nickchop

My TL-S will have NAVI. I spoke with a friend that has a Lexus w/NAVI and he mentioned that the Acura NAVI was difficult to use and that his was very easy. True? Can you save previous data you have looked up? What are some useful things that you can use?

bioyuki

I forgot where (JD Powers Survey I think) but somethign said that in a genearl survey, Acura's navigation system was the best and easiest to use. Its made by Alpine which makes the best aftermarket systems. Acura's Nav system is pretty good.

edgalang

If the acura's navi is considered difficult, then the only improvements i could think of is that the lexus one is somehow voice activated. the acura one is pretty straight forward. the only complaint i have is pushing the ok button when you first turn it on.

tgif

People said since the A/C control also need to go into the nav. screen to adjustit. I think you just need to get use to it. Once you get use to it. It won't have any difference.

My I30t had different controls between the Nav. and the rest of the audio and temperature system.

nickchop

That doesn't seem like a big deal to me, it does have auto-climate where you shouldn't have to fiddle with the fan control too much.

bebber

I've played with the navi systems in both the Mercedes S430 and the Lexus GS430. Hands down, I like the Acura nav system better than the German ones. The Lexus one is very nice, but I believe that you have to have your car parked in order to program it. That's a pretty lame safety-feature if you ask me.

Overall. I think the Acura system IS the easiest to use. It does retain a memory of your most recent destinations and I have been very very pleased with it.

I don't mind the a/c controls being built into the nav system either. When I show that a/c display screen to my friends, I just get additional oohs and ahs.

Tag66

But the I30t does not have a touchscreen interface. All of the controls must be done through the joystick, which I would think is a pain in the ass. I find the Acura system extremely easy to use and havent seen a better one yet. Granted, these systems are fairly new so technology will improve quickly and we'll see more and more cars coming equipped with them. I'm sure voice activation systems will be the leader at that point. Right now though, Acura is the one. And don't worry about the 'A/C controls' argument. I almost never go into it to manually control the airflow. Thats what the auto climate control is for.

tgif

But I don't like to leave my figure prints all over the screen. J/K

As I said before, all of us just need to get use to it. I think the joysitck feature is pretty good.

hunter001

During the recent Infiniti Q45 (Big daddy in the Infiniti line-up)introduction, the design engineers admitted that the Q45 did not have touch screen controls in the Navigation, because of the higher cost. Touch screen is much more expensive than the non-touch screen version. However, they said that a future Q45 might have touch-screen capability added on.

nickchop

You would think for $51,000 the Q could afford a touch screen!

DJ Iceman

My only concern with a voice-activated system would be that music or my own conversation in the car would be misinterpreted by the voice recognizer. I don't want to tell my friend that we're turning onto route 50 and have it think I wanted the temperature set to 50!

Unless it's like they used to do on Star Trek... "Computer, set temperature to 68 degrees. Computer, locate nearest drinking establishment. Computer, take me there."

chiawei

Own both Acura and Lexus with nav. Acura is by far the easiest to use. Moreover, lexus's are too button happy. Which I really hate, nothing is intuitive in lexus's setup.

Acura navi is simply by far the best factory system.

R Man

Both Automobile magazine and one of the other major car rags have stated that Acura's system is the best currently on the market. I think Edmunds may have said it too in their CL-S review.

Big Ped

Computer "get me that hot girl crossing the street."
Computer "yes the porno looking one"

Now that would be nice.

Firebird_EOU

It seems that Lexus has improved its 2002 DVD nav to be 3 times as fast.

Also Lexus has a touch screen where you can move the map by touching the side of the screen instead of having to use the knob. I have the TL 99 so I don't know if TL 2002 nav allows that or not. My friend's CLS 01 doesn't do that so I didn't think so.

thejavagod

I have the DVD navi in my Lexus. It has superior graphics and mapping detail compared to the Acura navi. The voice prompts are also terrific. Touch screen is much better - it is pretty sensitive to touch. And it is FAST as hell... veer off course and it will recalculate in a jiffy. POI search is also very fast (although it does not have much of a POI database :-( Mapping coverage is very very detailed, listing even small two lane roads in small towns.

One feature I love about the Lexus navi is the realtime map mode in which it will popup a screen of constantly updating street#s as you drive...pretty cool stuff! The Lexus navi also integrates all sorts of trip information - average speed, fuel consumption etc. etc.

The Acura navi is better in terms of intuitiveness, panning the map using the joystick is much superior than the ridiculous putting your finger near the edge to scroll or using the on-screen scroll of the Lexus! The Acura also has better sorting and a much more detailed POI database. The downside is that it is incredibly SLOW because it is searching the entire USA for each entry! The Acura navi's voice prompts preceded with the shrill 'ding' are downright irritating!

Overall, both are terrific navi systems!

Personally I like the Lexus navi better, its a little harder to use but once you get the hang its great! Just waiting for the updated POI database in the next CD.

BTW, the Mercedes navi is a joke. The Audi navi gives GPS a bad name! The retards at BMW could not show me their navi at the dealership because they did not have a CD!! According to them the customer gets it only when they buy the car and the dealership does not have any extra copies. It probably sucks.

tdoh

The Acura NAV is nice, but it could use a few features and improvements:

--a way to do positional correction on saved destinations, e.g., the actual location of my destination is not exactly where the NAV claims it to be. Okay, no one expects the NAV to always pinpoint exact location, but it would be nice if it could allow you to correct it. Nothing like inputting an address that you wish to add to your saved list and find out that it's half a block off with no way to correct it. Or is there a way to correct stored destinations?

--more zoom increments. Personally, I wish the zoom wouldn't jump from 1/2 mile to 2 miles.

--A way to display altitude without having to pull up the hidden menu

Minor requests/wants:

--Ability to orient the north arrow in all zoom levels, not just the 1/2 mile and less levels

--Auto-adjusting clock based on signal received from satellite. Yes, the built-in clock is more or less fairly accurate, but not as accurate as the GPS one.

--Show railroad tracks using standard RR map symbols rather than dashes. On a related note, when the salesperson was demonstrating the NAV to me, he pointed out these dashes and said that they were "breadcrumbs" so that you could find your way back when you drive into an area that the DVD doesn't have detailed map info for. I bought into this until I realized that if that were the case there would be breadcrumbs all over, and also that these "breadcrumbs" happened to be where known railroad tracks are.

In any case, I still like my NAV because of the large screen and that it's a color one at that. I don't particularly care one way or the other for the voice navigation, but that's just me.

Tony

Big Ped

I have o 2002 TLS. The one thing I absolutely hate about my nivi is that sometimes it takes me off of highways to go through local roads for several miles. Or when I select a destination it may take me through miles and miles of local roads when I could've taken a nearby highway and got to the destination in less than a quarter of the time. FOr someone that lives in NYC, local roads suck. Too much trafic. My Navi constantly does that and now I feel I don't trust it sometimes, so when it calculates a route for me, I feel I have to review the route patterns and compare to the map to see if there is a nearby highway or a faster way. That sucks, it should just be address entry and then drive to the destination rather than have to deal with uncertanty.

seqiro

I just press on the little picture of "me" (the Acura symbol) when I want to know the altitude (and latitude and longitude) at my location. I admit it would be neater to have it there full time, but it's not a big deal to me.

The thing I'd like most is more coverage. This of course could be added, and hopefully they will in an update some day.

Paul

coffeefingers

Dude,

Hey, I'm way impressed that I can get this system in car that costs less than $35K! Awesome deal!

I've never tinkered around with other Nav systems but I dig the one in my TL S-Type. It's easy to use without having to consult the manual all the time. It hasn't failed me yet in terms of finding the place I wanna go to. Sometimes I don't agree with some of its mapping choices but no biggie. If I knew how to get to the place...why would I use it? LOL. It seems to map according to the SHORTEST distance...not the FASTEST. Hopefully someday they'll make a "smart" system that will detect traffic jams and redirect you to the "fastest" route.


It's not "pinpoint" accurate. It's accurate to within a couple hundred feet. I'm not launching a cruise missle here so no biggie. A couple hundred feet is fine with me...I have eyes...I can look for the place. Even the manual said the GPS info it provides isn't pinpoint accurate...probably due to military restrictions or something like that.


Overall...I'm very please with it. Best $2k I ever spent on a car option.

Hey...it can only get better.


SLAYER RULES!

davest

I love the Navi in my TL-S. I believe it's about as detailed as can be, at least in my area. It even includes gravel roads I didn't know existed.

When you select "Direct Route" it really means it. It took me on two gravel back roads and through a military base to get to a friend's house I'd been driving to for years on normal public roads. Sure enough, it was shorter (though not quicker since I had to slow to a crawl on the gravel!) But simply selecting "Easy Route" made it use only the regular, public roads even though that was the more round-a-bout way to go.

I recently took a long trip from Northern Virginia to Southern Florida (and back) to my parents new home that I had never been to and it was correct 99.9% of the time. I wanted to suprise them so I couldn't ask for directions. I found them without any problems. At one point however, the Navi voice (I like to call her, Ling, as in Ally McBeal) stated "Stay on Freeway 'some number'." Well I had been on I-4 for over half an hour. Later she corrected herself. I told a Floridian this and they said that portion of I-4 is dual-numbered so Ling was correct.

I thought my dad would get a real kick out of the Navi (he's into cars) but it was over his head. He thought I was talking to a real person and didn't get the whole GPS/Satellite thing. It was my mom who really loved it. (She's a Trekky.) She thought it was the coolest thing and thought all cars should have that!

Is it perfect? No. Is it good enough? Absolutely and the best thing to come to cars since the radio.

daverman

The Acura Navi is great, but I have to admit it's rather "dumbed down", i.e. a lot of options are left as defaults and can't be changed. I'd like to always see the split-screen display, for example, but the Navi always defaults to the full-screen guidance mode.

On the Alpine version of the Acura Navi, there are a whole bunch more options you can set, including the guidance mode, "ding" or no "ding", how much prompting you want, Maximize/Minimize Highways, etc. etc. More options would have been nice!

Also, the Acura Navi on my car seems to have a real bad time filtering out left/right turn jitters. I've been progressively increasing my dampening coefficient (via the Yaw Sensor option in the hidden menus) to stop the car icon from jittering. I didn't see this problem on the previous Alpine navi I had.

And the road database is sparse. Only large cities are covered in detail--this is inexcusable! This is most likely a problem with NavTech's database. They absolutely must put every road on the continental US on the database by next year to stay competitive. I believe Lexus's Navi mixes in two separate road databases to get complete coverage. And why is there no database that covers Canada, Alaska or Hawaii?

Don't even try Microsoft AutoPC or any of the European manufacturers' GPS's; they uniformly suck.

tdoh:
Instead of storing the address by typing it, point to where the actual destination is on the map.

-- I think you can press and hold down the "North" icon to switch between heading-up and North-up mode.

--The clock is based on GPS time! All you're adjusting is the offset from UTC.

-- I don't care about the railroads They look just fine.

My wish list:
Allow me to change the colors used to depict things. I've noticed that the blue guidance line blends in much too easily with other blue-colored features.

More roads dammit. I want all the roads.

FTM-1

The Navi will take you some strange places if you let her.
That girl took me off the main highway one time & put me on a country road. I knew she was going A$$ backwards but I wanted to see were she would take me. When we got finished back in the woods she put me back onto the highway again. She was correct but this was not the fastest way. The count down mileage on the Nav was still going down so she never added any miles to that trip. I guess thats why we have the Easy & Direct Route option buttons. The Navi also made me pay Toll one time. I had went up to PA. one Saturday mourning from DC. I went to meet up with Einstein that was on this board we met & had breakfast. On the way I forgot to push the No Toll Roads button.
That old Navi girl had me pay a 25cent toll on some toll road in PA.
they have more than a few. I was only on that toll road for a hot min but she got me there. When I first got the car I programed in a way home. That girl wanted me go strange ways in the city back on streets with stop signs. I showed that girl I knew the way home & went my way. Please don't go the wrong way before she recalculates. If you are going the way you wan't to go & she wan'ts to go her way at first she can be a pain. She will start screaming that a U turn is possible over & over again. I love this girl & she can come on any trip with me. This Navi girl is correct 99.9% of the time.

SCWells72

I've had both the Acura DVD nav system and the new Lexus DVD nav system and both have their pros and cons. The POI search on the Acura is more straightforward; The Lexus optional split-screen interface is VERY nice (map on the left; next five or six turns listed in order on the right; zooms on on the next turn as you approach it); The Acura can be generally programmed while driving; the Lexus can only be programmed for recent destinations; The Lexus has not only recent destinations but also "Marked Points" so that you can add your own POIs to the database; The Lexus screen is larger with more detailed graphics and VERY fast route (re)calculations.

I could go on and on, but both are great systems.

Note that both are based on the Alpine DVD reference system, so they both inherit from a phenomenal base.

By the way, the voice-activated systems in the LS430 and the Q45 don't just listen to everything you say; you press a button on the steering wheel telling the system to expect a command and then speak it. Otherwise chaos would ensue!!!

pianoman41

[QUOTE]Originally posted by tdoh
The Acura NAV is nice, but it could use a few features and improvements:

--a way to do positional correction on saved destinations, e.g., the actual location of my destination is not exactly where the NAV claims it to be. Okay, no one expects the NAV to always pinpoint exact location, but it would be nice if it could allow you to correct it. Nothing like inputting an address that you wish to add to your saved list and find out that it's half a block off with no way to correct it. Or is there a way to correct stored destinations?


Well sort of. When you get to the "correct" location of a destination, press the satellite box in the upper left corner of the screen. Up comes your current position. Press the "Save Current Position" and it will add it as a previous destination. Now, whenever you want to get to the "real" location, choose this destination instead of the original one. If you save it as a personal destination, you can name it and always have it (as opposed to how it will eventually "scroll out" of the previous destination list).

pianoman41

I think he's referring to the fact that once you're zoomed out past 1/2 mile range north is always up and can't be toggled to orient north vs orient ahead. Although I hardly ever drive outside the default zoom level so not a big issue to me....

tdoh

Well sort of. When you get to the "correct" location of a destination, press the satellite box in the upper left corner of the screen. Up comes your current position. Press the "Save Current Position" and it will add it as a previous destination. Now, whenever you want to get to the "real" location, choose this destination instead of the original one. If you save it as a personal destination, you can name it and always have it (as opposed to how it will eventually "scroll out" of the previous destination list).

Sweet! Although I could probably answer my next question by finding out myself, I can't, since my car is at the dealer getting warranty work done, so...

If you store the "Save Current Position" into your list of personal destinations, can you add address info to it (I know you can give it a name) or will it just contain lat/long data?

Of course, I should just RTFM:o

Tony

tdoh

Will the heading switch work at all zoom levels? Maybe I misread that particular part in the NAV manual but I thought that it only worked for 1/8 and 1/2 mile scales...

As far as the clock going off of GPS time--great, it makes more sense to do it that way. However, does the clock have an internal mechanism for keep track of time when you temporarily lose the satellite signal (I know my handheld GPS loses signal when I'm on the lower deck of the Bay Bridge (SF), which is roughly 5 miles long)?

Tony

daverman

Um, you're right. It only works on the 1/8 and 1/2 mile scales. I guess Acura thinks that people will be spooked when they see an upside-down map of the continental US at the larger zoom levels! Heh heh.
Yep, the Navi has an internal clock, and it'll keep ticking away even without the GPS signal.