Mio C230 or TomTom One 3rd edition?

[MacTech]

I apologize for yet another "which one to buy" thread, but I have an interesting dillema....

I first purchased a Mio C220 at a good price at my local Radio Shack, sadly that unit was defective, it would lock up often, and occasionally get "Illegal Instruction" errors, even when I was doing nothing more than just looking around on the map, or plotting a course home, trying to see how well the rerouting worked

I liked the 3 million POI database on the SD card, it found some out-of-the-way spots I had forgotten about

anyway, i got fed up by the constant crashes and instability (I'm a Mac user, i expect my electronics to just work, crashes and lockups are unnaceptable), so I returned the 220, and "upgraded" to the 230, yes, I gained USB 2.0 connectivity (irrelavent, as my Mirror Door G4 tower is USB 1.1), more onboard memory and flash ram, Text to Speech, and an open SD card slot, but I *LOST* a lot of POI's

in order for Mitac to fit the entire United States roadmap, the Text to Speech software and whatever other dubious "upgrades" into the 230, they had to *remove* a large number of POI's, the U.S. version of the 230 has *only* 900,000 POI's, extremely irritating

the 220 was able to locate the three stores that my company has in New Hampshire (one was moved in November, just after the maps were finalized, and one was closed two months ago), the 230 didn't find any entry under our company name, heck, when I was pootling around the Boston, Mass map, I noticed that the Museum of Science was listed, but the New England Aquarium *WASN'T*, Apple Computer's listing, missing, even the Collective....err...microsoft was not listed, no wally-world or starschmucks entries either

on the upside, I *DO* like the smooth scrolling/zooming/tilting to 2.5-D that the Mio does, I like the predictive QWERTY keyboard, I like the automatic switching between day and night colour maps based on the system clock, the 230, as a pure mapping solution is very nice, the mounting hardware is very well designed and actually looks and feels *overbuilt* when compared to the TomTom One's "Suction-Cup-On-A-Stick" setup, however, the anemic POI database, and Mitac's noncommital stance on Mac support and unwillingness to provide U.S. customers with a POI database as a download, or maybe even on a *purchaseable* SD card for a reasonable cost is rather annoying, if the 230 had a decent POI database, it'd be the perfect entry-level/barebones GPS

So, I've been contemplating returning the 230 and getting a TomTom One 3rd edition, from what I read, I *LIKE*;

the customizeable voices, I'd love to get the John Cleese voicepack, but the U.S. Navtones site doesn't list him anymore, (predictable really, I suppose, act of purest optomisim to have posed the question in the first place.....)
the user-editable maps with free uploads/downloads of corrected maps
user editable/addable/shared POI's
with the editable maps and POI updates, it looks like the TT has the superior mapping and POI references
TomTom *DOES* support the Mac

I *don't* like
the "Suction-Cup-On-A-Stick" mount, I know other mounts are available, but I shouldn't have to purchase an additional mount just to make the TTO usable in my car ('07 Saturn Ion sedan, with a very steeply raked windscreen)
the panning/zooming of the TomTom's map mode, the "live" scrolling of the Mio really has spoiled me, I find the "drag and redraw" panning and the "Pixelated zoom and redraw" map modes of the TT annoying, it's difficult to precisely zoom the map to the level I want, due to the pixelation/redraw

as far as actual *use* goes, how smooth is the animation on the TT when actually in the car and moving, the demo route looked very slow and laggy, the Mio had a slight lag, but seemed to be able to keep up well with vehicle motion, it seems to have a higher FPS in both top-down view and "2.5-D" view, when the vehicle turns and takes corners on the Mio, the map rotation/panning is very smooth, yes it drops a few frames if it has to draw the marker taking a corner while speaking the next maneuver/road name, but generally it's quite smooth

how quick is the TT at recalculating routes, the Mio generally recalculates the route in under 8 seconds

and finally, overall, how do the two compare for mapping out routes in the first place, is one more efficient than the other?

I may just get a TTO anyway, as Best Buy will be having a killer deal on them on Black Friday (I think it's going to be $120 for a TTO-LE), that way I can compare the two side-by-side and return the one that I don't like (or more than likely end up keeping both, as "it's always good to have backup hardware", the words of a true computer tech ;) )

[philpugh]

Looks like you answered your own question there!

Trying both side-by-side is a good way of checking the basics but you would really need to take them both for a ride to see how they perform in real life. At the price you are stating for the TTOV3 - it would be hard NOT to buy one! It's nearly 1/3 of the equivalent TT One over here in UK

Screen re-painting isn't a big deal - as long as it works. Repainting only happens when using the device to do things like map browsing / route planning etc. When in normal driving mode the updates happen smoothly in about every device I have seen/tried.


As for the screen mounts - I don't like any of them - they block part of your vision, vibrate a bit and will always fall off at some point. Along with a few others here I am a big fan of the BRODIT/PROCLIP range of mounting solutions.
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Phil

[portman]

Can't you just get hold of the earlier Miomap/igo maps and replace the ones on your Mio?
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Samsung Mega
Tomtom 500

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