Mitac is carving out a name for itself as a maker of Pocket PCs. The company's latest Pocket PC does something quite unique - it is the first such PDA with a built-in GPS receiver.

Mitac expects to sell the Mio 168 in bundles with navigation software. The version we saw came with the Co Pilot software from ALK (www.alk.eu.com) and the equipment you need to mount the Mio 168 in a car and power it from the cigarette lighter. This is not a bad bundle for the price tag.

The Mio 168 itself is small and neat; its overall size would put it on a par with Hewlett Packard's much praised iPAQ h4150 if it were not for the GPS receiver. This sits on the back of the casing, fitting flush when not in use and flipped out at an angle of almost 180 degrees when required to earn its keep.

As the first product in a line, the Mio 168 gains some kudos simply by existing, but there's more to it than that. The GPS receiver works well and includes a nice tool that illustrates signal strength from up to 12 satellites. The Co Pilot software is impressive too, making navigation a straightforward task.

On the PDA side of things, the general specifications of the Mio 168 - while they don't win any prizes for being spectacular - are good enough. The Intel PXA 255 processor runs at 300MHz and there is 64MB of RAM of which 62MB is available for your applications and data.

A single SD card slot is provided. When you are using Co Pilot this is taken up with a card carrying key mapping information. This Mio does not offer any flash storage, so you will need an SD card for backups; Mitac provides some software to take care of this job.

Among Mitac's other software offerings are eMenu (which provides a graphics-based alternative to the Today screen), E-Viewer for looking at and annotating digital images, an MP3 player and the Mio Utility, which can be used to set the processor to conserve power and make a few other system settings. There is no Bluetooth or Wi-Fi built into the Mio 168.

The hardware design does not set our world alight, but it does not do anything drastically wrong either. The tiny joypad beneath the screen is fine for moving within and between applications, which is good as there is no scroll wheel.

We tested the battery by getting it to loop MP3s continuously with the screen always on, and the Mitac SmartBattery settings configured at 'auto'. We got precisely four hours of music and a further 25 minutes of battery life. You can't swap the battery for a recharged replacement cell when it depletes - but you do get that car-charge cable in the bundle.

Overall this device comes in at a fair price. We'd have liked flash data storage and maybe a wireless option, but as a portable navigation system with PDA features the Mitac Mio 168 meets requirements.