Last portable navigation system we reviewed from Mio Technology did not go so well in our tests. It’s a shame, because the Mio C220 so much going for it – affordable price, good performance, compact design – but its screen is fully washable. Fortunately, the latest GPS devices, Mio ‘, Mio C520, delivers a better experience and packs in even more features at wallet-friendly price of $ 399. For that money you get a big 4.3-inch touch screen, integrated Bluetooth, multimedia capabilities, as well as the exact directions. This, of course, better than the value of Magellan Maestro 3100. However, C520 has its failures: the integration of Bluetooth is limited, and real-time tracking and route recalculations could be better. If navigation and usability is of paramount importance to you, and you can find many on the Garmin Nuvi, you’d be better served by that device instead.
Design
Mio C520 is one of the most beautiful portable navigation systems we’ve ever seen. Charcoal-gray-silver color scheme is attractive, but even more tempting is the subtlety of the device. At only 4.9 inches wide by 3.2 inches by 0.8 inches deep and weighing 6.7 ounces, it’s very smooth, so that of all the multimedia capable model GPS, we’ve tested, Mio C520 is one we have almost not consider the use of a portable media player – almost (more on that later).
There is beauty in the simplicity of design. In addition to the power button on the top of the device, there are no other external controls cluttering the device. Instead, all functions and text are entered through a spacious, C520 in 4,3-inch touch screen. It displays 65,000 colors at 480×272 pixels, which makes maps and images look vibrant and text sharp. In addition, much to our relief, we could still read the screen C520 under sunlight, unlike the Mio C220 whose screen washed out in time to be unreadable. We still wanted a little more brightness and contrast of the maps, but it is still significantly improved experience over the C220. It should be noted that some address and POI listings is difficult to read because the font size is very small.
Features
Mio C520 is equipped with 20-channel GPS chip SiRFIII and comes preloaded with TeleAtlas maps of North America and 6 million points of interest. Basic navigation features are similar to C710. The system can create directions fastest, shortest or most economical route, with or without toll roads, highways, turns, and so on, and in different modes, including cars, bicycles and pedestrians. Other goodies include route recalculation, 2D and 3D map views with day and night colors, route simulation, and prevention of security cameras. You can read the Mio C710 review for a more detailed description of the navigation system Mio, but for this review, we focus on some unique and new features, C520.
