Customer Reviews

Mio DigiWalker H610 2.7-Inch Portable GPS Navigator

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I live in California and travel a LOT for business. I saw the H610 in a magazine and picked one up for myself. I will never leave the house without it! No matter what city I visit I can easily navigate from the airport to the hotel and can easily find a great restaurant or night spot for afterhours. And the media player has saved my sanity more times than I can recall. Now when I sit on a plane I can listen to songs, watch movies or play games - without having to bust open my huge laptop.

I cannot imagine hitting the road without one!

My Mio stopped working after about a year. I contacted the company and was informed the battery life is about 1.5 years. Mio charges 100 dollars to replace the battery and insists upon your shipping the device UPS. Just be aware it works great for a year or so but appears to have an annual cost of 100 + dollars a year in upkeep for battery.

i don't have car in NYC, just wanna have a GPS for cycling. I screwed the device holder to a Garmin handle bar bracket on my bike, cool!!! Vehicle type can be defined in several types, including bike and pedestrian. Each of them has even more detailed settings. I have used it just in NYC for few days. The preload POI is helping me finding lots of hideaways. But has no public toilet marked:( I have to do my own collection. As many review have said, 610 is a very adorable gadget in cities.

However, there are some issues bother me. Maybe I just haven't figure out the correct way. If you know the solution, please put in your reviews here. the first issue is to orient through the operation system. It seems the system is a combination of unrelated pieces. You have main interface, which you can setup your settings, light, volume, power saver... but in the sub-section, MioMap, you have a different set of these setting work independently again. You also will find "setting in setting" in MioMap. It is annoying at the beginning. But for a while, I start to remember which is where.

Another issue is to create personal POI. Even though you have many places to get POI information, only one place to create and edit your personal POI GROUP. You can change you self made POI between groups, but cannot copy preload POI into your personal collection. If you do need it, you have to input the information yourself. And there is no way to put note on your self-created POI, such as store hour, telephone No, floor located...

I have briefly tried couple of Garmin models. They don't seem to solve many of these issues either. Also be aweare, the bettery in Mio610 works up to 5 hours is believable. Many low end car use units have only 2-3 hours bettery life. Before purchurse, make sure the bettery life meets your need. So, over all, at this price range, I strongly recommend city users to pick up this hard to find low speed friendly device.

my first gps (Mio 310) was stolen, so i decided to take a look at TomTom 920 (has european maps) and Garmin nuvii 650(good reviews)...
The fact that TomTom 920 lists POI by name only (no address or city name) turned me off righgt away, also the screen is hard to read on a sunny day.
When i took Mio310 out of the box, i thought it is too small(especially after TomTom's 4 in screen), but after using Mio310 for a day, I am sure i don't need a huge screen("small TV") with just roads on my windshield window; in addition huge screen makes TomTom920 and Garmin Nuvii bulky and in NYC you better take it out of the car.

Mio 610 pros:
-very neat and cute design
-size
-packaging: wrist strap with stylus, neck strap, windshield mount, car charger, wall charger, earphones with volume and play control
-user interfase and very intuitive menues
-well organized POI, nice POI listing - with addresses, so you don't need to click on every one to find out where it is located
-Canadian Maps
-price; (TomTom has a big selection of voices, languages, car images, map colors and many other things(built-in and downloadable, free and not free); i think that many of them i will never use, for example I need just one pleasant voice and one good map color choice)
-love its 3D map, easy North-up, Route-up and North-up plane-view switch, smartZoom
-can be used just as an mp3 player
-nice WorldMate travel kit
-many other features that i yet need to explore and don't need to pay for

Cons:
- i am not sure where i can buy Eropean Maps

Hope it helps. Thanks to mio-tech for the great product.

I have the H610 for about one month now and it proved to be well working and fun to play with in its multiple
capacities as a GPS navigator as well as an entertaiment and travel helper gadget.
The small size (about the same as an iPod)makes it easy to
carry around and use it outside a vehicle.
The GPS part works well enough and the Miomap software
seems to be quite stable (I encountered a couple of crashes,but the software recovered well).
The display is smaller than available in most competitor devices ,but the use of portrait mode reduced somewhat the disadvantage.
The map lettering is difficult to read while driving,but the essential "turn" arrow and the mileage to go are large,clear and easy to discern.
A "distance to turn" graph bar that appears just before a turn is a very nice feature.
The mp3,video and photo players,as well as a few games work well enough and may provide some entertainment while walking or,say,waiting in an airport.
Some travel related programs such as a currency exchange
calculator,alarm clock,multiple time zones and even a list of things to pack are provided.A list of contacts could be made and saved,but the suggested transfer of existing contacts from Outlook did not work.
I thought it would nice to have the device in your pocket
while walking an unfamiliar city in a place where you don't
speak the language and find easily the way back to your hotel.Unfortunately I could not locate any Europe maps to add to the GPS,hopefully Mio will offer them at some time.
The device seems to be well built.The battery life is more than adequate and the recharging is quite speedy.
All in all I'm happy with my purchase.

This is my first foray into the world of GPS navigation. That being the case I didn't want to have to carry around another device (I have only so many pockets!), so I wanted it to be truly 'hand held' and have multimedia player built in (photos, vids and mp3's,wma files) to replace my non-iPod mp3 player. Tall order? Behold..What I finally found was the Mio H610. And it delivered all the above and then some. This device features pre-loaded maps of the US, a fast processor,a a hi-res 2.5' touch screen, a SD card slot (4 gig max, preloaded travel software and utilities, and a handful of cool games including a 3-D space racer game which shows off the processors' power nicely. Since I've received it a month ago, I have used it almost flawlessly navigate to weekend destinations all around my home state of Florida. It features the new SirfStar III chip set that triangulates a signal rather quickly from what I understand (under 2 mins). I've mounted it onto my Dahon Matrix bike and while biking it can play music files (while in nav mode I'll add) through its built in and speaker which is surprisingly loud! This has turned into the most favorite gadget I've ever picked up, and I've picked up a few in my time. The only issues I have with the unit is the video player and music player. Although the converted mp4s play every time, very rarely can I get the video to play in horizontal format. I have also found that when you play music files you can't 'scrub' thourgh the songs to find a certain section. For now, these are small bugs I'm sure that will probably fixed in an upcoming software update. The li-ion battery life on standby is also impressive and I find myself carrying it everywhere. Also comes with both a car and home power adapter (mini USB based), a nice carry strap with built-in screen tapper (great idea), great quality color matched headphones with in-line controller, and a well designed car mounting kit. Great unit, period. I would recommend it highly!

I have compared this device directly with the Garmin equivalent and while they seem pretty similar, the Garmin handles new construction areas better (maps are just plain superior). Frankly, Garmin seems better suited for U.S. travel. Just my opinion.

I am also confused about why the Mio restricts voice selection. It seems pointless to do so.

Still, the Mio is very portable and overall well constructed and useful.

I love this little guy. First off, ignore the 'feminine' aspect - every guy I've ever shown this to loves it and wants one also. It's so convenient, easy to use, and work fantastically. The POI's could use an update, but that's on the way anyways. It announces turns in a loud, clear voice. It recalculates driving errors immediately and accurately. It has a really cool 3D view on which you can change the angle in real time. I've used many GPS units, and this is by far my favorite.

The smaller screen does take some getting used to, but it's the trade off between size and portability. I bring this on trips all the time and it makes my life perfect. Want a Steak and Shake at 4AM in a city you've never been to before? Type in the name, and whammo - you're practically driven there.

I can't recommend this unit enough, and everyone I show it to wants one too. Plus the games are addictive as well.

I have very limited vision and use the H610 in "Pedestrian" mode. The voice directions are great but the display "washes out" in sunlight. I have only used the mapping feature locally but found the H610 relatively easy to use. The manual is good on "button" descriptions but leaves their utilization mostly on a trial and error basis. I would have liked more examples of route setup and the other features. The GPS seems to be fairly accurate but have yet to try it in a downtown setting with tall buildings.

There are a number of other features that are useful to people on the go. The MP3 player is OK but better done in other brands.

All in all, I am very pleased with the H610 and hope that the maps and POIs are updated on a regular basis.

I purchased this unit to find that it doesn't have Vista support. Mio justified it by saying lots of devices don't have Vista support. Not a good answer. I also found out they don't have any map updates. Every trip I have used it on has had a problem with errors in the mapping. With Vista support and map updates the unit would be great. Without it is useless.