Magellan is moving past the highly competitive consumer GPS market. The entire sector will be sold off to MiTAC International, the folks behind the Mio GPS brand, at the end of January ’09. The future of Magellan’s three brands, RoadMate, Maestro, and Triton, is unclear but one thing is for certain: there are way too many GPS options available. Sure, everyone should have the ability to make their own products, but my god, there are a lot of GPS units on the market. The world will be just fine with a dozen-less GPS options.

The J.D. Power and Associates just released the 2008 Portable Navigation Device customer satisfaction rankings with Garmin taking the top seat and TomTom following closely behind. These scores are a composite of six factors that include: ease of use, routing, system appearance, speed of system, voice direction, and navigation display screen. 

Garmin ranks highest among portable navigation device manufacturers, performing particularly well in the display screen, ease of use and appearance factors

TomTom follows Garmin in the ranking, performing well in the routing, speed of system and voice direction factors

Personally, I have never been a big fan of Garmin interfaces; who am I though but a lowly gadget blogger.

JDPower via GPSTracklog

There are lots of GPS units out there, talking to lots of drivers.  Some people may even enjoy the voices produced by their GPS units. But only the Mio Knight Rider GPS can speak to you in the voice of William Daniels, the original voice of KITT from the Knight Rider television show.

Sure, it’s gimmicky, but it’s also a lot of fun to hear Daniels’ voice giving you turn-by-turn driving directions. I’ve been using this GPS for a short while now, and even once the novelty of pretending to drive KITT wears off — especially when your car doesn’t respond when you say “Kitt, I need you pal!” into your wristwatch — the voice of KITT is surprisingly pleasant and enjoyable.  If for some reason you do grow weary of William Daniels giving you directions, you can select the generic Male and Female voices.
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Several live shots of the Mio Leap K1 have appeared online. The half cellphone, half proper GPS navigator first started making the rounds in early June, but now that there’s live shots we’re excited all over again.

It looks to be a standard candybar, which in and of itself isn’t bad. Obviouslly you’d need to be some sort of GPS fiend (or traveler in a foreign city, like me!) to get the most out of it, but there you go.

Bourgeois things like price and release date haven’t been announced or leaked just yet.

via Navigadget

Oh, it’s true, folks. This is the real deal. The Knight Rider GPS from Mio has a tentative launch set for August and it is priced at $270. The software is still being worked on hence some noticeable sluggishness in the video, but it’s just a demo unit at the moment that’s pretty neat and definitely nerdy. I mean, really, who wants another plain ole GPS when you can have William Daniels telling you where to go with flashing red LEDS?!

Oh, and the TV show is going back into production tomorrow. Not sure if that’s a known fact, but I thought I’d share.

If your name is Michael and you’re into GPS systems, then have I got the unit for you. The Knight Rider GPS by Mio features voice directions by none other than William Daniels, the voice of KITT on the Knight Rider series. When you fire the gadget up, you’ll hear “Hello, Michael. Where do you want to go today?”

No word on a release date, but the price will be $270 when it becomes available. Peter’s got a meeting with Mio later today, so he’ll likely get some more info.

via BBG

Oh let’s just embed GPS in every little thing from now on.

Mio, known for its stand-alone GPS navigation devices, will debut two smartphones at a trade show in Taiwan this week. (Think of that Garmin phone from a few months back.) Surprise, they have built-in GPS!

Even more interesting, perhaps, will be a digital camera with built-in GPS. Why, if it’s more interesting, it doesn’t lead this post, you may ask?

My guess would be that the GPS in the digital cameras would be used to stamp each photo with your coordinates. “Oh, we were there when I took this photo, now I remember.” That type of scenario (and other, more innocent ones, too, of course).

How battery life will be affected and how Best Buy and the like will classify the cameras—they’ll need a snazzy new name to trick consumers—will all partially determine the cameras’ success.

But if Mio markets them simply as digital cameras with “cool new GPS,” yeah, they’ll do fine.

The End.

Mio’s dropped a quad of new dash-bound GPS units that are aimed at first-time buyers. The Moov series now has four additional units, the 300, 310, 200 and 210.

The 300-series have 4.3-inch widescreen touchscreens, while the 200-series have 3.5-inch screens in a more squarish form factor.

The 200 and 300 have 20-channel GPS receivers and built-in speakers for driving directions, while the 210 and 310 have the same with the addition of real-time traffic updates.

They retail prices for these new GPS units starts at $179 for the 200 and goes up to $249 for the 310 and should hit the shelves on April 1st.

Mio Technology ‘Moovs’ You with the Launch of New GPS Line [Press Release]

You know that cool feature in Google Earth where in decent-sized cities you can have 3D renderings of buildings and so forth? Mio Technologies is bringing that fun to the GPS world with the new C620 and C620t GPS receivers.

The map like most receivers, but simply overlay the 3D imagery of more than 1000 European landmarks. There’s no reason to believe that if the company brought these units to the states that the same thing couldn’t happen here. Cool.

Mio C620 GPS gives you 3D mapping display [Slippery Brick]

I had the opportunity to sit down with Physi-Cal CEO Liz Dickinson the other day and chat about Mio and their upcoming line of watches. The Mio line isn’t just another line of cheapo heart rate monitor watches, but more of a lifestyle watch line that wants to keep you healthy and at the top of your game. I’m a gym rat looking to finally get in shape this year even if it kills me, so the upcoming Select line has me fidgeting like a five year old waiting for the bathroom.
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Mio first showed off the DigiWalker C520 portable GPS device during the heady days of CES back in January. Well now it’s out there, waiting for you to buy it so you can go on all sorts of GPS-guided adventures together. You’ll probably first notice its 4.3-inch widescreen, which, based on some of the company’s other devices, should be more than adequate to navigate the mean streets of your local town.

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Mio’s got a low cost, entry level GPS receiver with your name on it. It’s the C220 and has a 3.5-inch LCD and doles out turn-by-turn directions (in English, Spanish or French) thanks to its SiRFstarIII receiver. Supposedly this receiver is the best one out there, so, theoretically, you shouldn’t run into the same GPS problems that I did trying to get a signal in the canyons of Manhattan.
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Mio makes, like, a lot of GPS devices of various shapes and sizes and just showed off three hot little numbers at CeBIT. There’s the C320, C520 and C520T, all of which have a 4.3-inch widescreen, touchscreen display and the latest Tele Atlas maps. Awesome. Mio’s also quite proud of its new split screen interface, which supposedly helps show more information on the screen than ever before. The C520 and C520T distinguish themselves from the C320 by including Bluetooth; the “T” in C520T stands for Traffic Message Channel, which, as you might guess, provides real time traffic info to drivers.

All three of these GPS devices will be available in April, with the high end C520T costing nearly $600. Yikes. Hope the C520T also comes with a golden ostrich egg.

Mio via Ubergizmo

Not only does the Mio H610 have a glossy iPod front, there’s a metallic iPod backing as well. It’s “cute, smart and charges with a standard mini-USB connector”, which more and more devices are using nowadays. What’s so great about it? It’s got 3D-capable graphics, anti-aliasing, a decent screen size, fast CPU (400MHz), MP3 and Video playback, and relatively decent price at $500.

The only downsides uber gizmo found were that there are too many icons to click when driving, and the screen is hard to read under direct sunlight because of its reflectiveness. It will be available in October.

Mio H610: The Sexiest GPS Alive [Uber Gizmo]