Mio A701 review

Average user rating

7.9

very good

Average user rating from 7 users

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Mio A701 user reviews

August 9, 2006

Posted by: Peter Albert

"Spectacular GPS receiver, good phone and PDA"

What I like:

GPS receiver is fantastic... more sensitive than most dedicated Sifr III receivers I tried

What I don't like:

Text messaging requires the stylus. Technical support is not very responsive.

Review:

This is not a device for typical corporate users, who may need faster connectivity than GPRS to download those large email attachments.

But it is perfect if you need GPS, a phone, and a PDA for contacts and agenda, all compacted in a small, very elegant case, with a brilliant, readable screen.
This means: most normal users, who do not care much in practice about Wi-Fi (but you may buy a cheap, small Wi-Fi card) or UMTS (who really wants to make a video call?).

The Mio A701 has a spectacular GPS receiver (working also with other navigation software).
It is also a good WM5 PDA, with a brilliant screen (but *not* in direct sunlight, although I have seen worse screens) and a good phone. The only real annoyance to me is that Mio does not support one-handed text messaging... you have to use the stylus to prepare an SMS, or find a third-party application to allow it!

Bluetooth is a little buggy (as usual), but it seems to have been fixed in some new firmware version (which however has not been officially released yet). Camera is decent, but do not expect too much.

Of the various PDAs I had (iPaq 1940 and 2210, Loox N 520, Treo 650), I only miss the keyboard and the user interface of my Treo 650 (but the Treo was much bigger, buggier and had that horrible antenna).