Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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160 of 160 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
*****Great GPS for an unbeatable Price*****, November 8, 2007
I have the Mio C230 for about a month now. I have to say it was not very easy to use, but after a couple of hours, I was able to find my way around it. This is my third GPS, I have a Garmin C340 for almost two years, and a Nuvi 370 for about eight months; so I can say that I have a bit of experience with the Garmin products which considered to be one of the best GPS in the market. The only reason I got the Mio is the ability to add multiple stops to your final destination (Via Points), and the Mio's ability to optimize the route for you, a feature not available in the Garmin products. My girlfriend is a realtor, and she makes numerous stops to show houses to her clients; with the Garmin, she had to enter one stop at the time, which means that she might be going back and forth or zig zaging around; with the Mio, all she has to do is to input as many addresses as she needs to, and then the Mio will optimize the route and guide her around, cool.
You can enter address either by state / city / street; or you can use zip code / street; very nice feature. Any address you input will be automatically stored in the history and you can retrieve it at any time; you can also copy everything to the SD card and store it in your computer or use the data in another Mio, cool. If you don't have the address but know where your destination is on the map, you can touch that point on the map, and the Mio will take you there.
There is also an icon for "Home" where you can store your home address, by clicking it, the Mio will take you home, a similar one is for "work". You can rename both if needed.
The detailed information available on the screen in "cockpit mode" is impressive, on the upper left corner it shows the next maneuver (an arrow going right or left), below that it shows the distance to that maneuver and the estimated time of arrival to your final destination. Next to that you have four icons to zoom in and out on the map, and to change the view from 2 to 3 dimensions and vise versa. Another nice feature is the pedestrian mode, in that mode; the Mio will take you thru the shortest route ignoring the traffic direction of one way streets. You can customize the Mio for brighter screen or to get louder if you reach a specific speed; routing can be customized to shortest, fastest or economical. You can avoid Toll roads, U turns, unpaved roads, Highways, etc.
The Text to Speech feature is also a definite plus. The only thing that I really don't like in the Mio C230 is the very limited number of POI's (about 900K), you will hardly be able to find anything in there, Mio needs to do smoothing about that limitation. However, you can add you own POI's to the data base if you know the address.
In short, if you don't need the MP3/Photo player, or the blue tooth; then the Mio C230 is the one for you. It is a great basic GPS, loaded with features that may not be available on other big name brands. Impressive signal reception, bright screen, clear TTS voice, nice design, pocket size, at an unbeatable price.
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107 of 109 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Mio C230 does what I need it to do, November 13, 2007
Mio c230 Portable Car Navigation System Mio DigiWalker C230 GPS Portable Car Navigation Mio C230 Digiwalker Portable GPS
I picked the C230 for the following reasons:
1. The price was right. It was on sale for $175 at Circuit City plus I had a $15 coupon.
2. It's the cheapest unit with the "text to speech" feature that I could find.
3. It improves on C220 with a better brighter screen and is louder.
4. All the GPSs on the market (expensive or not, "name brand" or not) have mixed reviews, so I figured I'd take my chances...
5. I like the way you can "tilt" the view between 2D and 3D and stop in between.
6. You can set up multiple waypoints between point A and point B. Not sure how many you can have but it's better than a similar model, say Garmin 300 which you can have a start and a destination with one via point (3 waypoints total).
7. It has a "map panning" feature so you can draw the map on the screen in any direction for a what-if scenario planning.
8. Maps are August 2007 Tele Atlas.
This is my first GPS so I have nothing else to compare it to.
Pros:
1. Responsive. If you don't follow the driving directions the unit's given, it will recalculate fast.
2. Enough features for a basic GPS.
3. Suction cup is excellent! I installed it on the windshield. It's not going anywhere. The unit snaps on and off easy without much effort.
4. SD memory slot for future expansion.
Cons:
1. Not very user-friendly. Need time to learn how to use it.
2. Doesn't have Canada maps.
3. If you have large fingers or can't program a VCR, it won't work for you.
4. No Bluetooth connectivity, no MP3, no pictures.
5. Map upgrades seem elusive and/or expensive. With some digging, I found the 2008 North America map upgrade (includes both U. S. and Canada) for ~$180 on the official website.
http://www.mio-tech.be/shop/product_info.php?cPath=34&products_id=703
6. POI is on the low side. But I don't go shopping at A GAP or go to a post office out of town.
7. User manual could be better. But I learned how to "program" it without reading through the manual.
8. Lack of a USP cord (or charging via a pc)
I was playing with it really hard to see if I could "break" it. The only time that the unit restarted was when I:
1. Set up with the "Pedestrian" mode but I drove on the high way. It kept on recalculate (because a pedestrian can't get on the highway so it kept on taking the frontage roads) then finally gave up and restarted. And
2. Keep tapping on screen fast and don't wait until the recalculation is finished.
Other than these two scenarios, it works fine. I've owned it for only 2 weeks. I purchased a two-year service plan for $25. Thought it was a small investment in case it goes down for whatever reason plus I may buy a different unit anyway in about 3 years.
Tips:
1. Check off "unpaved" roads so the unit will recognize roads that were unpaved by the time of mapping but now maybe paved anyway.
2. Tilt the unit a bit downward so the sunlight won't shine on it directly.
3. Adjust the distance when the overview changes (between 2d and 3d etc. default is 1 mile and 3 mile) to make gas stations/food etc. show up quicker.
4. Set up a round trip via waypoints and try the "optimize" bottom.
5. Change the color schemes to fit your fancy.
6. Make sure all POIs are not hidden but shown.
7. Change GPS reference point for POI location or trip planning.
8. For planning an out-of-town trip, make sure you have "Home" as the base, then add stops or tourist spots along the way.
9. Understand the difference between the "Map" view and the "Cockpit" view. "Map" is for planning. "Cockpit" is for driving.
Hope this helps.
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22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Mio C320 Great Potential Not Realized, November 5, 2007
This product works very well in most situations. The graphics are great, the screens are bright, the voices are good, the volume is excellent, the user interface is easy to use except that I found that the buttons are on the small side unless the unit is in your hand, satellite acquisition on startup is slow but rock solid once established, the points of interest are very out of date, route performance on long trips is great but poor on short trips.
Route performance is a big deal because it is the reason that we buy a GPS. My experience over the past month of using the product in 3 different states and on many local trips in the Chicago area have been positive except for the beginning and ending of routes. The program logic without fail, no matter what the settings used, always routes the shortest route. Sounds good right? In practice it is not so good because this means that the route leaves the main roads and highways with higher speed limits and fewer stops and takes off on local streets, zig zagging around local neighborhoods with speed limits of 25 miles per hour and stop signs at every intersection. For example the first time I set the route from my home to work and followed the route it took 27 minutes on a trip that normally only takes 15 minutes.
This strange performance may be the result of the map database being incomplete for all coverage areas. The C230 handbook documents that fact under "Frequently Asked Questions" that the speed warning program function in normally disabled because the speed limit information in the data base is incomplete for all areas. If you remove speed limit information from the route calculation, all roads would have equal weights in the routing decision and would therefore come up with the routing answer that us usually very wrong. This is a deficiency no mater what the cause, is one that Mio needs to address to make the C230 a winner.
I will continue to use the Mio C230 on trips that take me into the unknown but I seldom bother to turn it on, on local trips unless I need a good laugh.
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