Mio Spirit 685 review

Unlike most budget satnavs, the Spirit 685 has a large 5in resistive touchscreen. Its resolution is no higher than the standard satnav 480×272 resolution, but everything is much larger and more easily readable.

There are also several other upgrades compared to previous Mio devices we’ve seen. One is the inclusion of TomTom’s IQ Routes, which uses recorded traffic speeds at different times of day and days of the week to calculate the optimum routes. There’s also better lane guidance than before, with a clear graphic of the motorway junction and a huge road sign that matches the real one on the road. We’d love this feature to be extended to every multi-lane junction, but so far, no satnav has this capability.

Another tweak is that the menu button, which was previously touch sensitive, is now a real button. This fixes the annoyance whereby you’d constantly brush the button while tapping the screen and end up looking at the main menu. This is unchanged and has five options: Find, Map, My Places, Settings and Explore. The sixth onscreen button takes you to the rest of the options, which include traffic information (the older and not as up-to-date TMC system that uses FM broadcasts), a trip planner and a button to take you home.

If you’d prefer the home button to be on the first menu screen, you’ll need to install the Windows-only MioMore application. There’s no mini USB cable in the box, but as these are standard, they’re very cheap. It’s a shame that menu customisation isn’t available directly on the device, as it is with some Garmin satnavs.

You can use a variety of methods to find a destination including points of interest near you, POIs in a city, address, postcode and keywords. The latter proved a little unreliable in testing, searching hundreds of miles for ‘Brands Hatch’, and finding nothing in its database. The next day, when we tried again, it found the racing circuit almost instantly.

Most of the time, you’ll enter postcode. Unlike most 7-digit systems, the 685 presents a list of road names to choose from, so you can’t simply grab a postcode and house number before setting off. Unlike almost every other satnav we’ve tested, it also refused to accept that number 35 existed on a road, forcing us to choose 26 – a house on the opposite side of the road. Another bugbear is the trip planner. This forces you to start the trip at your current location, making it almost useless.

There is good news, though. A new ‘recent locations’ option has appeared in the ‘Find’ menu, so you don’t have to go to My Places and then tap the list icon – an obscure place which took us ages to find in previous models. Plus, in general use, the 685 got us to our destinations with no problems. The text-to-speech engine may leave a lot to be desired, but the spoken instructions were clear and the auto-zooming map equally so.

We particularly like the choice of routes displayed when the trip has been calculated: Fastest, Economical, Easiest, Shortest. You can select more than one option to compare the routes on the map before making a final decision.

There are plenty of other features, including a trip computer for logging mileage and average speed, a walking mode and a ‘learning’ mode which improves routing over time after observing your driving style and routes. You also get safety camera and road speed warnings, where the speed limit is known.

Although it has its foibles, notably with the trip planner, the Spirit 685 is excellent value. A Europa Plus 44 model costs around £130 if you want maps of Europe, but you can also rent maps for 3, 7 or 30 days. As long as you can live without real-time traffic updates or Bluetooth for hands-free calling, the 685 is a great choice.