Mio Navman 575 review

Simpler, smarter navigation. That's the promise of Mio's latest range of Spirit sat-navs, represented here by the range-topping Mio Navman 575 (also known as the Mio Spirit 575).

It has a huge 11.9cm display, built-in IQ Routes and LearnMe – a Mio-derived technology that helps the satnav adapt to your driving style. Hang on, IQ Routes?

Yup, Mio is now using TomTom's IQ Routes technology to help give you the optimum route for your journey, the aim being to help cut your travel time using driving info gleaned from thousands of other sat-nav users.

You can find out more about how it works on TomTom's IQ Routes webpage. It maybe a bit 'me too' for Mio to include it here, but frankly anything that makes driving around the UK road network easier is a blessing – no matter where it comes from.

Straight out of the box, the Mio Spirit 575 impresses. It's dominated by a widescreen display, which at 11.9cm is almost 1cm bigger corner-to-corner than rival models from TomTom and Garmin.

It's clear and bright too, making it easy to read even in bright sunshine. Unfortunately that's clouded by its relatively low display resolution of 480 x 272 pixels – which is almost less than half the screen res offered by some rivals.

The display is surrounded by a glossy black plastic bezel, which gives the Mio Navman 575 a total width of 13.2cm, within which you'll discover an indicator light showing the battery charge status as well as a a button that kicks you back to the Main menu. The unit measures measuring just 14mm deep.

The silver plastic back of the Mio Navman 575 is almost feature-free apart from a grille at the bottom left which covers the built-in speaker and a slot for sliding in the supplied windscreen mount.

On the top edge of the Miro Navman 575 you'll find a 3-position slider switch (On/Off/Reset), while the bottom houses a microSD card expansion slot and a mini-USB port which serves double duty as both a power port and for synchronising the satnav to your Windows PC using the supplied MioMore Desktop 2 software.

Inside, the Mio Navman 575 is powered by a Samsung 2450 processor running at 400MHz, and a 20-channel SiRFstar III and Instant FixII GPS chipset.