Mio Spirit 685 review

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Verdict:

At this price, we can forgive the 685's flaws. It's easy to use and has a larger than average screen

Review Date: 11 Oct 2011

Price when reviewed: £100

Buy it now for: £84
(see more store prices)

Supplier: http://www.amazon.co.uk

Reviewed By: Jim Martin

Our Rating 4 stars out of 5

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Unlike most budget satnavs, the Spirit 685 has a large 5in resistive touchscreen. Its resolution is no higher than the standard 480x272 resolution, but everything is much larger and more easily readable.

There are also several other upgrades compared to previous Mio devices we've seen. One is the inclusion of TomTom's IQ Routes, which uses recorded traffic speeds at different times of day and days of the week to calculate the optimum routes. There's also better lane guidance than before, with a clear graphic of the motorway junction and a huge road sign that matches the real one on the road. We'd love this feature to be extended to every multi-lane junction, but so far, no satnav has this capability.

Another tweak is that the menu button, which was previously touch sensitive, is now a real button. This fixes the annoyance whereby you'd constantly brush the button while tapping the screen and end up looking at the main menu. This is unchanged and has five options: Find, Map, My Places, Settings and Explore. The sixth onscreen button takes you to the rest of the options, which include traffic information (the older and not as up-to-date TMC system that uses FM broadcasts), a trip planner and a button to take you home.

If you'd prefer the home button to be on the first menu screen, you'll need to install the Windows-only MioMore application. There's no mini USB cable in the box, but as these are standard, they're very cheap. It's a shame that menu customisation isn't available directly on the device, as it is with some Garmin satnavs.

You can use a variety of methods to find a destination including points of interest near you, POIs in a city, address, postcode and keywords. The latter proved a little unreliable in testing, searching hundreds of miles for 'Brands Hatch', and finding nothing in its database. The next day, when we tried again, it found the racing circuit almost instantly.

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User comments

Route Planning

Any satnav that does not allow route planning except from present location is not worth consideration and should automatically earn no more than a 2 star rating.

By chrisnation on 14 Jun 2012