Average performance for low price. Be prepared to take the scenic route.

NOTE - After using this unit for 6 months, I have to say that I must change my initial review of this product, which was very positive.

I have had 2 expensive GPS units stolen from me in under a year. (The first, theives looked for the suction cup mark on my car in a hotel parking lot, broke the window and took the unit from the glove box. The second was stolen by hotel housekeeping off the nightstand.) My decision to buy a Mio was a decision not to keep buying expensive GPS ststems in case they were stolen, but rather go with one that was cheap to replace. I purchased the Mio purely based on the fact that it was the cheapest unit out there. The first two units I had were Garmins and honestly, I wasn't expecting much from the Mio because of its $99 (on sale at Radio Shack) price tag compared to the $350 price of the Garmins I had in the past.

The Mio was a good buy, but it certainly does not perform as well as higher priced units. Be prepared to take the scenic route because the Mio loves to take you on roads that are not the most direct way to go. In fact, most times it will tell you to take any road that will get you somewhere that you pass. A good example of this is that I was going to an outlet mall in Princeton, NJ. The easiest way to go was the highway. Instead of taking me to the highway ... the unit took me on back roads. 40 minutes of back roads ... once putting me on a dirt road in the middle of the farm which ended in the middle of the woods. I had to turn the car around and drive to the nearest paved road before it told me how to keep going.

The best thing about the Mio is that you will not find a GPS unit that actually says the names of the roads at this price. For example, the GPS voice will actually say 'Turn right on XYZ Drive in 15 yards' instead of many GPS units that say 'Turn right in 15 yards'. This is actually very helpful and I was actually pretty surprised that this feature was offered in a $99 unit because I have not seen this feature on a lot of units in the $250 price range. The pronunciation is actually very accurate on most street names as well.

The most important thing is that this unit's directions are sort of accurate. The unit will always get you to where you need to go eventually. Although many times in more rural areas, that will be about 20 - 30 minutes longer than if you had taken the highway. There were only a few times the Mio unit got me completely lost. One time the unit insisted that the hotel I was looking for was 5 miles away from where it actually was and I had to call the hotel to get directions. (The front desk staff said that happens all the time so I have a feeling even the more expensive units had a problem with this address.) I travel extensively and usually have 4 appointments per day during busy months and 95% of the time the unit works without issue. Another time, it brought me to a location in the middle of nowhere that was nowhere near the place I needed to be.

Sometimes it will uneccesarily take you through the city when you can take a shorter road around the city. There was one time I was leaving Long Island and going to New Jersey. It brought me through Manhatten at rush hour, which added about an hour to my trip as opposed to if I had taken the highway around the city. It also wants to take me three exits out of the way of where I live to get on the highway to go to work, where there is a short road that directly connects my street to the highway exit. Sometimes I leave the unit on even if I know where I am going to see if it gives accurate directions. It is usually only in cities or on smaller highways that connect to big highways where it takes a longer route.

For the suburbs that are more populated, the unit works like a charm. It will bring you to a lot of different places with ease that you would normally have a tough time finding because mapquest would have to give you 15 different streets to take in order to get there. If you have a very important business meeting, you may want to print mapquest directions for a back up because the Mio map does have the tendency to get a little confused sometimes.

It did get me through Manhatten's busy traffic one night. There was a little bit of a 'lag' in the GPS instructions where I almost missed a couple turns because of it, but in Manhatten and Times Square, that is to be expected because streets come up on you so fast. It was a little frustrating missing the streets because the unit gave me such little time to take the turn, but when you don't know your way around the city like a cab driver it would be impossible to read mapquest directions while you are driving with all the pedestrians, cabs and crazy drivers in the city. I'd give this unit high marks for city navigation, although sometimes the streets do not look the same on the map as they look in actuality.

The unit successfully navigated me around San Francisco, which is another city where it is hard to find your way around. It only had one street miss due to the lag time. But it easily put me back on track. Without the GPS, it would have been very hard to find my way around.

The streets, for the most part are given quickly so you have plenty of time to prepare to make the turn. It usually tells you several yards in advance when to turn. If you look in the upper corner, it tells you which way you will be turning next and how many miles you will turn in. The only problem I have with the Mio is that the streets look a little different sometimes on the screen than they do in actuality.

The screen itself is nice. Some people prefer bigger screens but I like this size because there are less things to confuse. You always know what you need to do because of the cockpit view. There are menu buttons at the bottom of the screen that sometimes get in the way when you are touching the screen. Often times, it will bring you to a screen that you don't want or it will change the view or stop the route and the only way to get it back is to turn the unit off or reprogram the address. The screens can be somewhat confusing until you get the hang of them, but I do like the Mio's screen view better than Garmin's because it is easier to follow. The unit will automatically switch from day colors to night colors in order to make the unit easier to see. The screen is relatively glare free and I haven't had a problem seeing the screen even on bright and sunny days.

I have always wanted to try the Navigon GPS unit (reviewed fairly poorly) because it has real view of the highways so you don't miss the exit. The Mio has a tendency to show a very basic view of the highway which sometimes results in missed exits because it shows highway merges after the highway splits or doesn't alert you to them. Of the problems I've had with the Mio, this may be the biggest one. I have missed many highway exits or not taken a split I should have because the Mio took so long to show or notify me of the exit or split, that it was too late to take it by the time it told me or showed me to. Compared to other units, the Mio is worse when it comes to highway travel and better when it comes to streets.

Another bad thing about the Mio is that there are very limited points of interest. I frequently visit high schools for work, and it doesn't really show many. If I type in a city and then go to the schools point of interest, it brings me to high schools 10 miles away but not the high school I am looking for. The restaurants and shopping centers are another very bad category for the Mio. Often, the only restaurants it will bring up are local ones. Sometimes I type in 'Chilies' or 'Applebees' and it tells me there is not one for 35 miles, even though I know there is one nearby.

Shopping centers are the worst. If you look for shopping ... it will give you local craft stores and convenience stores but it will be almost impossible to bring up something like a Marshalls, TJ Maxx or Staples. This is very frustrating because even if you type in the exact name of the store, it either won't list it at all or give you one200 miles or more away. Hotels are the exception to this as it finds all of the national chains and gives accurate phone numbers and address for the hotels. The Mio site says there is a way to download a file into the Mio that gives you more point of interests than it comes programmed with but a friend of mine who did it said the process was confusing to figure out how to do it and it took over 8 hours to download with a high speed internet connection when he did. I have heard from reliable sources that there is a frequent problem that occurs when doing this in which the GPS unit gets corrupted and has to be sent back to Mio to be reprogrammed. I tried to find a Pizza Hut in New York which was 20 minutes away from where I was and the nearest one it listed was in Pennsylvania, 138 miles away which was quite ridiculous.

In terms of receiving a signal, it usually takes a while to get a signal when you first turn it on, especially on cloudy days. On sunny days, it usually turns on and brings up the map and location within a minute. I will say that it does tend to lose the signal while going through a tunnel. If this happens, sometimes you have to re-enter the address while driving which is inconvient.

The Mio does tend to 'crash' more than the more expensive units. You will be driving along and all of a sudden, the signal will be lost and the unit will restart. After about a 20 second loading period, you will have to re-enter the address which is bad when you are in the city. This happened to me once in Boston and once in New York City, which was hard to do while driving. It also happened a few times on the highway. It happened to me 3 times in the last week.

The best thing about this unit is that it is a size where you can remove it from your car and put it in your pants or coat pocket when you are leaving your car. After I learned all about GPS theft, I found out that theives often target out of state license plates on cars and look for suction cup rings on the windsheild even if the arm of the unit is not visible when stealing GPS from parking lots of malls and hotels. I do not leave the GPS unit in the car when I am not there and wanted something that could be portible and carried with me without too much bulkiness. The Garmin units I have had in the past were more of a blocky shape that would not fit in a pocket and had to be carried, which was a problem when I was bringing bags and items into hotels for check in. There is a weird thing that happens where the Mio sometimes will turn itself on if the unit is touched or moved. I have had times where I put it away and the next morning the battery was completely dead because it had turned itself on.

Overall, the Mio map is a very affordable GPS unit that performs okay. It has some of the same features and flaws as the more expensive GPS units. Aside from the low amount of points of interest, the difficulty with exits and merges on a highway and the occasional system re-load that occurs ... and the insanely long 'scenic routes' it takes me on ... this is an averag system for a below average price. If you are looking for economical and so-so ... the Mio is a good alternative to spending $350 on a Garmin.

It is reliable most times, it is fairly durable for its price range and it comes with a well made stand , which stays suctioned to the windsheild nicely and a car charger. It does not come with a wall charger or a case. The swivel stand is a little tricky to position while driving. A completely trivial issue I have with the Mio is that I will admit, I do miss the British Lady voice that Garmin has. The Mio has only a US English voice, which is clear and understandable, but I did like the British Accent on some of the other GPS units better.

NOTE - I am adding this information to my review. Lately, something strange has been happening with my Mio GPS. I've had it for about 6 months and only lately I've been noticing that it has been taking me on much longer routes than I need. I didn't change any of the settings on the unit and checked to make sure that they were all the same as before. An example of this is the other day I was driving from northern New Jersey to Princeton, New Jersey. This trip should take about an hour and 15 minutes. The GPS listed the miles as being about 55 miles but the time it would take to get there as being around an hour and 50 minutes, which is ridiculous for a trip that is mostly highway. It took me off an exit and basically routed me in circles through small town roads. To go about 12 miles took me about 35 minutes based on the route it took me. Then, the next day ... I was going from Princeton, NJ to an outlet mall which was 25 miles away. The GPS said the trip would take about an hour, which is a long time for 25 miles. It brought me through some windy back country roads and at one point brought me down a dirt road on a farm that ended. When I turned around and went back, it brought me way further than it should have. When I got to the mall, I looked at a map and saw that had I taken the highway ... which was about 5 miles away from my starting point, the trip would have actually taken about 20 minutes - 30 minutes max. Instead, I got to see some nice country roads, but it cost me 30 extra minutes. I don't know why it did this and it has not taken me too far off track before. It seems to be picking up the highways fine again now.