We had the Mio C620 for review. Wow, what a machine! The first Mio to run iGO 8. That is MioMap 2008, since the guys at Mio built an own brand for the custom iGO’s, which is sure to help the brand, and in turn it’s not completely compatible and anyone who has already seen more than one navigation device can tell that this is only a clone. Then why is the, certainly not cheap, name-changing operation is needed? We will try to ask someone official sometime.

Of course there is no problem with that, lucky for the patients they usually don’t die during an operation, so there is no reason to be sad. When gathering information about the Mio C620, my first task was to visit the manufacturer’s national site, but I had to notice disappointedly that only the C520 and C720 are present – and this is not by chance. That’s because the protagonist of our review arrived from LCP Systems, they are the official national distributors. The explanation is very simple: in it’s current state the C620 only has a Western Europe map, obviously the version with our country’s map will be present in the manufacturer’s local offer.

The history book of the navigational industry is just a bit longer than the one entitled “A thousand years of German humor”; the history of Mio also began recently, in 2002. They’ve spent their first two years conquering the Taiwanese and then the Korean market, then as of 2004 they have arrived to Europe. From here the story is familiar: PDAs, PNAs, PDA-phone combos, huge success. It has become a worldwide known brand by now; approx. 1200 engineers are working on better and better solutions. The C620 is positioned in the center of the PNA (PND) product line, it’s packaging is the colored box characteristic of Mio, this contains the device, the passive holder, car charger, USB cable, user manual and a CD. Unfortunately there is no wall charger, so we have to use the data cable to feed our machine when not in the car.

The C620 highly resembles the aforementioned C520 and C720, all of them have an elegant, clean design (a bit too clean for some); so overall the designers have created a nice little gadget. The case of the navi is made of hard plastic; other manufacturers usually use a material that is more comfortable for the hands. Besides this the feel of quality is perfect and that is mainly due to the quality of assembly, which is the usual prime class, the device won’t crack or rustle even when forced, the case covers the interior perfectly. The 126 x 81 x 19.9 mm (width x height x depth) large navi, weighing 190 grams, is not explicitly large, but we have seen smaller ones before, it’s true that the display limits the size the case.

This TFT LCD display is 4.3” in size, has a resolution of 480 x 272 pixels and a picture diameter of 110 mm; it’s luminosity is all right, although it’s not even close to the readability in bright sunshine of a Garmin device, but there were no specific problems in its usage.

We shall finish very soon with the exterior of the device; the clean shapes offer very few sights. There is nothing else on the frontal part besides the display, a charge and a Bluetooth LED; the situation is similar on the top part, where we can find the power button and nothing else. The left side contains the SD/MMC socket and a 3.5” headset connector, the right side is completely empty. Looking at the back of the navi we can see the speaker and the connector of the external antenna. On the bottom we can find the mini-USB connector, and a very spectacular, but rarely used, row of connectors, full of uncovered copper connectors. The left side of this row is used by the car holder, which seems to contain another speaker, but unfortunately I couldn’t find any additional information regarding this.

The heart of the C620 is the successful Samsung 2443, running at 400 Mhz, supported by 2 GB ROM and 64 MB RAM. There is nothing to complain about the device’s speed in practice: all applications were running at a fine speed in all situations. Since there is no stylus we have to use our fingers for screen-touching, but the menu is built up so that even those with sausage-fingers can use it easily. At the next review I will try a sausage, so that I can write my above statement in an authentic manner.

I would like to mention the passive holder: it is one of the best I have seen in this category. First it is the fixed type, so contrary to the goose-neck types, no shakes or swings can be experienced; second the central part of the holder can be turned to another position with one move and third the fairly large suction cup hangs onto the windshield powerfully. As a bonus, the holder has a clever little hook, in witch we can hang the charger’s cable, thus avoiding it to be too tight or swing because it’s too long. The passive holder could separately get a “highly recommended” award.

Besides navigation, the C620 can function as a Bluetooth handsfree, it can sync with the contacts in our phone, and, furthermore, if the contacts have address data, than they will be placed on the map. Besides these it can be used as a music player, it can cooperate with a stereo Bluetooth headset. There is a calendar with week and month view, and the device can also be used as a picture viewer, so there are a lots of uses besides navigation.

As there is no map for Hungary, the user experience is very close to zero in our country, so we had a little trip to the capital of the monarchy, especially because there was a veteran car exhibition there, with real rarities. As we passed through the now symbolic border we cast our happy eyes on the display of the navi, waiting the SirfStar III to hunt down enough satellites, and we didn’t have to wait much: the Mio found the satellites quickly and hung onto them massively. There is a separate review being written for the use of iGO 8 (MioMap 2008), so I really wouldn’t like to go into details about that, let’s just say that it’s interesting, but one has to re-learn its use.

I would still say about the map and the software, that – probably in order to increase user experience – it took us so “deep” into Wien that we got home only because we know the Austrian capital very well. We couldn’t find out if the map, the planning algorithm or the gods were responsible for the error, but it was very unpleasant hurrying somewhere, against the clock, knowing that only the navi is more lost then we are.

As a conclusion my opinion of the C620 is that in its current state, with only a Western Europe map, for an estimated price of 500 EUR, it is way too expensive. It is practically unusable in Eastern Europe and this can’t be balanced not even by the quality of the assembly or the extra applications. We hope that we soon get the version including the map of our country. But until then, there is no award.