Mio Moov 310 – Chapter 3

June 24th, 2009 nk Posted in GPS | No Comments »

Well, the test of the map update was very short. I didn’t check all the maps of the U.S. but the Pacific region maps are OLD. Streets that have been there for more then a two years are not on this “new” map. These same streets are up to date on the Quarter 2 2008 iGO maps from Navteq and TeleAtlas. The “new” Mio maps look like Navteq Quarter 2 2007 maps. The rest of the bugs are still there: the text to speech (TTS) says only highway exits (no street names) and some addresses in gated communities are inaccessible.

In other words: Mio Map 2008 is still a piece of garbage compared with iGO or Destinator. Destinator’s latest maps are of the same generation as the Mio’s but at least its TTS works and it lets you go where you want.

After all this my recommendation is: if you want a 4.3″ GPS buy something inexpensive. The only requirements I would look for: Win CE 4.2 or higher (Win CE5 preferred) and at least 64MB of memory. Mio is still good as a hardware platform at a reasonable price, so if you find one at a good price buy it and use it with an unlock and another, better navigation software. By the way, the TMC receiver in the Moov 310 is accessible only to the MioMap software. iGO can’t see it, so you may as well save your money and buy a model without TMC.

If you want the latest maps and a real good navigation program buy iGO 8.3 – it comes on a memory card and can be used on any Win CE machine. Of course there are a number of unlocks for the Mio family of devices but there are some universal ones as well. I am using Simple Unlock which is compact, fast and easy to customize.

Mio really screwed up with this one.