UPDATE: Okay commenters, you’re right, it’s not the iGO interface, but it does appear to be the Navman interface, and not the Spirit. I stand by my Black Friday prediction though!
Mio just can’t seem to make up their mind. When we last heard from them they were touting the Spirit interface on their S-series units. I never got to play with one for more than a few minutes, but it seemed pretty clunky to me.
Well this morning we learned about two new models, the Moov M300 and M400 (pictured above), which appear to use their old iGO interface. But wait; Nav N Go, creator of iGO, suspended their relationship with Mio early last year due to “breach of contract.” Further confusing matters is Mio’s lack of retail presence in the U.S., which is pretty much confined to Radio Shack at this point.
Mio seems to be withering on the vine, while parent company MiTAC, who bought Magellan late last year, continues to improve the latter. So why introduce anything at all under the Mio label?
There’s only one way this makes sense to me – I think Mio is planning on the Moov M300 being a Black Friday star with wide distribution, the way the Mio 310x was three years ago. How low could they go on the Moov M300? $69.99 seems like a safe bet, but they may be willing to push it down even further.
Enough speculation; on to the specifics of the devices. The Moov M300 is a 3.5” model, while the M400 is 4.3”. Both feature maps of the entire U.S., text-to-speech, 4 million POIs and lane guidance. MSRP’s are $119.99 and $149.99. Both are slated to be available later this month.
About Rich Owings
If it’s at “The Shack” it can’t be all bad. 🙂
I vote we start calling it “The Moov”.
The user interface in the photos above is the old NAVMAN interface not the IGO interface.
BTW, the Spirit software is super cool
Dear Editor,
I read your article this morning and would like to thank for your valuable comments. However, there’s one thing needs to be corrected, we’re not using iGO in the M-serie. Please kindly update the information, thank you.
If you have any further question, please feel free to contact me via [email protected] or my colleague Michael Williams at [email protected].
We appreciate your support to Mio.
Sharon
Thanks for helping to clarify that Sharon. I’ve updated the post.
moov 400 is a very poor product. poor customer support,key codes and website do not work. save your money and buy garman or tom tom. anything magellan offers is a total waste of money!
Instead of moving people in your targeted direction with simple critics, you should gather/put some scientific data for comparison and sell this data through a fair subscribtion environment and let the people buy this reasonable membership so that we can make up our minds not the one on your mind. We are really fed up with this sick attitude and waste our time with these games.
I quite like my recently bought Navman m400. However, the website support for it is appalling. Just try working out whether there is a free refresh available!!!!