Mio’s 169 GPS PDA won our group test last year but the A701 is a very different beast. It’s fundamentally a Windows Mobile 5-based smartphone but, without any significant increase in dimensions, it also has an embedded GPS receiver. It uses the latest version of the MioMap software which we found to be well-featured and easy to follow if slightly flawed. All downsides are obliterated by the convenience of having everything built in though. It’s also good to see Mio bundle a windscreen mounting and car charger and that the screen can be rotated to landscape mode. Everything looks good on the bright, 2.7in transmissive LCD, though it’s tricky to read outside in direct sunshine.

Other features include a 1.3 megapixel camera, Bluetooth and a handsfree/headphones combo but unfortunately Wi-Fi is missing. Mio claims the 1300mAh battery supports 4hrs of talk time or 200hrs of standby. In reality we couldn’t leave it for two days without recharging it. If you want to use the GPS under battery power you’ll get about two half-hour journeys out of it. Charging and synching is useful, via standard mini USB.

Everything runs smoothly thanks to the Intel PXA-270 520MHz processor and there’s plenty of storage space with 128MB of flash ROM and 64MB of RAM. The GPS application comes on a 256MB SD card (there’s only one slot).

In general usage, we missed having an HP Mobile Messenger-like keyboard as icons, and stylus-writing areas are pretty small: if you’re particularly fat-fingered or partly myopic, you’ll have problems.

As to whether you should buy this in place of HP’s Mobile Messenger is tricky. The iPaqs have smaller screens and a keyboard which can be a bit fiddly. But using the Mio is not un-fiddly. They cost the same when you add the excellent TomTom Navigator to the iPaq which also supports quad-band, EDGE and Wi-Fi. However, the Mio is easier to use as a general PDA. Ultimately it will come down to personal choice, but the Mio still deserves an award for this great device.