding a mcdonalds, panda express or the grand canyon. But unless you know the address of the business you're looking for, realize that it might not be in there. Also I've found that it sometimes does steer you down roads that don't go through. This is pretty common in vegas as the town is still growing and there is tons of construction.

We road tested this on a recent trip from vegas to san diego. It did very well, I even got to test the recalculation in a pressure situation when I got the wrong exit on a cloverleaf outside of LA. It steered us through a route I would never in a million years managed to make myself. But it got us pointed back in the right direction pronto.

I am very satisfied with this product for the price. I don't think you're going to get a bigger bag for your buck in the low end GPS market. If you're on the fence, I hope this helps.

I bought this product without reading reviews and am loving it. I used it for few destinations and it's very accurate. Moreover, the processing is very fast that leads to faster recalculation of route if you lost a turn. Mio c220 takes just 15 seconds approx. to recalculate the route and you are back on track. I also liked the screen and resolution. Great product of reasonable money!!! Strongly Recommended.

Found this unit at Circuit City on sale for $179.99! I've been wanting a GPS unit for some time, but the prices are just to high for my meager budget. But prices have been dropping and when I saw this, I decided to take the plunge. I'm glad I did. This is a very basic unit with little in the way of "frills" but a solid unit none the less. First off it does the job of getting you there very well. With no streets being voiced you have to pay attention, but I've not had many problems with this. And it recalculates very fast. Some of the menu's are a little hard to figure out, but with time, everything is smooth. The sound is fine if you don't have your radio on. It gets a little hard to hear with the radio on and up loud enough to hear well. I saw the review on cnet that said the screen was weak, but I've been using this for 2 weeks and I've had no problem even in bright sunlight. I think the screen is very bright and clear. I've seen brighter ones on unit that cost 600 dollars and up, but, this unit is less than $200! Come on. And who needs video and bluetooth and mp3 players built in. Buy an I-pod for heavens sake. This is a GPS unit and it does it darn good and it $200 dollars!! If you can afford it, you will find better units but for this money, I don't see how it can be beat! No problems with reliablity or battery life. Both have been fantastic. I am enjoying this unit very much. Best purchace I've made in a long time.

I will begin by saying I loved this product when it worked. It was easy to learn and use and had a bright screen that was easy to view. I never really got a chance to use the navigation features, however.

I had significant issues with the performance of the product. After working well for two days, mine stopped reading the card with the maps and just showed the default/demo view of Arizona. I tried reloading the maps on the card but without luck. I exchanged it for another. This one would only show what I would call a "blue screen of death" (this is a Microsoft platform, afterall) when I tried to boot it up. I exchanged it for a third which worked for another couple of days, then had a "fatal error trying to read memory card." I rebooted it and it worked for another day before it again stopped reading the card and just showed my location on a map with no streets. I tried contacting technical support, which I won't get into other than to say it was not helpful. I gave up and returned it.