Three high-end models compared

They all passed before our reviewing eye, and all at about the same time too: the Mio C620t, the Garmin nüvi 760T and the TomTom GO 920T. An excellent opportunity to compare the high-end models of the best-selling PND manufacturers in a 100% objective side-by-side comparison we thought.

Horror

Of course judging a navigational system is always a subjective task. When we talk about the appearance of a device, be it the display of the navigating screen, the menu build-up or the sound quality of the voices, opinions will differ. What one might find very beautiful or handy, the other might find horrific, and this is a good thing, because this only feeds our forums.

All this makes reviews (partly) subjective. Because even if we always try to be as honest as possible in our criticism, reviewers are only human and also have their preferences and personal opinions which will always influence the final conclusion.

Objective

This time, we’ll do things differently. Not only will we compare the three devices in a side-by-side comparison for the first time, we will also do this based on 100% objective criteria, because luckily those are also abundant. For example, there’s not much to be discussed about the weight of a PND, or the standard shipping of a carrying bag with the unit or not. Also things like processing power and battery life can be measured simply by using a stopwatch.

In this special, we’ll line up the specifications of the current Gamin, Mio and TomTom high-end models, without making any conclusions. The final choice is up to you. Which criteria are important to you? Which criteria help you decide if you will buy a certain unit or not? Have a look at our findings, and judge for yourself!

But before we unleash all this raw data onto you, first a small word of explanation...

Price

The prices we’ve included in the table are average prices which we've seen the devices being sold for today (22nd December 2007) in several web shops. We’re sure there are cheaper shops out there, as we’re equally sure there are also more expensive ones. But as said, these are average prices, and should give you a good indication.

Dimensions

We’ve measure and weighed the devices ourselves. You may find our conclusions differ from the numbers some manufacturers claim. We simply try to determined the total volume of a device by multiplying width, height and depth, but of course this can never be 100% accurate. On a small note, we also found it surprising to see that all three devices ended up weighing less than what the official numbers claim.

Use

To get an impression of the efficiency of the software, we've looked at how many taps on the screen were necessary to select four destinations. We’ve always chosen the same four addresses: one in Maastricht (Holland), one in Reims (France), one in Vienna (Austria), and one in Rome (Italy). The number of taps was counted from the regular navigational screen to the start of the route calculation.

Performance

Determining how long a battery lasts is not very difficult: make sure the battery is fully charged, put the devices next to each other on the desk, and wait... The moment when the PND shuts itself down was the time we clicked the stopwatch again. We’ve done this test twice for all PND’s: the first time when we were actively and continuously using the devices, and the second time when they were idle. We can already tell you that none of the three devices even came close to the battery duration values which are claimed by the manufacturers.

To determine the processing power and speed, we've let the Mio, Garmin and TomTom calculate routes with a stable GPS fix at Oegstgeest (South-Holland), because that is where we are located. For these tests, we used the same addresses as mentioned above. All route calculations have been tried at least three times, and this mostly resulted in stable values which we’ve extracted the averages from. The only exception was the Mio C620t here, who returned some very mixed results in calculating the route to the Roman address. The results varied from 66 seconds to more than two minutes. We (still) don’t have an explanation for this. In the end we’ve done this test about ten times with the Mio, and ended up using the value which we saw the most.

Data

This is about all the explanation you'll need, and now it's time to unleash all the numbers and features of no less than 40 criteria which we’ve compared for you per device. Questions, comments and additions are of course very welcome, as they always are.

For your viewing pleasure, we've also added another ten photos of these devices, which you can view below the table.

Enjoy the comparing!

		Mio	Garmin	TomTom
		C620t	nüvi 760T	GO 920
Price		€ 429,-	€ 479,-	€ 499,-
Dimensions
	Width (mm)	126	122	119
	Height (mm)	81	75	84
	Depth (mm)	20	20	26
	Size (cm3)	204	183	260
	Weight device (gram)	163	174	215
	Weight car mount (gram)	159	67	31
Also in box
	Car mount	v	v	v
	Charger 220-240 Volts	x	x	x  (possible via docking)
	Charger 12-24 Volts	v	v	v
	USB-cable	v	v	v
	TMC-module	v (in car mount)	v (in 12-24 V-cable)	v
	Docking-station	x	x	v
	Remote control	x	x	v
	Carrying bag	x	v	x
Mapping material
	Supplier	Tele Atlas	Navteq	Tele Atlas
	Areas	Western-Europe	Europe	Europe, North-America
	3D-landmarks & 3D-mapping	v	x	x
Technisch/functionaliteit
	Screen	4.3 inch touch screen	4.3 inch touch screen	4.3 inch touch screen
	GPS chipset	SiRF Star III	SiRF Star III	SiRF Star III
	Bluetooth/hands free phoning	v	v	v
	TMC traffic information	v	v	v
	Text-to-speech	x	v	v
	Speech recognition	x	x	v
	FM-transmitter	x	v	v
	Videos / MP3 / Photos	v / v / v	x / v / v	x / v / v
	Built-in microphone	v	v	v
	Built-in light sensor	v	x	v
	Motion sensors	x	x	v
Use
	Number of clicks Maastricht	14	17	16
	Number of clicks Rheims	21	26	21
	Number of clicks Vienna	20	23	23
	Number of clicks Rome	33	37	32
	Total number of clicks	88	103	92
Performance
	Battery life 1 (min)	91	141	169
	Battery life 2 (min)	96	152	170
	Route calculation Maastricht (sec)	6,7	15,6	7,5
	Route calculation Rheims (sec)	18,4	18,8	17,3
	Route calculation Vienna (sec)	28,5	20,6	22,5
	Route calculation Rome (sec)	(79,0)	57,8	29,2
	Sum all route calculations (sec)	132,6	112,8	76,5