Review of the Mio C310S Portable Car GPS

The first idea of buying a portable in car GPS came to me after a few visits to Los Angeles for E3, with such a massive city I needed a GPS to navigate around. I would often pay about $5 USD to rent a GPS from Hertz; it just seemed like money wasted. So I waited for a GPS that got decent reviews to go on sale. Last week the Mio C310S (Called Mio C310sx in the United States) had the price slashed by $100 to $250 CAD.

I must admit, the Mio C310S was quite enjoyable for the first few random trips I entered into it; even though I knew where I was going I wanted to ensure it would: A) Give me accurate directions B) Ample warning of difficult highway circles C) Points of Interests and D) Easy to use interface. Unfortunately, it failed in all four points most of the time.

Let’s start off with the slick Cockpit mode for when you are navigating, it turns into a “3D” view where streets approach you like in the real world. Here is where the “easy to use interface” becomes annoying, when you type in an address or use the searchable Points of Interest (POI), the unit does not switch to the Cockpit mode; It leaves you in the overhead map, which you can not drive in because there are no visual turn directions. Why doesn’t it switch automatically to the Cockpit view?! The rest of the interface is straight forward, you can easily punch in addresses and POI’s, the unit will show what is on screen before you will finish typing most of the time.

The maps included with this model are extremely out of date, the maps are from 2005. In fact, these TeleAtlas maps are wrong in many areas of Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It shows roads that were NEVER BUILT, totally wrong “left turn allowed” indications and Points of Interests that no longer exist, at least they threw in the U.S. maps for free. However, it seems that this same model in the U.S. does NOT include the Canadian maps, which doesn’t make any sense…just buy the Canadian model then. With the preloaded 92 megabyte Candian map, there is about 242 megabytes free for you to upload other maps; the largest map is California and is about 85 megabytes.

The voice prompts are useful enough, but only if there are no rapid successions of directions you have follow. For example, many highway exits can branch off to other highways in multiple directions: If you were using a Hertz Neverlost system; it would say the following: Freeway Exit on the right (DING!), followed by a keep to the left, followed by a keep to the right. This audio prompt makes is very easy, you need to exit now on the right, keep in the left lane after you exit and then ensure you go to the right lane to continue your journey. The Mio C310S only gives you the first two directions and BARELY in time on top of that. Exit Freeway (DING), Keep Left…then silence until you are about 2 seconds away from the “keep to the right” while going at highway speeds…in short you won’t make the last guidance voice prompt.

Another example of this poor voice prompting: You are doing a right turn onto a street that will bring you to an highway entrance ramp is on the LEFT hand side 200 Meters away (in other words you must turn right into the “left lane”). It will NOT prompt you that the ramp is on the left until 180 Meters, by then you will be unable to merge into the left lane to get onto the highway ramp.

Another thing that bothered me was awful “exit parking lot” navigation, the unit tried to get me to drive across 3 lanes of traffic and a concrete barrier to get into a north bound lane, the map on the screen even shows the street is divided and you can not cross over this barrier. Another time, I decided to ignore the direction while getting out of shopping center parking lot because there was simply too much traffic, the unit told me to go totally around the mall onto a highway on ramp. I refused to because there was a closer road to my home. The unit complained for a full 3 KM to do illegal turns to go back to the mall exit point, even though I was getting closer and closer to my home. Finally the Mio gave up when I ended up 7 blocks from my home. Yes, that is right; at 8 blocks it told me to drive back 3 KM so it could “make me use the route it had chosen when I got out of the mall” about 15 minutes ago. Great, my GPS is a tyrant…ITS WAY OR NO WAY.

The hardware is about the only positive thing I could say about this unit, it locks on my location in under 15 seconds. The SD card slot is great for adding the U.S. maps or turning it into an MP3 player (SD card not included). The screen is readable even in direct sunlight and the night mode is cool looking. I even liked the suction cup mount that they included (Warning: a few States do not allow GPS’s to be stuck the front windshield)…but I simply can not recommend this unit with all its “tantrums” and bad software programming for route calculation.

The company said they will release some 2006 maps in 1^st quarter 2007 but you’ll have to pay for them, and while it may fix the routing problems and out of date maps…it may not. I am returning this unit to the store and sticking with the more expensive units that don’t tell me to drive over a 3 lane road or not tell me directions in time for a highway. I frankly have no clue why other websites gave this unit an average of 6 to 7. I wouldn’t give this more than a 3 out of 10 with the current software, and since it runs on Windows CE you can hack it if you are brave enough and put a better software on it.

Related posts:

1. The Malcolm Owen Portable Office Kit
2. Google Street View – Some Highlights