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Never Lost Again

A review of the Mio DigiWalker H610, a GPS device you can carry in your pocket

By Andy Walker

Monday, March 19, 2007

The other day I was driving home and decided to take a back way into my new neighborhood. Normally being only a mile or so from home wouldn’t be a problem, but the residential streets all seemed to look alike and soon I found myself deep in an unfamiliar tree-lined neighborhood.

I stopped and asked a teenager (with iPod-plugged ears) for directions, but she wasn’t very helpful. Then I remembered my Mio H610 GPS device in my pocket. It was new, so I hadn’t yet mounted it on the windscreen holder.

The H610 is about the size of a deck of playing cards. Its 2.7-inch (diagonal) touch-sensitive color screen displays your satellite-located whereabouts and offers spoken turn-by-turn directions, in a human sounding voice, to addresses you input.

“Jason” is the default American voice, but if you want more sophisticated-sounding guidance, try “Thomas,” who has a UK accent, or “Otto,” who directs you in officious German. (I may have a crush on “Katarina,” who gives rather sultry directions in Finnish.)

Can’t Live Without It
The gadget guided me out of the suburban black hole quite successfully. I should have turned left at the school and dog-legged onto the main road, as it turns out.

Now I can’t live without this handy little device. The H610 can guide you to addresses in the U.S. and Canada, using both voice prompts and two map views. The first is an aerial view of the road you are on or, if you prefer, a 3D map that you cruise through as if you’re inside a careful video game.

The device has multiple modes for drivers of cars, trucks and even emergency vehicles. Its pedestrian mode is useful for tourists and offroad hikers, and there’s a bicycle mode for cyclists. Directions and maps are drawn at a pace suitable for each type of user.

In addition to GPS functionality, the H610 has a music player mode and comes with headphones so you can play your favorite tunes. Its software travel kit features compass and WorldMate (three-year subscription included), which offers regional information like weather, time zones, area codes and more. WorldMate, which gathers data via your computer when it is connected, also has a mode called “Clothing,” which, when tapped, offers conversions for bra sizes for U.S., Europe, France and international fittings. It’s a mystery to me, but clearly useful for tourists buying undergarments in Paris and beyond.

Where the H610 falls down is its somewhat complicated menu system that at times isn’t very intuitive.

It takes a while to learn to navigate via finger taps. The H610’s screen is also smaller than ideal, so an unsteady finger can put you into settings you didn’t mean to choose.

The live map detail is very good; however, you’ll need your reading glasses to read the screen effectively. Occasionally the device wants to take you in a direction you don’t want to go.

For instance, I found that one local highway on-ramp and another right-hand loop off a bypass appears not to be featured in the map; when I encountered these road features, the H610 didn’t know they existed, so it tried to make me turn around and backtrack to get onto the road I should have been on.

If your adult children live in a new housing development, you may find that the map shows you driving through a farmer’s field because the software hasn’t been updated since the neighborhood was built.

Nevertheless, as you get used to the H610’s quirks, you’ll find it’s a device you’ll learn to love and carry with you everywhere. It would also be ideal to give an aging parent confidence on a shopping spree when you’re holidaying with them in an unfamiliar town.

Then again, keep it to yourself. Maybe it’ll help find your way home when, like me, you’re lost in your own backyard.

(Editor’s note: Andy Walker runs cyberwalker.com, a great website where you can access easy to understand technical assistance for most anything computer related.)

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