This is a guest post by the very talented Mark Levenstein. Mark is an engineer by training, an e-learning content developer and technical writer by trade, and a technology critic by habit.

It’s been well over two months since I was asked to review my latest acquisition, the S505 navigation system from Mio. Things came up and I just didn’t get around to it until now, and it’s a good thing too, because had I written this review after a couple of days of driving along my usual routes and around my home town, I would have churned out just one more raving review of this product to add to the hundreds already out there on the web.

I would have written about how clear the redone maps are, about the crisp display and the attractive casing. I would have described how easy and intuitive its revolutionary menu system is to use, and about how its Explore feature lets you know about points of interest at your location or along your route, a great feature when out on vacation.

So, what went wrong and why, in my humble opinion, did the other reviewers get this one wrong?

Let’s go back to the beginning. I’ve used many different GPS’s in the past, and to be honest I hardly paid attention to which one I had just rented or borrowed because they were all pretty much identical, at least when it came to basic navigation. When designing its Moov S series, Mio unabashedly went back to the drawing board with both its navigation software and maps, attempting to make them more “user-centric” and “clutter-free” – quotes from their web site.

My first few trips with this GPS, all driven along routes that I could have navigated with my eyes closed, convinced me that the team at Mio had smashed all conventions and created a truly beautiful and functional accessory for my car. I could not have thanked them enough. I am convinced that it was at this magical point in the relationship between man and machine that all those other reviews were written.

It was when I started driving to places to which I’d never been, along different types of roads, in different traffic conditions, and at different times of the day, and under pressure to get to meetings on time, that I began to realize that the Mio team may have spent too much time back at the drawing board, and not enough time out on the road.

Enough of that idle chatter. Please find my complaints below.

Loss of Vital Information

Mio set out to remove clutter from the admittedly busy screens of typical GPS’s, but some of what they threw out was not clutter, but rather vital information without which you stand little chance of arriving at your destination without a few wrong turns.

For example, every other GPS I’ve used indicated the direction of the next turn, as well as the turn after that. “Clutter!” I hear you say about the turn-after-next. Yes, but what happens when you’re making a left turn into a six lane road and have no idea of which lane you need to be in so as to make your next turn? For me, after missing too many turns on a busy city grid because of this problem, this flaw was enough to make me question my decision to buy this product.

A slightly less vital, but nevertheless important piece of information that was deemed unfit for inclusion on an uncluttered screen, was the name of the road you are currently on. I’d happily have given up on a bit of the 4.7” real-estate for that piece of trivia.

Mio didn’t stop at the display when removing clutter, they also turned their attention to the voice announcer. I used to feel a slight annoyance when other GPS’s I used would announce “Recalculating Route” after I had missed a turn I was meant to take. The Mio does not give such a message, it simply recalculates the route and gives you the next instruction. Sounds like a good idea, but it becomes confusing when you’re told to take a left, and soon after you’re told to take a right. Did I already take a left without my realizing it, did the GPS change its mind, or did I make a mistake and it has recalculated the route? At 60 mph I don’t really care, I just want a refund.

Unclear Display of Information

I found that the display appears amazingly clear and clean as long as you don’t actually need to look at it. My first complaint in this area is the fact that the name of the next road and the distance to the turn are written in a feint grey in a thin font. Driving with the sun shining anywhere near the GPS makes that information very difficult to see. Even in the best of daytime conditions the display does not rank high in visibility.

One thing that I really disliked was that the map display shown when you’re driving always plots the planned route on the map, even that part of the route you’ve already completed. Like all the other innovations, it probably sounded like a good idea at the time, but if you make a mistake and have to drive back along a road you have already driven on, the there and back routes get plotted on top of each other and it does become very unclear. This became a real problem in inner city driving, to the extent that the map became so cluttered that I had to reset the route from scratch while driving.

Poor Navigation Assistance

After paying good money for a GPS, I expect to be able to turn my GPS on and my brain off. Not so with the Mio S, its navigation instructions have kept me guessing on too many occasions.

In this area, my biggest complaint is the inaccurate, or strangely programmed, distances to the next turn. If I am just about to cross into an intersection at which I’m meant to turn, shouldn’t the distance to the turn be zero? Evidently not, because that has almost never been the case.  The distances at intersections seems to be strangely inaccurate. Again, this is a problem in inner city situations where the distances between intersections is short, so from the distance information it was not always clear where I had to turn.

Following on from the above, the most natural work-around to this problem would be to simply look at the map and see which intersection to turn at. I really have given the Mio S every opportunity to prove me wrong, both in 2D and 3D mode, but with auto-zoom on, it most often does not show enough of the map to see the next turn. I have often only been shown the intersection at which I was meant to take a turn after having passed it. The only work around that I have found is to turn the auto-zoom off and manually adjust the zoom as required during the trip, and this does work quite well. No officer, I was not playing with my GPS at the time of the accident.

The Bottom Line

For all the positive reviews this product obtained, I have found it at times to be the most frustrating piece of electronic equipment I have ever used. Frustrating not only because of the design issues I discussed above, but because of how great it could have been had more thought been put into how a GPS should work when one really needs it. I would really have liked to love this product, and am left hoping that a (free) software upgrade will make my Mio Moov S505 into the GPS it could have been.

Just a quick Thank You to mark for this review.

Have you tried the Mio Moov S505? If you have and have an opinion, please share it with the rest of us in the comments below.