Mio C310 GPS receiver / MP3 player reviewed

Personal Tech Pipeline got a chance to tour around with Mio's C310 portable GPS receiver with built-in DAP that we first spotted at CES, and claim that although the unit is a pretty good value, its performance is a bit underwhelming. Rather than building a product from the ground up like the Garmins and Magellans of the world, Mio has assembled a Windows CE-powered unit featuring software from Destinator Technologies and maps from TeleAtlas -- which, while not necessarily a bad thing, means some of the features aren't as polished as they are on vertically-integrated products. For example, PTP found that many important options were buried under several sub-menus, which made simple tasks like changing to night mode or selecting a new destination while driving more difficult than they should be, and probably more dangerous. The C310 seemed to perform its navigation duties fairly well, though, and even ships with ActiveSync for loading up your Outlook contacts' addresses, but little annoyances like a cluttered 3.5-inch screen and awful built-in speakers might be enough to convince most folks to put their $600 towards a more expensive model that operates a little more smoothly.

[wilkins @ May 16th 2006 2:04PM]

Thanks for the review. :D Intersting that they went with TeleAtlas - they seem to be doing well now, I read some articles over the past few weeks that Cobra is going with them, as is Pioneer in-car.

[Davey Maines @ May 17th 2006 3:27PM]

I like that this uses CE actually. Not many do indeed, and I wonder at the possible openness of this approach.

[Seunghan Nam @ May 17th 2006 10:15PM]

I was actually consisdering to buy c710, up scale version of c310.
No review was available, no unit was available in compusa, bestbuy or circuit city (Although bestbuy.com featurues it). This means that I can't compare and see if LCD is bright enough, navigating is quick and route setting is fast enough.

To me, the turn-off was that I wasn't sure if this is a GPS unit. It has so many things inside. I don't need mp3 player, I don't need movie player. But the unit should be built on GPS. Even one GPS function can cause a huge hassle in driving.

Another is I wasn't sure if there are enough POIs. If you look at good GPS unit, they will advertise that it has 6-7 millions POI. In case of c310 or c710, I am not sure if this is the cases - it only says 1000s.

Having Destinator before, I don't like the software one bit, although map display is fantastic.

Finally, it doesn't have WAAS feature, although it supports up to 12 satelites. It would be difficult to find a GPS which ranges from 600-700 dollars, buut doesn't have WAAS.

So in conclusion, I can't see whether it is a serious GPS unit. But the internet price is much lower than $600. So to some, this might be appealing unit. That would be... people without IPOD and look for basic GPS stuff.
Again, if the speaker is horrible, mp3 means almost nothing in car. Also I would like bluetooth for future version.

[eCom @ May 19th 2006 6:07AM]

menu selection for displaying live traffic information and re-routing on its basis? It?s there, but the feature isn?t implemented on this model.

[Navigation Blog @ May 23rd 2006 2:01PM]

that is a slick little unit

[Andy Meyer @ May 26th 2006 5:53PM]

Interesting. How does that compare to the Garmin nuvi I keep reading about at garmin.blogs.com?