mio digiwalker c520

Although most portable navigation systems still have 3.5-inch touch screens, last fall, Garmin changed the market forever with the introduction of the nüvi 660, which featured a WQVGA 4.3-inch display. It followed up with the nüvi 680 at CES in January. Now the competition among widescreen GPS devices is really heating up. Say hello to the new Mio DigiWalker C520. With a $400 price tag, this feature-packed widescreen GPS boasts a 4.3-inch display, and it's also super-thin, slickly styled, and going to give the nüvi 660 a run for its money.

Powered by the latest SiRFstar III 20-channel WAAS-enabled receiver, the C520's most notable feature is its 16-bit touch-sensitive WQVGA display (480 by 272 pixels). The GPS antenna is built in—there's no "patch" antenna like those on the Garmin nüvis. Running on top of Windows CE, the device has 2GB of onboard flash memory and 64MB of SDRAM. Like Mio's other GPS products, the C520 uses TeleAtlas maps. Inside, you'll find maps for all 50 states plus Canada and Puerto Rico, along with an impressive 6 million POI (points of interest) database. Measuring 5.0 by 3.2 by 0.8 inches and weighing 6.7 ounces, the C520 still qualifies as a shirt-pocket GPS.

When you first boot up the C520, the main screen presents you with eight icons: MioMap, Videos, Audio, Pictures, Mobile Phone, Stereo; Tools, and Settings. The C520 has a Bluetooth interface that will pair with either your Bluetooth-enabled phone or your Bluetooth-capable stereo headsets. I was able to pair it with my LG enV VX9900 phone, but was unable to dial out from the GPS keyboard. Unlike the Garmin nüvis, my call history and contacts list from the phone were not downloaded into the GPS. I was, however, able to receive incoming calls on the C520. Though there are many features I like about this product, its Bluetooth cell-phone implementation needs improvement.

The DigiWalker C520 has built-in media players for music, video, and pictures. To play your multimedia content, you simply insert an SD card into the available card slot. The music player, which supports both MP3 and WMA formats, lets you create playlists too. Unfortunately, the Mio's video player has relatively limited file-format support. For example, .AVI files taken directly from my camera wouldn't play. Neither did .WMV or .MOV files that I downloaded from the Web. But all of the MP4 files that run on my Apple iPod played without a hitch. To help you convert video files, the Dig Walker comes with Ulead Video Toolbox Home edition Version 2.0, which will convert video to MP4 format.

For viewing digital images, the C520's picture viewer supports .JPG and .BMP file formats. A built-in slide show also lets you choose 1-, 3-, or 5-second intervals for your slide show. A zoom feature lets you zoom in on your photos as well, but there isn't a rotate feature for those images that you shoot vertically.

To start navigation, you tap the MioMap icon from the main menu. The MioMap software is based on Nav N Go's Igo software and looks very similar to other Mio GPS devices. But there are some new features and an improved user interface here that take advantage of the C520's widescreen format. The main menu has icons for Address (the find menu), Favorites, Map, POI, History, and Settings. Since the features are so similar to other Mio GPS devices previously reviewed, such as the C710, I'll focus on just the new features intrinsic to the C520.

First, and most important, the C520 now supports text-to-speech conversion for English. The instructions pronounce both the street and highway names. For example, here's an instruction given during my test drive: "Prepare to turn right after a quarter mile onto highway three westbound."

The C520 also has a simplified user interface. Instead of the separate map and cockpit views found on other Mio devices, there is now a single map view. A tab located in the upper right-hand corner of the screen lets you switch between a full-screen map view and a view that contains additional information about your route. (See attached slide show for screen shots of the new user interface.) With a route active, this information panel shows you the distance to your next turn, the direction of your next turn, remaining distance and time for your route, the current time, and the estimated time of arrival. Near the bottom of the information panel, your current speed is also displayed. At the very bottom of the panel, there are four icons. A tap of the list icon replaces the trip data with a scrollable list view of the next four maneuvers. There's also an icon for the optional traffic receiver (scheduled to ship later this year), a scrollable list of nearby POIs from categories that you've selected to display (such as gas stations), and an icon to return you to the navigation display. Without an active route, the information panel displays the current time as well as an analog representation of your speedometer.

Like the C220, the C520 does a particularly good job of managing POIs. You have the option of searching for POIs near an address, a location from your history file, or nearby GPS coordinates. If that wasn't enough, you can then scan near your current GPS location, around your destination, or near the cursor position on the map. You also can search all POIs by name or by category. The shopping area has 214 predefined national retailers that you can browse with a tap of an icon. In addition, you can choose to display or hide the icons on the map for any POI category or subcategory.

Like the other Mio GPSs, the C520 supports the traditional 2D north and track up views as well as the 3D track up view. It also has a 3D north up view, which I'm starting to like. For the 3D views, you can control the perspective angle. If you choose to enable auto-zoom, the perspective flattens out to a 2D view as you approach a maneuver.

For data input, you have your pick of keyboard styles. I especially like the QWERTY layout with numbers across the top row—like a regular keyboard. The C520 also speeds data entry by graying out letters that are unavailable choices.

The Mio DigiWalker C520 offers a lot of value for the money spent. Its widescreen, large POI database, text-to-speech conversion, and improved user interface make it a worthy competitor in the medium-price GPS category. Is it also good enough to beat out the new TomTom XL One, also priced at $400? Check back soon for a full review; the XL One will be the next device I test.

Source : http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2142073,00.asp