Getting to grips with GPS

GPS devices were first introduced to the consumer market in classy and expensive cars. But, what can you do if you own a classic era Jaguar or 10 year-old Fiesta? You can't buy GPS navigation as an upgrade option at your authorised car dealer's place.

Now, you can have latest generation GPS device stuck to you windshield for a decent price.

Mitac's own, MIO 269+ GPS device comes in a nicely-shaped box with a large and fancy LCD, but is it worth the price? Well let's see.

The 3.5-inch colour Transflective LCD Display supports 320 x 240 resolution, with 65K colours and QVGA resolution in landscape mode. The display is also touch sensitive. There is a SD/MMC card slot with a capacity up to 1 GB+. It comes with internal one-inch, 2.5 GB Hard Disk Drive with 500MB free space available to end user. There, you can store MP3 files and photos only. The devices measures 138mm (Length), 72-78mm (Width), 26mm (Height) and it weights 226 grammes.

It uses 300MHz Intel Xscale 300MHz CPU, has 64 MB of RAM and a rechargeable 1350 mAh Lithium-ion battery.

The device has home button that can always guide you back to your home, there is a start navigation button and volume up and down. You have a joystick on a left hand side, the mute button whole you can access the other features via touch screen and soft buttons.

The box includes the Car charger, external GPS antenna, AC adapter, ActiveSync USB cable, Car mount (sucker arm), Integral device holder, very neat leather carrying case, earphones, remote control and a bicycle mount.

Usage
When you press the power button, the device needs about one to two minutes to get lock on the satellites in urban environment. The SirfStar III extra-sensitive GPS chip is one to thank for it and the speed is rather acceptable. You get preinstalled 27 maps of European countries. Most of Western Europe has all percent of roads covered.

The device also functions in a door-to-door mode which gives you the possibility to reach your destination with amazing precision. Just input the country, city, street and street number and there you go. Usually, the calculation lasts for between 30 seconds to a minute, but it can take even more. It all depends on how complicated and far your destination is.

When you enter a tunnel and lose satellite lock in needs only few seconds to get locked back on. You can input the date with a pen as the Mio 269+ is essentially a PDA with a hard drive and a GPS antenna built in.

The device comes with Microsoft Windows CE .Net 4.2 Core version Operating systems and it uses MioMap CE Version 2.0 navigation. It is based on Nation's Personal Navigator 5.1 and the maps are provided by Tele Atlas and can be updated from the internet. The 27 countires covered are: Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Gibraltar, Italy, Ireland, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Norway, the Netherlands, Portugal, San-Marino, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Vatican. The new countries included are the Czech Rep., Greece, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia.

The streets database is organized in that way when you type a letter, it lists all the subjects which contain that specific letter. As soon as you add more letters you are narrowing your choices, which is handy if you don't know the correct name of the street. But it can be slow in some circumstances especially when you have a lot of similar street names in the range. The other feature is to find your proffered Point Of Interest. You can select POI's like petrol stations, parking, hospitals, ATMs and so on. It is possible to look for POIs in cities or areas or around your present location. There is also a new compass mode which makes it easy to navigate your way when you're walking around town.

Another great feature is TMC receiver, which is sold separately. With TMC you'll be able to receive up-to-the-minute information on everything from road works to accidents and traffic jams, so that Mio 269 Plus can then recalculate your route. TMC works throughout Europe and the messages are always shown in your own language. So far we were lucky to not get into traffic jams so only occasionally we had information's about police control check-points on our way.

Performance
MIO 269+ GPS comes with car power adapter, so you don't have to worry about device autonomy in the car. The integrated battery can last for a few hours so you won't need to plug it all the time. You won't need it much for city driving. You can put it on a bike (it comes with the bike holder) or you can carry it as a pedestrian. In pedestrian mode, the device was not very accurate and sometimes it struggles to find the right way to go, probably because not all pedestrian pavements are on the map. In bike and car mode, the device performs very well as it knows the streets. The device reads your current speed and it can warn you if you are exceeding speed limit. That is a handy feature which can be turned off.

Theoretically it will get you to a desired point but not always the fastest way. If you prefer the speed roads it will always guide you to a speed way and sometimes you will lose the time to get off the road to a speed way or high way and will take as much time to return to a slower street. At the end you will The device is really loud and the English and German voice navigation is very understandable. You really need to pay attention is weather the lady says take the next exit on the left now, or in 100 meters take the next exit on the left. You need to focus on the exits if you don't want to miss one, but at the end even if you miss the exit and chose the other way to go, the device will recalculate the route for you.

In Short
We were happy with MIO 269+ GPS as it works well, helps you find your way in Western Europe and have a satisfactory battery life. It can even play MP3s for you. It doesn't have the maps of Slovenia, Croatia, or Bosnia but who wants to go there? It has all the western countries including Austria, Germany, Switzerland, even UK, France, and all the other Schengen countries.

The device is well built, not as compact and light as some rivals but it is yet functional and ergonomics are on a very high level. You are getting 2,5 Gigs hard drive in it with the maps and some space for you. Now when I tried it I think my driving experience will not be the same without it. You just get use to a nice lady that has to tell you where to go.

In the US this nice device will cost you around $470 and of course it comes with the US maps. In the UK it costs very attractive £233.82 incl. VAT. The cheapest one we could find in Euroland costs €450 including VAT.

We think it is a good device for the money, it gets the job done and costs at least half of the price you would have to pay for the integrated in car navigation. ?

Reviewed and tested by Enis Abazovic and Fuad Abazovic