Okay, most of know the Nav system in the RL is excellent, but not everyone has had the opportunity to live with other "brands" of car Nav's, so I'd like to make a few comments based on my use of Garmin, infiniti, Lexus and Acura units:

- I also have a TL, and I was not looking forward to losing touchscreen capability. But now I think the RL's "dial" is almost as good and almost as fast as touchscreen.

• The main reason is the layout of the letters and numbers in an arc, as opposed to a 3 or 4 row grid like Infiniti's or Lexus's. Grids require you to navigate both up and down as well as left and right.
• Another reason is the way the next available letter appears over greyed-out letters. That keeps you from having to scroll past a bunch of greyed-out letters.
• While Infiniti, Lexus, Garmin and others also have autocomplete (unusable letters grey out), and predictive complete (the system guesses at the word after X number of letters), the RL seems to me to need fewer inputs than other systems. Type "San Fr" and San Francisco pops up, saving you lots of turning and pushing. Better yet, type a few letters of any name or place and you get a list of places starting with those letters from which to choose.
• Some systems (like the Infiniti's) require the exact name of the street (N.E. Oak Blvd), for example), and turn up nothing if you don't know it (Oak Ave, or N.E. Oak won't get you anything at all). the RL's Nav needs only "Oak" and then serves up a list of "Oaks" to choose from.
• The selector dial itself is located in the perfect place for my hand, and it works better - and in more ways - than Infiniti's dial (IMO).

- The graphics are better in some ways on both Infiniti's and Lexus's (Gen5) systems, but the RL's are more than adequate for the job, and the display is bright and clear and has a nice level of detail.

- The RL virtually always announces the side of the street the destination is on. This may seem like a small thing, but when you're on a busy 4 or 6-lane divided boulevard, you need to know which lane to get in to get to your destination. Also, in congested commercial areas, it can be hard to spot your destination place if you don't even know which side of the street it's on. That was a BIG issue for me with the Infiniti system. I often had to drive by the destination and circle back to find it.

- The RL's (and the TL's, for that matter) "logic" is excellent. That is, the methodology it uses for accessing information and destinations. After using Garmin units - which I believe have the most logical process - and Acura and Lexus units, the Infiniti system seems really awkward and at times illogical to use. Once you master it, I guess it's fine, but after almost a year and a half (and 10,000 miles in road trips) I never really adapted to the Infinti Nav's logic and found it difficult to work with it.

- And needless to say, the fact Acura allows you to access info while on the move is absolutely golden. Both Lexus and Infiniti lock you out of most info while moving (although some Lexus units have a backdoor way to re-activate it). IMO, that really cripples the usefulness of any Nav, since having to pull over and stop just to look for a gas station or check out restaurants or motels is both unsafe and enormously inconvenient. HUGE kudos to Acura for giving us credit for the ability to handle that task.

All in all, I'm really happy with both my Acura Nav's, but I'm happier than I thought I'd be with the RL's!
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The above are my two biggest gripes with the Gen IV Nav in my 2004 Land Cruiser. Not sure if the new Gen V navs have improved upon that.

 

Try comparing it to the ones in the Mercedes/Chrysler cars. Those units are utter garbage -- no touchscreen, no voice control, and you have to input letters one at a time with a freakin' JOYSTICK which is twitchy and slow as hell...

Mike, have you been using the voice commands? As good as the knob is, once you get facile with the voice commands you'll hardly ever touch it....

 

Is there a way to spell by name instead of by letter for a restaurant. For example I want to find the nearest starbucks. I can't seem to say the name and come up with a list, I have to spell by letter the entire word then it pops up as a list. Is there any other way to do this?

 

It does voice recognition for streets, not for database entries.

But, you can narrow down the category of restraunt verbally. So, you can't say "find nearest starbuck's" but you CAN say "find nearest chinese restaurant" and it will find the nearest restaurant in that category (I think it does American, Seafood, Thai, Fast food, Japanese, Italian...maybe a few other categories)

So, if you know the category that Starbuck's is in (eeew) you can narrow it, show nearest, and just scroll. Otherwise, you have to input the name of it but if you put in "STARB" it probably is good enough.

 

One of the main reasons for me trading in my 04 TL is because of the navi on the RL. I like it so much better than the touch screen. It's easier to use while driving and my arm does not get tired from leaving it up in the air while I pay attention to the road and looking at what I'm inputing. When we got the 07 MDX, going back into the TL was pretty disappointing. It was the same as when I went from our 03 TL into the 04 TL. Since we traded in the 03 TL for the MDX, the 04 TL was not the latest and greatest anymore. So I went looking for a deal on the RL. I can't say I miss the TL at all. I like how the navi tells me what is currently selected. I also like being able to tune the stations using the big knob instead of reaching for the tune knob on the TL. I also do alot of channel surfing and being able to browse by category on XM is a great addition. So overall I am very happy with the new navi. Forget the touchscreen. I'll take the knob any day. I find it much faster and safer. Hopefully Acura does not ever follow Lexus and let me keep playing with my navi while I drive. Better yet, hopefully nobody sues Acura for their own stupidity by getting in an accident and not paying attention to the road while playing around with the navi.

BTW, thanks for the insight to other manufacturer's navi systems.

 

Sorry - didn't realize this thread had progressed. Yes, I do use voice commandsa lot.

You generally reach a point , though, where you have to input something by the knob. When you DO, this one is the easiest to use I've found so far.
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I have navi on my '03 350z. It also doesnt have a touch screen. To be honest, when I had my CL-S with navi, it got dirty pretty quickly and always had tons of fingerprints. I do like the knob on my Z and the RL which I will be picking up this weekend.