I can never find anything by name, ever. If I just want to find a Lowe's, it brings up too many places, it is then sorted by a dozen sub-categories. My Lexus always found what I needed first shot. Acura is just too expansive with their options, searching the entire country, and being too divided, drives me insane.

Am I the minority on this?

I end up just doing a google search on my Iphone for address, and typing that in, but kind of negates the point of having NAV with searching capabilities...

 

Yes I agree with you. And mine doesn't even bring up my current location.

 

Well, I never use my nav to find places. I use my smartphone for that.

However, yesterday my nav totally failed to find a simple address in Brooklyn. I entered the city Prospect Heights (it's an area in Brooklyn) and it said it had no map data. Then I entered Brooklyn as the city but it wouldn't find the street.

Did I forget to update something?

I never had this issue with my '02 MDX.

Also, is there a way to get the dial to only click through available letters when entering a city name?

 

I agree with you. The NAV in my 2010 isn't great in terms of filtering results. Also it is slow to update positioning when I am driving through areas with complicated intersections or freeway connections. Many times I have taken the wrong route (you know instantly when you see "recalculating" on the screen) based on directions that were too slow to update.

 

YESSS.

I wanted to punch it the other day.

When entering route, highway, whatever.. I never know what to type. On my retarded Garmin I can just type the number (so if it's route 22 I can just type "22") and somehow that POS figures it out, but the acura cant.

Oh well.

Once I actually figure it out though, I have no complaints.

I have a new one sitting for m

 

Yeah, I hate mine too. Actually considered trading in the damn car because of the stupid stupid stupid NAV. Lousy route selection, difficult to operate, and no mute button. The Ford Sync/Touch or whatever the hell it is called is light years ahead of this thing, even if it is made my Microsoft.

 

Ford is shitting all over the imports right now.

Never thought I'd say it.

I don't like how the sedans look but the Explorer.... beautiful car.

 

Agree NAV Sucks

 

Yes, the search algorithm on the Acura NAV is a POS. On mine, it seems that unless you type in the complete name, it will never find a match, as apparently it cannot do a partial name match. On my Infiniti, even if I just type in one word from the name, it pops up all the places with that in the name that are reasonably close to me... The Acura NAV always seems to pop up something completely unrelated that is 3000 miles away. One time on the Acura NAV it returned something stupid on the opposite coast, unless I actually put the word "The" in the beginning of the search, because apparently it couldn't search on just the name, unless it had the entire name.

 

My wife says she thinks she figured it out, as one time I tried to search something, and gave up... She said I was doing it wrong. She said not to search by place name. She said to search by category, and select the appropriate sub-category, and then type in a name. She seemed to find whatever we were looking for on the 2nd or 3rd attempt. (Not perfect I know, but at least it was in there)

 

Overall, I love the systems. But you do have to 'learn' how it has been programmed. It can be far too literal and by default should assume you're more likely to be looking for something close to you, rather than on the opposite side of the country.

 

It really needs to learn that when I'm searching for a Greek restaurant, I'm probably not going to drive from Ohio to California for dinner...

 

Voice commands?

'Find nearest Greek restaurant'

 

I've never had luck with voice commands. maybe I need a refresher when I'm at the dealer this week

 

Primary reason for me not upgrading to 2012 (from '09) - planning to wait till 2014 now and hoping for a refined NAV with some style changes (unless 2013 comes with refined NAV and I just pull the trigger)

 

Yes this is the best way to find things nearest you. If you start by category eventually you can search by keyname nearest you. I wish the place name defaulted to find the places nearest you.

I've also had pretty good lucj searching by phone number. Assuming of course you know the phone number. If l looked up something while at work and want to find it in my nav, I have the best luck searching by the phone number.

 

I have an 09 and just bought a 2012, said I'd never do it because of NAV, but can't seem to find another SUV that can compete with MDX. all the options, high resale, reliable, etc. just can't be beat...

 

I hear you - for a moment I thought of JX but then the looks/driving exp. kind of kills it. So, will wait and see what 2013 or '14 has in stores and make a decision

Congratulations for the new ride..

 

Agreed. Once you figure it out, it's great, but until then, it's frustrating. My wife drives the MDX mostly and she's been using it proficiently. This is also why I opted not to get the Tech package with my TSX since 90 percent of the time it's my car to work and home, and when I do need navi, I'll just use my Droid.

 

I'll admit that after having Nav in a few cars (Infiniti, BMW, GMC), at this point I don't have the interest in studying how it is programmed...I just want it to work "out of the box".

I laughed at some of the posts above...I think all of us have at least once been given the address for a Starbucks or something 2000+ miles away.

 

And I thought it was a Canadian thing, sending me to Texas for a Home Depot. I don't feel bad, my employer drove a Mercedes that had Nav but he purchased a Garmin that he stuck to his windshield. He found the Garmin to be more intuitive. I wonder if the Chrysler products that have built in Garmin Nav units are any better. Sounds like a good excuse to test drive some new vehicles....

 

The one good thing about Acura's Navi is you can change it on the fly. Others, most notably Lexus and Toyota, you have to stop the car to make changes.

Here's a good one, couple weeks ago, went to LA on business, punched in the address, and the Navi took us toward San Bruno, which is about 20 miles south of LA. The Navi did show the address I input with Los Angeles as the city, and when we got to San Bruno, I checked the Navi again and it did say we were in Los Angeles.

I then punched in the phone number of the address I really wanted to go to, and the Navi had us turn around and head north to LA which is where it should have sent us originally.

The only thing that works every time is when you ask the Navi to take you home from where ever you are...no more overpriced Navi updates for me, thank you.

 

The following is an excerpt from the new RDX review. I think that this issue is going to permeate the Acura lineup:
Secondly, the optional navigation system does not allow you to enter addresses by voice while driving -- and it doesn't even allow your passenger to enter them via the interface (for safety reasons -- the assumption is presumably the driver might try to do this solo). In short, this dramatically reduces the usefulness of the nav system, and make it so you're better off skipping it and tossing in a portable GPS or smartphone with turn-by-turn.

 

We had a 2004 Lexus ES330 and it had the same safety "feature." I don't remember how, but I found a way to defeat this on line. The only downside was you had to defeat it each time you started the car.

 

To be fair you can sort these lists by distance.
I seem to find what I'm looking for without too much trouble. But I do hear what you are saying.

I mostly use it to look up client addreses and it works 100% easy.

And if I ened to find a Jugo Juice or Starbucks I can sort by distance so I don't have an issue.

 

Car and Driver agrees....

http://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/...er-test-review

 

I LOVE our Acura nav...but that's because I've held steadfast on keeping our 2006 with it's easy-to-use touch-screen. I felt the same way with our 2008 TSX's (obviously same nav). I personally don't like the dial.

Our 2006 is still ahead of my 2010 Mazda 6's nav unit. The ability to change destinations on the fly is huge, you don't realize it until you can't do it (I curse every time I pull over in the Mazda). Mazda's nav database is so incomplete it's ridiculous. I do like the free real-time traffic though.

My biggest gripe though is with the inconsistency of the Acura database (I know this is across the board because I've had 2007+ MDX loaners with the same problem):The end result is that your local Home Depot may be listed as a Building Center and you wouldn't know it...

Clean it up Acura.