Mio DigiWalker C230 Portable GPS Navigator

I bought the Mio C230 first for its amazing price(78.99+shipping) and for the operating system that runs the device. Knowing this thing is incredibly easy to mod and install additional program fully convinced me to pick this over the other Garmins and Tomtoms.

The device is loaded with US map, but I mostly use it in Mexico so I installed another very similar program called Igo 8, along with map of Mexico. Google gpsunderground if you like to know how. Igo 8 definitely runs better than the Miomap software in my experience. Better customization, better interface, and better functionality.

Performance wise, this thing is dead on every time. I checked the Mio in an underground parking lot and it showed 0 satellites tracked(no surprise there). Within 2-3 seconds of exiting the parking lot, it showed 3-4 sats and took another 3-4 seconds to be fully functional and guiding you on your way. It can even catch sat signals within the average buildings, albeit not 100% accurate like on the road.

With windows 5 CE as the operating system, there are so many other programs you can run on it also: notepad, media player, photo browser(you have to unlock the device first, though I unlocked in 2 minutes tops).

The included cradle seems to work very well. You have the option of dash-board mounting it, or mount it on the windshield. If you want to mount on the dashboard, you'll have to use the adhesive patch included. Windshield mounting is much cleaner with the suction cup.

Also, the device can be charged over USB(chargin/sync port is micro USB). I have so many USB charger around that this is really convenient.

1. Very poor battery performance.
2. Very high current drain.
3. Small and nice
4. Good GPS performance, time to 1st fix is short.

there might be some better and newer Navigotrs in the market.
But this is a great price for a product that gives you what you need.
There might be largers LCD screens, more utilities,
but, hey, if 99% of your time - is navigating - then it is good enough
enjoy

Reasonable value for the price, but it does have its shortcomings. Example:Rather than stay on a particular street, directs me to take 2 turns, which puts me right back on the street. No obvious reason for this! Biggest complaint is the POOR QUALITY OF CUSTOMER SERVICE. Repeated requests for a printed manual (for which I indicated I was willing to pay for!)resulted in grudging assurances BUT NO MANUAL.

This is our first GPS. The unit is great!! The issues that I have are probably more on an operator error side than on the unit's side. I did accidently drop the unit from about 3 feet high onto the cement, I thought the unit was history. Outside of a couple of scratched the unit is still working. The mounting bracket sticks to the windshield too good. Overall I'm very pleased with my purchase.

The seller was very professional and efficient. The product has arrived on time. I am also using the GPS Mio c230 in Brazil and it is being a good experience. You can buy a specific program in Brazil easily install and every thing will work as expected. In details, the sound and also the video quality is very clear. The program is easy to use and navigate. I guess it is a good deal if you do not want to expend money in an expensive one or if you do not require it that much.

This GPS is one of the best out there for price. It has great maps and points of interest. I love the fact that you can enter either a street address or actual coordinates for a place. I use this a lot and have taken it to different states on trips and always gotten where I wanted/needed to be. I would highly recommend this GPS. Best value for the price!

I love my little GPS. This is the first that i've ever used so i can't compare, but i read all the reviews and decided on this one. For the price, it has everything i need and it is very cool. I love it!

Complex instructions, but unit works as specified when one learns how it operates in use.

I just got this GPS a few days ago and I am learning how to use it. I like the idea of turn by turn directions with actual street names. There is also a foot or yard measurement that is spoken to you when you get close to that next turn. The display is very good. The audio is very clear. You will have to open a couple of "windows" to adjust the audio if you do not like the default setting. The POI's are adequate. Adding "Home" and "Work" is very easy to do. Pressing the "satelite dish" icon on your map opens up a new window that displays a satellite strength meter for each received satellite and a globe showing where each received satellite is located. There are also other important "boxes" of information that can be found on this page. I have only touched on a very few things about this GPS because I am learning as I go. In my opinion, the MIO Digiwalker C230 is a very good choice for first time users like myself.

I have had this GPS for a little over a year. It was VERY hard to learn. In fact it was so hard to learn that I am terrified of purchasing a different brand (way to go Mio!). I would recommend using the GPS on routes you drive every day until you get the hang of it. You are not going to be able to hop in the car and completely rely on it right away.

After about 10 months of rugged use, the screen would blank out frequently and the GPS would have to re-boot. It always turned back on and kept working. I would have done maintenance, but the GPS does not include a data cord.

Now, the power plug-in area has pushed itself in the GPS itself & I am no longer able to charge it.

Summary: We had a good run together and I will buy another.

My father bought one of these things for my brother and me last year for Christmas. I was so excited because I'd never owned a GPS system and now I could have the freedom of just plugging it into my car charger, typing in an address or selecting a favorite address and being on my way. WRONG. It's almost a year to the date later and I still haven't figured out how to get this thing working the way it claims to work.

I read the manual provided online for this model. Underneath a few of the instruction blurbs will be a note which says "depending on which model you have, the menu screen may not look like this." What it should have read was "depending on which model you have, actual feature may not be available."

I can't save favorites. I can't save POIs. There is NOTHING in the manual which explains how to use My POIs. Someone earlier reviewed that you can save POIs in My POIs but I have been sitting here trying to figure that out and I don't think it is possible.

One other point I can make (because I haven't really used it that much at all) is that I don't think this thing has any idea where it is. On US Rt 9, I was "unable to locate" for a while. I decided to try to use it for the first time as a test. I typed in the address to my friend's house to see if it would get me there the same way I have always gone. Like a previous reviewer said, it couldn't really locate where you were at your starting point. Like, is my car pointed in the correct direction or which way should I turn? So I started going straight ahead because that's where I was pointed. I knew I had to make the first left, go down 4 blocks and make another left. This thing told me to make my first left, but then to make the 2nd RIGHT onto some other street. Then again after that, it had me making a left onto another street in the COMPLETELY WRONG DIRECTION.

I know I really only gave this thing a few minutes of test time, but that's about as long as I could stand it for. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. I will try it again today to go somewhere that I am familiar with and just use it until I get there.

But seriously, do not bother with this. My friend has the newest Garmin model and that got us to our destination precisely on time with absolutely no problems. I wish that this thing wasn't a gift so that I could return it or just plain old sell it for $20 on Craig's List.

It takes 2-3 min for the equipment to get updated coordinates upon start.
The built-in POI database is very unpopulated, making it useless. I have tried a Garmin GPS (nüvi 200). It update coordinates quickly (as long as there is signal of course) and the POI database is amazing.
Botton line is that it is preferable to expend a couple of dollars more in a Garmin GPS to have a much more useful product.

I bought the Mio DigiWalker C230 after not getting any new updates from Dell. Dell's maps are old (2006) and I wanted to have an updated GPS system in my car because I do a lot of driving around as a local locksmith, Mark's Locksmith, here in Beaverton, Oregon. The only thing that I didn't like about this Mio C230 is that it does not tell you whitch side of the street the house is on, and that you are unable to change the time in the system after it was entered once. I wanted to change the time after having this for about a few months now but could not find a way to do it so I have to leave it as it is. This is a GREAT GPS unit for the price. I'm glad a long-hauler truck driver got locked out of his SUV because he showed me his GPS system, Mio C220, and I liked it, so I bought one the very next day.

This is the worst GPS system I have ever interacted with. It took a long time to figure out how to set the system up, and eventually I just gave up reading the manual and experimented till it worked.

Other issues:

-Computerized voice is sometimes unintelligible
-Doesn't provide street names in audio directions, instead gives instructions like "turn left in 400 feet." Unless you've got a tape-measure on-hand, good luck. "Turn down Main Street" would be more helpful!
-Frequently gives inaccurate directions. Has told me repeatedly to turn (the wrong way) onto one-way streets, dead-end streets, and no-turn intersections.
-Takes forever to orient. Expect to wait 5 minutes while it figures out where the heck you are. In addition, it doesn't give immediate directions after you input your destination. You have to choose a direction, start driving in it, and wait for it to figure out you're moving and tell you what to do next (which may be to turn around at the earliest possible opportunity).
-Often gives contradictory directions, seconds apart. This almost lead me to throw the C230 out of my car window. Twice. Turn left in 50 feet. Turn right in 50 feet. Turn left in 50 feet. Literally 3 seconds apart. Have frequently followed the directions given, only to get either contradictory directions when I'm already en-route, or the "turn back" command seconds later. Not only is this a frustrating and confusing flaw, but it's also dangerous, as being commanded to change direction unexpectedly can be a bit jarring when you're driving.
-Turns off at random when driving. This has happened both while I've had it connected to the charger and not. I will be en-route, and after what feels like an unusual long silence, look over to discover it has turned itself off. Powering on and re-orienting takes a few additional minutes, during which necessary directions are missed.
-As another reviewer mentioned, if you frequent a certain business repeatedly, you can't simply save that location in the system if the business is already in the system's directory. You have to search, for example, for a McDonalds, input the city and state, every time, rather than easily access it in a favorites list.
-i live in Boston, and the system is really lacking in its business directory. i have had to look up addresses for popular businesses (restaurants, supermarkets, etc.) ahead of time, then bring them to my car and input them in, since the GPS was unable to find them using its search function.
-no way to edit information! the GPS consistently tells me to turn down one particular dead end street, and i would really like to edit the system to reflect that the street is, in fact, a dead end. but there's no way to.
-plenty other issues to speak of, but the point is, there are better systems out there. Opt for one of those. Or buy this one and leave it on the freeway after a month.

I recently purchased a C230 as my first GPS device. I couldn't justify spending a lot of money for a GPS device with a lot of bells and whistles that I probably wouldn't use. What I wanted for my first GPS was a simple, versatile, full-featured device that I could use to gain experience and then move up to a more sophisticated device if I deide that a GPS is really useful for my purposes. The C230 met all of my requirements. It comes complete with an AC car adaptor, windshield mount, instructions that are simple to understand and CD with GPS instructions and MioMap instructions. Some of the reviews that I read about the C230 complained that the instructions were difficult to understand and that it took a couple of hours of playing with the device before it could be used. I did not find this the case. Setting up the device initially and using it is pretty intuitive and goes quickly. I was ready to road test it in about half an hour. The software is easy to navigate. What I do feel takes a little more time is exploring the software and discovering all the subtle features that aren't explained in detail in the instructions. There's a trade off here. You can either get simple set up instructions and be up and running quickly, or get bogged down with a thick user manual. I prefer simplicity and I'm willing to learn as I go. The C230 provides flexibility in the type of views you can select and the manner in which the route information is presented. I prefer the cockpit view and find it very easy to read and useful. What really impressed me was how quickly the device syncs with the satellite signals and finds its location and how quickly it recalculates a route if I deviate from the recommended route. That was a concern of mine because reviews that I read in the past cited slow sync time as a fault with other more expensive GPS devices. Not the case with the C230. The voice prompts require a little attention. In some cases it mispronounces street names or cities. For example, it pronounces the city of La Verne as "Louisiana Verne"; obviously recognizing "LA" as the state abbreviation and not a prefix. Also, in some cases the route that it recommends to a destination that I am familiar with varies with the route that I would normally take. However if I take my preferred route it will usually recalculate the new route to the destination quickly. One limitation that I would like to see corrected in future versions of the operating software is the ability to select more than two "favorite" destinations. You can store a large number of destinations and they appear in the History section. All in all, I think that the C230 offers a lot of features, ease of use and functionality in an attractive small package at an affordable cost.