NaviGadget

Vio360 E-walker

Sep 22, 2008 gps navigation 6 Comments

Vio Technology is a new southern California company bringing some variation to the U.S. GPS navigation market. They already have several GPS navigation systems available and soon they’ll be releasing the new Vio360. Not to be confused with Mio Digiwalker, Vio E-Walkers are not really bringing anything new to the industry, however making sat nav systems more accessible to everyone by keeping their prices below $200.

Here are some of the features of Vio360 E-walker:

• 400MHZ Processor (Atlas III)
• Centrality 22 channels GPS receiver
• embdedded GPS Patch Antenna
• 2D & 3D Map Display
• Auto day and night modes
• Preloaded U.S. and Canada maps with 1.6 millions POI on 2GB SD card
• Support MP3 audio; MPEG4 video playback
• Support E-book and Photo review
• Voice Prompts
• Speaks street names
• 3.5″ high-resolution color touch screen

Mio Moov 200 review

Apr 14, 2008 gps navigation 17 Comments

Mio’s new lineup “Moov” was recently announced and now we have a review for Mio Moov 200.

The new Moov devices run on an in-house navigation software developed by using Navman technology, a GPS company Mio bought out last year. As a result, user interface on Mio devices has changed quite a bit. Although the reviewer likes some of the differences, such as Moov’s text-to-speech conversion, multi-segment routing, and multiple language support, it looks like Mio has taken a step backward when it comes to presenting POIs.

Like Mio’s previous entry-level product, the DigiWalker C220, the Moov 200 features a 3.5-million-entry POI database, but the way it handles POIs is disappointing. You can search for POIs by name or by city/area, or search for nearby POIs by category (parks, restaurants, and such). By contrast, all three of the DigiWalker devices offer more search choices, so it’s easier to find your POI. Additionally, when you search by name with the Moov 200, results are presented alphabetically by city name rather than by distance, which isn’t as useful. And there aren’t any POI subcategories, so although I could search for nearby restaurants, I couldn’t specify Italian or Chinese.

However not doing so well in terms of POI does not make Moov 200 a bad product. Priced under $200 this GPS navigation system still adds features that are not available in closely priced competitors – such as the text to speech feature and multi segment routing. Mio Moov 200 currently sells for $180 Amazon. It is a bargain… Read More …

Mio C720t, GPS with digital camera

Sep 27, 2007 gps navigation, mio 10 Comments

Mio just announced a new GPS navigation called C720t – first from Mio to be equipped with a digital camera. Other features include live traffic updates (that’s what the ‘t’ is for), bluetooth hands free calling, text-to-speech for pronouncing street names, and a wide 4.3″ screen.

Mio C720t has a 2MP digital camera – that lets you embed GPS coordinates into an image, and navigate back to it as if it were an address. Other features of image capturing lens is the ability to recognize business cards and store them in your lists of contacts.

Real time traffic information is provided by ClearChannel’s network of affiliates, and can be viewed on C720t’s split-screen interface. 12 million POI’s is way more than what others offer and the device also lets you upload your photoPOI’s onto an SD card.

More features and specs:

• 20-channel SiRFstar III GPS receiver
• 2 GB flash memory, 64 MB RAM
• 4.3″ TFT with Touch Screen and 65k Colors, WQVGA – 480 x 272 pixels
• Built-in speaker and 2.5 mm headphone jack
• Two-megapixel camera, digital zoom, 320 x 240 to 1600 x 1200, multi-shot, 5/10 second timer
• SD/MMC Memory Expansion Module
• 1300 mAH rechargeable Li-ion battery

Mio DigiWalker C720t costs $600 and is already available at your electronics super stores.

Mio Digiwalker H610 review

Feb 19, 2007 gps navigation, mio 2 Comments

Mio’s smallest hanheld GPS navigation system Digiwalker H610 got reviewed and got 4 out 5 stars (circles to be exact).

Measuring just 2.3 by 3.4 by 0.7 inches and weighing a mere 3.9 ounces, the H610 packs plenty of features into the tiniest unit on the market. Of course, in a GPS device, that biggest asset could also be its largest liability. The 320- by 240-pixel touch screen is only a small 2.7 inches. Also, without a text-to-speech engine that pronounces street names, the tiny screen size definitely makes it less usable as a dashboard-mounted GPS. But that’s not the only target market for the H610. Because the device features both bicycle and pedestrian guidance profiles, the smaller screen is less of a liability than if it were a dedicated dashboard device. Even so, I found it quite usable in my road tests, especially after I placed the unit closer to me by mounting it fairly high up on the windshield.

Reviewers liked almost everthing about the H610, even including the media players that they’re always so picky about. The only downside was the side of the size of the screen (2.7″) they say. You can buy the Mio H610 from Amazon for $380.

Delphi NAV200 review

Nov 8, 2006 gps navigation, reviews Leave a comment

Delphi’s one and only GPS navigation system NAV200 got an “OK” review from people at PC Magazine of UK. The bottom line was that the hardware stood their test OK but the multimedia capabilities was less than impressive. As a result Delphi NAV200 received 3 out of 5 which corresponds to a “good”.

The higly portable NAV200 is out there to gain some market share from the non-PDA, dedicated GPS navigation devices with multimedia support such as the Mio C710, Garmin nüvi 350 and nüvi 360. Delphi NAV200 also includes built-in games, calculator, world clock, and still manages to stay below $400.

The NAV200 has standard hardware that come with most other GPS systems such as the SiRF Star III GPS receiver and the 3.5″ touch screen. The navigation software on the Delphi NAV200 is Navigon’s Mobile Navigator which is a well-known company in Germany that produces navigation software meant to run on smartphones, PDAs, and portable navigation devices.

Multimedia features are also quite limited. When you plug in an SD card, the NAV200 scans it for all supported media types. For music, the player can handle MP3/WAV; for video, AVI. Unfortunately, playlists are out of the question. Likewise, the picture viewer is very simplistic. You’re limited to gif, jpg, and .png file formats, and there’s no option for a slide show and no provision for rotating pictures shot in portrait mode. Worse, the NAV200 took close to 25 seconds to downsize and sample some pictures shot on my 7-megapixel camera with file sizes of about 3.5MB. Even so, the video player played back video recorded at 320-by-240 quite well. When I tried to play back a clip recorded at 640-by-480, however, I got an error message that said it couldn’t play the file (Error—Lower buffer size).

Overall, if you don’t care so much about multimedia handling on a navigation system the Delphi NAV200 is there to provide good basic navigation at a great price.

Mio DigiWalker P550 review

Oct 4, 2006 gps navigation, mio, reviews 15 Comments

People at Clove have done a review of the Mio DigiWalker P550 PDA. There’s no rating or assigning numbers on their site but the editor only had nice things to say about the P550. First off they talk about the physical characteristics of the device and they find it to be very light and its weight equally distributed. They also mention the device is very well built and has a nice solid feel to it. Digiwalker P550 uses Windows Mobile 5.0 which Mio managed to control very well when it was stressed under running 3 applications at once.

The list of cons was very short for the P550 – they only say the battery life could be better and more buttons on the device could’ve helped getting around.

The part of the review that we most care about at Navigadget is when start talking about the GPS capabilities of P550:

So far we have discussed the P550 as a PDA but that is not its main selling point because it is the first one to include the new SirFStar III GPS receiver as part of the unit. I tested it with TomTom 5.0 and TomTom Traffic via a Nokia 6310i and it worked perfectly on a 3 hour journey. Not once was the Traffic or GPRS connection lost unlike with my Treo when the connection will drop at least 2 or 3 times during a long journey.

The receiver works as you would expect a SiRFStar to- location acquired in a matter of seconds and the signal up 100% of the time. When you consider the price of a standalone GPS unit you can purchase the P550 with included UK and Ireland maps on an SD card plus the whole of Europe on DVD for £309.99 inc. VAT. You would be hard pushed to buy a standalone unit with all of Europe included for just over £300 and when you consider that you get a very good Pocket PC as well this represents one of the best value options for navigation and general organisation.

You can pick up a Mio P550 for £240.88 inc VAT – even cheaper than when the review was done.

Mio DigiWalker C710 review

Aug 8, 2006 gps navigation, mio, reviews 1 Comment

A recent review compares the Mio C710 to the Garmin’s nüvi 350. Because of the short list below it finds that the Mio C710 is no nüvi killer.
Pros

• built-in DivX video player
• GPS antenna integrated into the case

Cons

• no music playback during navigation
• no pedestrian mode
• no text-to-speech engine

The Mio C710 is listed at $650 however you can pick one up from Amazon for $510 and the competetion Nuvi 350 for $620.

The POI database appears to be reasonably up to date. Restaurants near my home that have opened within the last year were included. I was disappointed, however, that you couldn’t search for a POI by spelling its name. You couldn’t, for example, search for the nearest Wal-Mart or McDonald’s.

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live pics of the new Mio navigation devices

Jun 13, 2006 gps navigation, mio Leave a comment

Many live pics of the various Mio navigation devices’ made an appearance on Korean aving network. The top is the Mio C310, bottom left is Mio C210, and finally the bottom right is the Mio Digiwalker. We don’t have much info on the last one. Check back later perhaps. Until then more pics at the source…