Review: Mio C210 satellite navigation system

The C210 is Mio’s budget in-car satellite navigation (sat nav) system and is built in the same style as the compact Tomtom One .

It's intended to be a budget solution with a straightforward set of features, but we weren’t expecting to be bowled over by its versatility.

We did expect its performance and usability to justify the £200 asking price, though.

First impressions on this front were mixed. The device takes four AA batteries, but the design of the battery housing means quite a bit of fiddling is required to place the batteries into the correct positions.

When we started up the device a welcome message appeared within about 10 seconds and the device gained a satellite lock and our position was pinpointed shortly after that.

Plotting a course is far more troublesome. You’re faced with one Address button and no obvious alternative for entering postcodes. Mio boasts about the seven-digit postcode capability of the device, yet has done a particularly good job of hiding it away.

Location searches are first split into cities. You have to choose the relevant city and can then start to hunt down a road name.

Results are filtered as you add more characters to a road name, which is useful, but if you want to perform a simple postcode search it takes a bit more work.

The manual provides no clues, so trial and error taught us that you first need to change your chosen city, add another city and, provided you have the right country, run a postcode search.

It's rather troublesome for what should be one of the most common ways of navigating.

What's more, you can forget about doing any of this when on the move. The buttons are barely large enough for you to press with a finger. We would have liked a built-in stylus to help.

Once you get a location logged, you’ll find the performance of the device is very good. Apart from qualms about the small fiddly button, the mapping software is detailed, responsive and very easy to browse around.

On the move directions were accurate and route recalculation was done with a minimum of fuss.

Viewing a route itinerary and choosing roads to avoid, and so tailoring your route from the one offered is straightforward. A Flyover feature takes you on a tour of the route before you depart.

The software highlights your route with a different colour road, so it’s pretty obvious where you’re going, although the tiny black arrows that confirm your direction at tricky junctions and roundabouts are small and not particularly clear.

Combined with the size of the screen and a less-than-impressive viewing angle, this means a split-second glance at the device (which is all you might get in heavy traffic) might not be enough to confirm your next turn.

Elsewhere you’ll find the basic features you’d expect, such as route history, methods of travel (select taxi, pedestrian, bicycle among others), languages, voices and screen settings, but you’d expect these in even the most basic sat-nav system.

The C210 is touted as an entry-level device and, in terms of the features on offer, it gets the job done. The mapping software is impressive and routes are calculated and recalculated quickly.

However, the 2.7in screen is very, very small, the on-screen controls are even smaller, and the menu system can be both confusing and frustrating. The latter is something you’ll probably get used to, but we’ve seen budget alternatives do a better job for around the same price.

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