Reg Review Mitac launched the first PocketPC with an integrated GPS receiver - the Mio 168 - in Taiwan last November. At the time, the company had no plans to offer the device outside the island and mainlaind China. An odd decision, that, given the growing popularity of cheap GPS systems in Europe. Germany's Medion has come from nowhere to become Europe's third biggest PDA seller during Q4 2003 - all on the back of its PocketPC GPS bundle. That puts it ahead of heavyweights Sony and Dell.

Not one to let such an opportunity by, UK PC supplier Evesham Micros decided to bring the Mio 168 over to the UK and, following Medion's lead, offer it specifically as a low-cost GPS device. The result is a partnership with navigation software provider ALK Technologies, which provides the UK and Ireland street maps and path-finding code Evesham bundles with the hardware.

The PDA

Mitac's Mio DigiWalker 168, to give the device its full name, is one of the most compact PocketPCs I've seen. Face on, it measures just 11.3 x 7cm, smaller than Viewsonic's V35, which held the record until now. However, the Mio isn't thin, coming in at 1.6cm - and that's before you taking into account of the 0.8cm-thick GPS antenna folded down against the back of the device. The whole lot weighs 147g, which gives it a sturdy rather than heavy feel.

It's comfortable in your hand. If you want to use the Mio as a PDA, you can do so without feeling you've had to compromise on weight or size in order to get the GPS functionality built in.

The 168 contains a standard 3.5in, 16-bit colour display with a 240 x 320 resolution. The viewing angle in both the vertical and horizontal axes is good, but not great, but the backlight is weak. Sitting out in the back garden on an overcast but bright day, I had to squint a little even with the backlight turned up full.

Since you shouldn't be peering at the PDA while you're driving, this might not matter for some folk, but if you plan to use the device for walking or even while cycling, it's worth bearing in mind. Half the point of integrating GPS into the device is to make the rig sufficiently portable for pedestrians. ALK's CoPilot 4 Live software even has a mode for guiding folk on foot, so it's clearly not a package aimed solely at motorists.

The Mio isn't the most powerful PocketPC I've tried, either, running a 300MHz Intel XScale PXA255 processor backed by 64MB of SDRAM and 32MB of ROM. Expansion comes courtesy of an SD/MMC card slot.

In addition to the usual Windows Mobile 2003 applications, Mitac bundles an MP3 player app, back-up and application launcher utilities, a picture viewer, and Mio Utility, which allows you to adjust the 168's clock speed in order to extend battery life or limit it to maintain processor performance. That's handy if you're out walking and away from power points.

Garmin shipped the first PDA with a built-in GPS receiver, the iQue 3600, although that runs the Palm OS. Like the iQue, the Mio's GPS antenna is a flatish unit hinged at the top rear of the device. It latches solidly into place on the back of the PDA, and when released rotates smoothly but with a little resistance. The hinge feels sturdy, and it didn't seem to me the kind to go loose on you.

Navigation services

The Mio's GPS hardware is redundant without software tools to make use of it, and Evesham has chosen ALK's Pocket CoPilot Live. ALK has been in the business of journey planning and fleet management tools for a quarter of a century now, and was one of the first to offer a PC-based route planner app. These days it's focusing on the mobile GPS market, and its software, now at version 4, shows some refinements.

The software offers four modes: planning, walking, navigating and guidance, though the last three are essentially variations on a single theme. Walking mode essentially ignores vehicle-centric features, such as one-way streets, when it's calculating the route.

Planning is about building up your route. Journeys are defined in the expected way: by adding a series of stops, the last of which is your destination. Stops are added by entering an address, either directly or from the host PDA's contacts database - a nice touch I've not seen on other navigation packages.

CoPilot also provides the usual database of places of interest - anything from tourist sites to gas stations to public amenities, plus speed cameras and London's Congestion Charge zone - and you can store two addresses ('home' and 'office') as regular departures and destinations. The software remembers the ten most recent addresses you've entered, allowing you to quickly recall any of them should you, say, inadvertently replace your start point with your destination, which is rather easy to do. It will even alert you when you're coming toward a point of interest - particularly useful for speed camera watchers, this.

CoPilot will calculate your journey there and then, allowing you to review the trip before taking it. That's a feature missing from other navigation tools, such as Navman's SmartST Pro, which will only show you the route on a map when you go into guidance mode. Since you're not always going to do your planning when in satellite line of sight, it's good to be able to check the details of your journey - perhaps you want to avoid a particular route you know to be bad - before you start out.

Move into Guidance mode, and CoPilot first makes sure you've got a GPS signal and then proceeds to tell you where you are and how to get to your destination. Sensibly, it offers voice directions, using voice synthesis technology from Fonix. The benefit is that street names and so on are read out syllable by syllable, sparing ALK from building a vast database of WAV files for all the possible word permutations the software is likely to need to speak out. The downside is that it's somehow more robotic, less reassuring.

Having tried both techniques - Navman's SmartST Pro uses the 'stitched together WAV files' approach - I'm not sure one is better than the other, but I certainly found Navman's voices easier to hear while driving. Some of the fault lies with Windows Mobile 2003's poor sound quality, but a few times I was unable to hear quite what CoPilot had said because of crackles on the speaker. That wasn't an issue with SmartST Pro and the iPaq it was running on.

Still, CoPilot does at least speak out street names that SmartST Pro can't because of memory induced limitations to the size of its WAV database.

SmartST Pro's maps are more visually appealing than CoPilot's but that shouldn't be an issue when you're driving - after all, you're not supposed to be looking at the screen too often. Just as well, since the Mio's display was tricky to read in the light streaming through my windshield.

Incidentally, both SmartST Pro and CoPilot use maps produced by NavTeq, and I found them to be both accurate and detailed enough for a test drive around the highways and byways of North London. Evesham ships CoPilot with a UK and Ireland map, but ALK does offer a Continental Europe separately on CD - it will sell you the upgrade for £100. Unlike other companies, it offers the whole of Europe, not individual countries.

Back on track

CoPilot had no trouble when we temporarily slipped into 'can't find the right road for toffee' mode to test its on-the-fly journey replanning. It got us back on the right route pretty quickly, and I was soon driving in the direction I was supposed to be going.

The software also provides a 'get out of traffic jams quick' feature. Tap the Detour button at the top of the screen, and CoPilot will take you off the main road and along the backstreets, hopefully bypassing the roadworks or whatever is holding up the traffic flow. There's also a button that will immediately take you back on to the original route.

I had an ideal opportunity to try this while stuck in slow moving traffic going up the A1 near Archway, but with the the unit mounted to the screen over to the left of the windscreen so as not to impede the view, I couldn't reach the tiny Detour button to hit it.

This is definitely a situation where keeping GPS receiver and display unit/PDA separate is a good thing. Had the Mio been attached to the dash, say, I would easily have been able to activate the detour facility. But of course you can't do that without losing the satellite fix.

So is battery life. An hour an a half's driving was enough to all but flatten the PDA's power pack. Having forgotten the bundled in-car ciggie lighter adaptor, I had little choice to go on using the PDA on battery. Had my journey been a long one, I'd have been stuck without directions after less than two hours on the road.

Verdict

Both Mitac's Mio 168 and ALK's CoPilot Live 4 software are, individually, solid enough products, and putting them together for £450 including VAT makes for a very cost-effective package. At £400, Halford's Medion PocketPC/GPS bundle is slightly cheaper, but the extra seems a small price to pay for an integrated GPS receiver and ALK's superior software.

I prefer Navman's Bluetooth-based 4400 GPS module and its SmartST Pro software, but it remains a more expensive if you don't already own a Bluetooth-equipped Pocket PC. And while SmartST Pro looks and sounds better than CoPilot Live, the ALK offering is tops for features and stability.

The Mio 168 isn't a bad PDA either, but it's let down a little by the screen. Inside the car, with no direct light, it's easy to read, but it becomes rather less legible when it's mounted on the windscreen attachment, which is essential if you want to get a satellite signal. That limits its use when you're out hiking on the moors, too.

But when a dedicated sat-nav system can set you back a grand, who's complaining? Evesham's bundle is undoubtedly very good value indeed. ®

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