When you first fire up the DigiWalker C520 it takes around 45 seconds to locate the signal from a few satellites and determine your position. The unit only has a power button, everything else is done via the touch screen. Some buttons are a little small and decent fingernails come in handy. Unfortunately it's not obvious what all the icons do and even the labelled icons aren't always self-explanatory. Turning to the manual doesn't help because amazingly there's no chapter on using the interface. It turns out those instructions are only provided as a PDF Quick Start guide on the supplied CD (which didn't come with our review unit). Why on earth Mio couldn't just include this as a chapter in the hard copy manual is beyond us.

Once you master the interface, selecting a destination is made easy by predictive text when entering suburb and street names. Once you've typed the first few letters of the suburb it narrows it down to a short list on the screen, then same again with the street name. You can also nominate stop-off points and even run through a flyover before you set off. Unfortunately you can only bookmark two locations, work and home, but you can access a list of recent destinations. The advanced settings offer a choice of taking the fastest, shortest or most economical route and you can choose your mode of travel from car, taxi, bus, truck, emergency, pedestrian or bike.

What helps the DigiWalker C520 stand out from the crowd is it's one of the first GPS navigation units in Australia to offer text to speech, meaning it can read aloud the names of the streets rather than just saying ''next left''. You're given the choice of 16 languages, many with male and female voices. Jason and Samantha are A-mare-ecans while Thomas is a Brit and Philippa an Aussie. Only Samantha is capable of text to speech.

While her pronunciation of street names was occasionally off, Samantha did an admirable job of guiding us around Melbourne. Driving through the back streets she does an excellent job of announcing street names and upcoming turns well in advance. Sometimes she advises of two close turns at once, to give you plenty of warning. She quickly compensates for wrong turns without panicking and is informative without being annoying. The display offers a choice of 2D or 3D map views and the C520 uses an auto-zoom feature that hones in as you approach an intersection to give you a better look.

Moving to the freeway, Samantha's speech to text skills allow her to read out turn off names and route numbers. Unfortunately the volume control is buried in the menus and we often found her too soft. The unit has a headphone jack, along with Bluetooth for connecting to a wireless earpiece, so it could be use on a motorbike for audio instructions with the unit safely stowed in your pocket or bag.

Along with the gift of speech, the DigiWalker C520 has many other blesseings. CONTINUED

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