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Mio Spirit 687 satnav

Vocal performance

Spirit and destiny

Like all new Mio satnavs, the Spirit 687 uses TomTom’s excellent IQ Routes system to determine the optimum route based on time of day and historic traffic flow. Select a destination and the system will work through the options and present them as colour-coded fastest, shortest, easiest and most economical. Just tap the relevant colour option and Go and you are good to go.

Mio Spirit 687

The road ahead

As is the current vogue the 687 ‘learns’ your preferred routes over time but even after a week it was difficult to judge if the system, called LearnMe Pro, really works or not. Give it a longer learn period and your mileage may vary. That aside, I had no issues with the 687’s navigational judgement.

Mio Spirit 687

TMC traffic alerts are free for life

Mio’s maps are clear and easy to read and vocal guidance is clear, timely and succinct though the single installed voice is a little too female-prison-warder for my tastes. You can change this, but you need to go through the faff of installing the MioMore desktop application to add alternative speakers. The text-to-speech system does a good job of pronouncing road names while road numbers are read out as individual numerals.

Mio Spirit 687

Recent destinations

With a view to keeping you beyond the reach of the long arm of the law the 687 warns you of speed cameras on the road ahead and a chime sounds if you exceed the speed limit. You can very the degree by which you can exceed the limit before a getting a warning gong between 3 and 7mph – or you can switch it off.

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