MIO 505 HC GPS Device

I'd recommend my Mio 505. It's a good unit with excellent mapping and good features re cadence, HR, speed etc. It's also fairly robust, I came off at circa 25mph recently and the bars went down hard. My shifters were toast but the GPS unit was undamaged.

Thanks. I have spent a while flicking through the specs on their site and my head started to spin!

It is annoying that Mio don't have a side-by-side comparison of its different units (or at least one that is easy to find). The 305 is the equivalent to the Garmin 800 series, the 505 is the equivalent to the Garmin 1000 series. The 505 (over the 305 additionally) supports bluetooth for HRM and syncing with your phone (for messages and whatnot) as well as Ant+ power meter support. With a bit of looking around the Mio website does have the specs

Does anyone know what the difference is between the 505HC and the 305HC. Is just the WiFi capability or have I missed something?

Mio seem to be having issues at the moment with their 4.2 update - issued and hastily withdrawn, been a couple of months now and they still can't fix it (although it's ok elsewhere in the world). Had a Mio 505 running 4.1 - can't fault the navigation side of it, turn by turn works near faultlessly - plan a route using ridewithgps or similar - export a gpx and drop it into the Mio. Agreed, their portal is awful, but you don't need it. Tried the same t-b-t on a Garmin 800 - hopeless, didn't work at all. My concern with the Mio was battery life - seemed to be 8 hours max. It’s a little bulky but not too bad. Sold it in the end as didn't need it for navigation for a while - I'm waiting for navigation on the Polar V650 for when I need it next. Have a look at cyclogps.com for Mio info.

I've been looking at these, 505 vs Garmin 810/touring+

Before you make a decision look at the web sites used that each syncs their data with. You don't have to have a device to register & try them out.

I found the "Mioshare" one very, very basic indeed. The Garmin one seems much better, both not as good as ridewithgps.com, though that is another £40/year sub for more advanced features.

If all you're doing is syncing with Strava the above probably doesn't matter so much.

Hey road.cc, that would make a great article... mapping website supertest.

this might be useful

http://road.cc/content/review/116620-mio-cyclo-505-hc-gps-computer