Mio A201

procopius · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jan 10, 2006 Posts: 2

Hi , i am just about to buy myself the Mio A201 , after trawling the net for reviews etc this seems like a pretty good GPS PDA for the price , what i would like to know is what else can it do , e.g can it play movies and what sort of games can it play.
Thanks for looking ( if this is way off topic , sorry).

madtam · Regular Visitor Joined: Jul 09, 2005 Posts: 78

Having recently acquired one of these I am tempted to ask what you want it to do.
I have added a lot of music and a section of my photo collection to a 1gb SD card and can listen and view these. It will also play recorded video clips. Yes games can be played on it and I am sure there are games out there that can be downloaded and played on the device. It is a reasonably well featured small computer and comes with the newish windows mobile 5 with cut down versions of word, excel, powerpoint and outlook. Paired with your bluetooth mobile it will act as a handsfree device in the car, or you can use it to make calls from. You can also connect to the internet this way although I have added a wifi SDIO card and can now connect to wireless networks without having to dial up.
For playing movies I would think you would have to convert to .wmv files and I am not sure what size of file you would end up with. If under 1gb then no problem, if larger then I can't confirm whether the 2gb cards would work although I see no reason why not. I would guess that you could possibly stream the data from your PC via bluetooth although what this would achieve I am not sure.
It does work pretty well as a GPS device but I haven't worked out yet how to get it to stop burning the toast or make a decent cup of coffee (and as for ironing, forget it).

procopius · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jan 10, 2006 Posts: 2

Finally went out and bought a Mio A201 and Tom Tom 5 , bit tricky getting Tom Tom to work took a few hours but simple in the end. Installed Blitzkrieg: War in Europe , works great have not tried any movies yet .

travelagent · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jan 27, 2006 Posts: 15

Madtam,Procopius
Can you say what it's like as a GPS? Any problems? I can't find any in depth review or much other user feedback except some comments on the Global Positioning Systems site. does it have a socket for extension antenna for car use?I'm considering this instead of the Mio 168 as a first purchase

Travelagent

madtam · Regular Visitor Joined: Jul 09, 2005 Posts: 78

It works fine as a GPS and it does have a socket for external antenna
but with the newer sirfIII chipset or whatever, it seems to make little difference adding an external one.
Compared to the 168 that I had it is a little quicker and the newer windows OS seems to be an improvement. Whether it is worth the extra money over the 168 I am not sure. At the moment the price is perhaps still a bit inflated due to higher demand because it is new.

travelagent · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jan 27, 2006 Posts: 15

Thanks for the info.That does give me more confidence to shell out the extra cash for the 201.I'm still not sure about which software to get.The Mio Map or TomTom.Tom Tom does seem more popular but again more expensive. Smile

madtam · Regular Visitor Joined: Jul 09, 2005 Posts: 78

I tried an older version of Tom Tom some time ago and although it had more add on feaures I couldn't see enough advantages over the cheaper Miomap. I have got the up to date miomap this time and am quite happy with the improvements. I have also got the full European mapping this time and having just visited a small village in Switzerland I was most impressed with the detail and accuracy of both the device and mapping.

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