Well, my daughter was playing with the navigation and we discovered that it can be zoomed out & in.

Once you set your destination, select Explore in the middle of the screen. You can then hit the +/- signs to zoom in & out.
Also, once Explore is selected, a 'Pin' can be placed and navigated to.

 

Further, once in explore, swipe and the screen/map will move in that direction. Worked great last night looking for a route around traffic.

 

I believe the issue is, that when there is NO specific destination programmed into the Nav and one zooms in...... the Nav does not stay zoomed in, but instead reverts back to a non-zoomed screen.
Sometimes, it's nice to just zoom in while driving just to see the "lay of the land" (ie: local streets or places) without programming a destination. My old $65 Garmin portable unit does that as do most other portable and installed GPS units. This is definitely a shortcoming.

 

If this "explore" feature works to zoom the nav, then WHY doesn't Acura include that in the owner's manual? I now have 3500 miles on my Advance and enjoy the vehicle. What I have NOT liked however, is all the effort to learn or find out things that should be laid out in the instructions. My last BMW provided chapter and verse in the manual on how to do everything. Acura should too.