Hardware: now with TV!

The Mio Moov Spirit V505 TV has a similar design to the Spirit 500, with glossy black plastic around a matte screen and silvery plastic finish for the back.  The only real difference is the size: it's now 13 mm wider, 2 mm taller and 2 mm thicker.  Most of that extra thickness is taken up with a TV tuner and the storage for the collapsable antenna.


There is just 1 GB of internal memory, which is apparently enough to hold the maps of 23 European countries that it includes.  There's also a MicroSD card slot and a mini USB port for adding more maps.  A headphone jack is also used to act as an antenna for TMC data, while a wall adaptor is provided to charge the battery.

The V505 TV doesn't have Bluetooth, so you can't use this model as an alternative handsfree kit for your mobile or look up information using Google.  It can, however, handle photo, video and MP3 files, and uses an FM transmitter to play audio over your car ratio.

Handling: easy, simple menus--but quite slow

There are no new features to report in terms of ease of use.  The same clean, simple menus are there, along with the 'Slide Touch' scrolling system that we don't really like.  We would have preferred some faster menus and a quicker way of typing details into the GPS.  The menus on the V735 TV seemed slower to us than on either the Spirit 500 or the Spirit V505 TV.  Perhaps it's because managing such a large screen is harder?

Navigation: powerful, despite the lack of real-time information

Navigation is clear, accurate and efficient, with help from features like Text-to-Speech, TMC, lane management and virtual signs.  It's a shame that there is no premium traffic info service, so you'll need to subscribe to that service for extra.