Mio 269 review

We also encountered what seemed like a bug in the POI database. Regardless of which point-of-interest category we selected, the Mio listed only airports. It turns out that tapping the check box next to a given category isn't the correct action; you have to tap the name of the category itself. Admittedly, the instruction manual says as much, but it's just one more example of how unintuitive the Mio's interface can be.

The Mio 269's MP3 player is a stylish, easy-to-use applet with 17 equalizer presets and support for on-the-fly playlist building. Alas, if you plan to listen to music, you'll have to do so at the expense of navigation: the Mio can't map and play tunes at the same time. What's more, the speaker is barely loud enough to overcome normal road noise--not that you'd want to listen to your music through the tiny thing anyway. Passengers can plug in the included earbuds (in most states, it's illegal for drivers to wear them), or you can invest in an FM transmitter for listening through your car stereo.

It's bad enough that the tunes cut out when you switch to Map mode, but there's another oversight that's even worse: using the Mio Transfer utility, you can copy Microsoft Outlook contacts to the Mio 269, but all you get is a static address book. You can't automatically navigate to a contact's address or even look up an address while the navigation software is running.

Part of what makes interacting with the Mio 269 so frustrating is its sluggish operation. Despite being equipped with a 300MHz Intel XScale processor, it's slow to recognize button presses, slow to load POI, and slow to refresh during navigation. On many occasions, we'd tap a button, and nothing would happen for several seconds. We didn't know if the tap didn't register, if we'd pushed the wrong button, or if we were just supposed to wait for the corresponding screen to appear.

What's more, whether you're viewing your map in 2D or 3D, the Mio can't keep up. Screen refreshes tend to lag behind your current position by at least a second or two, especially when you're driving at traffic speeds. This can be a problem when you're trying to determine when to make a turn or take an exit; at least the voice prompts stay ahead of the game. Even worse, the Mio was inconsistent and often inaccurate when generating routes. For example, we used it on two occasions to route to the same destination, and it provided different directions each time. What's more, when we pressed the Home button, the route it created took us considerably out of the way when there was a shorter alternative.

On the plus side, the Mio starts up almost instantly. There's no lengthy bootup process, as with some GPS devices. It also proved extremely quick at locking onto GPS signals during both warm and cold start-ups. It even managed to pull signals when we were parked in an open garage. As for map data, we found it admirably up-to-date; it included a traffic circle recently constructed in our neck of the woods. The Mio 269's battery is rated for 4.5 hours.