Mio C520 Navigation Receiver

Summary: I have been using a C520 (purchased from Circuit City in Mid-May, paid $338 after AAA discount coupon) for over a month. I replaced a Garmin Nuvi 360, which was OK but lacked the options and customization that Garmin has had in the older ColorPilot series. Plus I wanted a bigger screen.

The MIO unit is great for the price, BUT they have several issues that must be fixed. See below. I have sent these issues to Mio and iGO (SW supplier to MIO). Mio has not responded. iGo has responded and claims they will look at the issues for an upcoming software release in summer.

Until they fix the high priority items, I still recommend Garmin for the entry level user. Experienced nav users, willing to overlook the following bugs, will enjoy the vast customization and advanced features. Great detour function! Garmin take note: Your detour function is useless on the NUVI 360!


High priority must be fixed:
1) When approaching the destination, there is no indication if address or POI is on the Left or Right. This is a BIG, BIG issue. When you have shopping malls on both sides of the street, you don’t know which way to turn to find your POI or destination!!!!
2) No selection to find POI along the current route. Add “Along Route” to Change Reference selection screen. This is a great option when traveling on a highway route and you want to find your favorite restaurant or brand of gas or Rest Area on the same side of the highway. You don’t want to travel miles off your route if there is a POI directly ahead on your current route. It saves time and money (gas).
3) When sitting still at a traffic light, often the map “auto rotates” sometimes up to 90 degrees and shows your position at an angle to the road. You have to drive about 100-200 feet before the icon straightens out and shows you traveling parallel to the road. If the unit had a gyro, I’d say the gyro was getting out of calibration, but the unit does not contain such a device, so I have no idea what causes this issue.
4) Can’t find a way to repeat the last voice command. The speaker icon is not showing on the map screen. I think this is a Software bug, as the manual shows a speaker icon on the screen.
5) The voice commands stutter often. It seems worse on the female voice. “Fa-fa-fa-follow the current road.” “Turn Ra-ra-ra-right.” It’s really annoying.

Highly Annoying and should be fixed:
1) We have several major roads in Michigan that are divided with a median and have left turnarounds every 500-1000 feet to facilitate reversing directions. They also allow for “Michigan left turns” where instead of using a left turn lane, you must turn right on your target road and then take a quick u-turn to head left. I was working at Bose in Framingham, MA until last October, so the road that sort of exemplifies this situation the closest in Route 9, except you exit right to turn around.
The Mio C520 issues commands almost continuously in these situations: “In 500 feet, keep right”; in 900 feet, keep right, in 600 feet, keep right, in 500 feet, keep right…….” It’s really annoying to the point where you either turn off the unit or you start ignoring it and finally miss a real maneuver. No other GPS unit I’ve tried does this, so I think the iGO engineers must not encounter this situation in Europe where they develop the software. In the map screen, the turnarounds are labeled “connecting roads” so it must be some logic tied to this road classification.
2) After calculating a route, it should say something, like “Please proceed to the highlighted route and route guidance will begin”. Or, something shorter: “Ready to navigate”. Or, a simple chime.
3) After calculating a Route and you are in a parking lot (not on the route) the Info screen does not give you the Route Information (arrival, distance, etc.). You have to get on the route before the information pops-up. If I am trying to evaluate different routes or estimate an arrival time, it can’t be done.
4) The Arrival time or Distance cannot be found for Vias in the Itinerary List. So, if you set-up a via point for lunch ahead on the route, you can’t find out the distance or estimated time of arrival to the via point in the Itinerary List. It only gives the arrival time and distance for the final destination.
5) The screen gets washed out in sunlight. The need for thinness and battery life probably drove the compromise.
6) It is very difficult to “drag and drop” to move the map around without the C520 triggering the cursor to inquire if you want to enter it as a destination/POI. This is really aggravating while driving. Change the sensitivity to make the touch of the screen longer before you pop-up the cursor so it is easier to pan the screen.
7) The Lock-On-Road option too strongly ties the current position icon to the road and turning it off is too loosely associated and the icon drifts too far off the road while in a route. When it’s Locked-On-Road, it doesn’t do a good job of vehicle icon orientation in a large parking lot to help you maneuver back to a digitized road. It locks you to the closest road and you have no way of knowing which direction to head out of the parking lot to get to the highlighted route.

Annoying:
1) I prefer the Garmin method of displaying the scale. Keep it one width. It’s too confusing to have the bar changing size AND scale simultaneously as you change the zoom level.
2) After calculating a route, it should say something, like “Please proceed to the highlighted route and route guidance will begin”. Or, something shorter: “Ready to navigate”. Or, a simple chime.
3) The screen has poor contrast and gets washed out in sunlight too easy. The need for thinness and battery life probably drove the compromise.
4) In the POI list, if two POIs are the same distance away from your current location, the two POIs will swap positions in the list constantly. When you try to choose one, it’s like shooting at a moving target. You might get the one you want or you might not. Suggestion: Order the list by distance first and then alphabetical order so no swapping back and forth occurs.

Personal preference:
1) The HMI (Human Machine Interface) is a bit cluttered for big fingers. The Clarion implementation of the same iGo software might be better. Plus, the Clarion has the speaker icon that the Mio 520 is somehow missing.