MIO CYCLO 405 HC
£349.99
WE SAY...
The perfect GPS computerfor technophobes GPS pickup is reasonable, it notes movement quickly and navigation is excellent
WEIGHT 186g SIZE 128mm x 72mm x 20mm SCREEN SIZE 53mm x 87mm SCREEN TYPE: Colour touchscreen, 360 x 600 IN THE BOX Bar mount (zip tie), micro USB cable, heart-rate monitor, speed/ cadence sensor MEMORY 8gb WATERPROOF IPX7 BATTERY LIFE (CLAIMED) 15 hours
Mio's approach is all about making a unit that’s easy to use. Set-up requires downloading software onto your laptop so that you can register and sign in to Mio’s own web-based hub MioShare. Here you can add your personal information and set-up any crossplatform compatibility, like Strava. The website even includes an excellent route planner that can upload directly, or you can drag and drop a GPX file into the unit.
Connecting sensors is simple through the smart interface with the Mio dedicated Di2 portal on its set-up screens. We connected power meter, heart-rate monitor and Mio’s included speed/ cadence sensor easily. Although we couldn’t connect with SRAM at all.
The main screen has six icons: Navigate, where you can access saved GPX routes and navigate to a point of interest. The History icon is where you can access previous rides. Surprise Me is where you can ask the unit for a loop of a set length and it’ll work out three route options. The Workout icon allows you to create a session based on distance, time, calorie consumption, heart rate or power zones.
GPS pickup is reasonable at between 50.3 and one minute 3.6 secs across our multiple rides. It notes movement quickly if you're connected to a speed sensor. Navigation is excellent, counting down to turns with graphics. Sadly, position accuracy does suffer some significant drift. Data screens offer eight fields over three pages, plus the map screen and the brilliant gradient screen, showing the topography of your ride. The data fields show gradient (current) amount of climbing left on the full ride and the distance to the next climb.
The map screen’s data fields offer similar encouragement with current speed and a countdown of the remaining mileage when riding to a GPX file. It does well on battery life, too, with a claimed 15 hours of run time. We got just over 10 hours of use when connected to gears, power, HRM and navigating.
It’s a great ride companion, and is worthy of admiration for its user interface and some of the innovative ways it presents data. Despite having Bluetooth communication, along with ANT+ showing phone call info, texts, WhatsApp messages etc, it doesn’t reciprocate information to your phone. There is no-app available for iOS (an Android app is available) so post ride you have to USB connect to your laptop to upload rides to MioShare and Strava.