Mio DigiWalker C720
The Mio DigiWalker C720 doubles as a 2-megapixel digital camera and has handy features such as free (in limited areas) traffic information, voices in 16 languages and three different English accents, and customizable speed alerts. You also get modes for pedestrian, bicycle (a bicycle mount costs extra), taxi, bus, and emergency vehicle travel (the last of which assumes that the user can disregard traffic signals and other rules of the road).
The downside of the C720 is its battery life of 2 hours, 45 minutes--shorter than all but one other device. This result may be due in part to the power consumed by the 4.3-inch touch screen, which gives you a clear view of the map in 3D or 2D, as well as easy access to volume and other controls, and plenty of information about your route (including the estimated arrival time, the speed, and the distance to your destination). It's also easy to see the distance to and the direction of your next turn.
Images shot with the built-in 2-megapixel camera were typical of pictures taken at that resolution, and you can tag them with GPS coordinates. Mio says that the C720 comes with optical character recognition software that captures address information and then creates a contact record. I didn't have much luck using the camera as a business card "scanner": It photographed my cards but didn't recognize text.
You can display photos and play video and audio files stored on SD Card or MMC, but you can't simultaneously use the media player and view maps--something every other media-equipped unit I looked at for this roundup lets you do. You can sync the C720 with your Bluetooth headphones so that you can listen to audio files and directions through them, and you can sync your Bluetooth phone for hands-free calling over the C720's speaker.
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