I went through the same debate that I think others go through when considering the TL with or without NAVI. I can remember a reluctance to spend 2K for a computer with a seemingly limited function set. I do not travel on new roads very often; in fact I commute to the office the same route everyday, with only little variations in the trip. And besides, I was born in this town. I know these roads like the back of my hand, right? So why would I need a NAVI?

Well, I ended up purchasing the NAVI, and I’m glad I did. I use the NAVI almost every day, and here are some of the ways how…

Sometimes, while driving to work, traffic starts to backup. I see red taillights in front of me and I know I’m heading into trouble. I glance down at the navi screen, and I immediately see alternate routes. I get real-time answers to questions like… Does this road go through? If I make a right turn here, can I get to XX street? Or, if I turn right here, is there a school nearby where I may encounter a school zone delay?
Now that XM has introduced a traffic and weather channel for my area, I use this with the navi to consistently shave traffic time off my daily routine.

On weekends, my wife and I often get lazy and may be undecided about dinner. We just get in the car and do the “find nearest” trick; sometimes Chinese, sometimes Italian, sometimes seafood, whatever. If you’d rather just do takeout, use the DIAL option to (Bluetooth) phone in your order. The navi guides you right to the door of the restaurant, and your order may be ready, or at least in process.

A few times, while finding a particular address, I have second-guessed the navi, and been wrong. I thought I knew better, and disregarded the navi; only to find out that I should have listened.

In retrospect, I appreciate the navi more often than I thought I would. For me, it has been like TiVo, I never knew I needed it until I got it; now I am not sure I could ever go back.

 

glad you are happy with it.

to each his own.

I am using the 2k to buy a plasma tv and an atlas. (ok, the tv was 2200, but close enough).

 

yano,

I couldn't agree more with you.

 

 

i agree
NAVI is awesome and finishes off the dash nicely

 

This is my third car with navigation. I wouldn't buy a car without it. Apart from the navi you also get the voice control and the bluetooth kit. All features that i absolutely love about this car.

 

dash wouldnt br right with out

 

Besides, the plasma will need to be recharged before long, and reading an atlas while driving is nutty.
Navi's the better option, as yano so eloquently put it. Even travelling the same roads, I'm able to give reliable ETAs based on the Navi.

 

i love my navi, its a great feature on the car.

 

The navigation has been more of a toy for me so far, but glad I have it. The current navigation is light years ahead of the Nissan offering. I was test driving an Armada and the salesman could not figure out why I kept touching the screen. Plus, only a 7 inch screen and not as intuitive. Acura/Honda got it right with the navigation. Quite honestly it is the XM radio I would not give up.

 

The TL without navigation is like a football helmet without a facemask. A bicycle without handlebars. A dog with only three paws. To buy a car whose entire dash is built around a single element and then opt to remove that element is criminal.

A non-nav TL is an incomplete vehicle. I am hoping that it is no longer an option in '05.

BJ

 

Last night, the wife and I visited a restaurant in the eastern end of our county. Traffic, congestion, and business activity in that part of the county is quite busy and hectic. We haven't been to this restaurant in a year and so I dialed in the info to my Nav as I pulled out of my driveway. I knew enough how to get within a few miles of the place and it was interesting that the Nav had to recalculate my route several times as I drove there. But it all worked out perfectly the first time through without a hitch and without a wrong turn.

At first, I didn't want the Nav since I wasn't convinced that it was all that much worth it. But putting things in perspective, I would bet a bunch that when the time comes to sell or trade the car, whether or not you have Nav is going to be a question asked by any potential buyer or car dealer. So I get to use it for the duration of my ownership and most likely get a fair amount of the cost back at the end of the game.

 

I would bet a bunch that when the time comes to sell or trade the car, whether or not you have Nav is going to be a question asked by any potential buyer or car dealer. So I get to use it for the duration of my ownership and most likely get a fair amount of the cost back at the end of the game.[/QUOTE]

 

I think I made that point, though I tend to not think of it as an investment. I agree that future owners will want it as Navi becomes common in more models.

 

i got some OZ rims with the 2k i saved. all of the trips this TL does are 1-off's, so mapquest works fine.

if you (orignal poster yano) does alot of unknown trips then navi is for you. 2k (+tax +financing) was not a value add for me to have lcd and voice commands that would get rarely used.

 

I've now taken three major road trips in the last year in my TL, and haven't had to pull out a map yet because I bought the navi. All I do is plug in the address I'm going to in an unfamiliar city, and SHAZAM! directions. If I get off route a little, the navi reroutes me, no muss, no fuss.

I used to be in the anti-navi camp, but changed my mind for this car. I will hopefully never buy a car without navi again!

 

To fast-tl;

Yep, few cars are investments, that's for sure. Though it's interesting to see now that the baby boomers who were "car-age" in the '60s are not seeking out and buying American supercars in droves. Either locating one that is in bad need of a body-off restoration or finding one where this has already been done, these people are either former owners of this type of car or wished they had been but missed the chance or were too young at the time. You see pristine 'Vettes commanding prices in and over the $100,000 range. And at the head of the class are the extremely rate 1966 427 A/C Cobras (only 351 were made as I recall and less than 50 exist in the world), and the early '70s Plymouth HEMI Cuda. There was a time in the 1990s when the aforementioned Cobra was demanding $1,000,000 (yes, a million) for a clean number-matching car.

Incidently, 53 (I think this number is also right) of the 1966 427 A/C Cobras were not actually 427s. They had the 428 engine which was not as good as the 427 NASCAR side-oiler engine, making only 355 HP instead of 485 as in the 427.

There are a few other cars which can demand more at sell time than their original price, but certainly few and far between.

 

I agree with Yaho.

Navi is extremely helpful. Can't wait for the 2004 DVD update (unknown timeframe) for new restaurants, etc.

 

When I bought my first TL... I had every intention of getting the navi. Somehow... due to the dealers limited stock... the salesman talked me out of it.


I spent the next 6 months regretting that decision... and finally traded my TL in for my first CL WITH Navi.....

It has paid for itself 1000x over in every vehicle ive purchased since.


I will never ever ever buy a vehicle without a navi.


Forget DIRECTIONS. The life-saver is DETOURS.


I have probably... over the course of the last 4 years that I've had vehicles with a navi... saved 50-100 hours of sitting in traffic all in part to the DETOUR functionality of the navi.

 

I would've preferred the NAVI. The interior looks nicer with it and it is a very cool feature. But, I chose non-NAVI because I think the price is waaaaaaaaaaaaay too high. For $500-700 I would get NAVI, not for $2000 or realistically at the time I bought my TL, $3000. Simply not worth it to me.

 

try the points test.

1 point for YES
0 point for NO

YES or NO

1) do you mapquest once per day?
2) have you even gotten really really lost?
3) have you ever been detoured only to get lost?
4) do you want voice commands which call all be done by hand?
5) is there more than one driver unfamilar with getting around?
6) do you carry loads of maps in the car?

i'd say get navi if you scored 3 or more points, or get it just to have it (be cool), or don't get it.

in my book my $$$ is valued, and what i buy must have my value. some posters are saying it may help sell or retain residual in the future, won't know until then....

 

know why cars have "options", because they make the dealer money. i'm hypothesizing using data others have posted about the deals they were offered w/ and w/o navi, that the dealer is probably making $800 off of navi option when it costs an extra $2k.

navi is nothing more than non-sophisticated trianglulation circuitry, lcd interface, and some data stored on dvd.

 

If i had to do it again....I would have bought the NAVI....I'm actually considering selling my '04 and buying the '05 with NAVI...hmmmm?

 

same here. my wife dig's the navi, i do not. i lose because it's my wife's car. my 04 is for sale up on cars.com

however, i'm not pushing the sale of it, if someone buys it then i get a 05 navi, if not i keep driving my 04. HO tint goes on the end of this week and Eibach springs next week.

i will not pursue a 05 until at least may of 2005.

 

non-sophisticated? Maybe you need to see the diag screen that shows all of the GPS satellites as they appear in the sky. I'd say the ability to track 10+ satellites, access a huge multi-gigabyte on-board database, and do decent voice recognition is far from non-sophisticated. (But then, I'm a software engineer, I know how hard it is to get any of this stuff to work so well)

 

the navi adds so much much to the interior and it is just a great overall feature to have I have used mine more than I would have ever expected, I love driving around and having the navi to direct me.
GET IT

 

I scored zero. Looks like I made the right choice!

Mike

 

You forgot to add in the non-sohpisticated integration with the hands-free link system for hands-free dialing of POIs, and the non-sophisticated solar-sensing climate control that comes with the NAVI option, not to mention the software that uses the data on the DVD to reroute you automatically and lead you to the nearest emergency service or convenience service at a whim, and without heading to mapquest.

From some I sometimes wonder if people even research such things before purchasing...it's hard to win credibility using such oversimplified explanations as above.

 

....besides it looks cool.

 

Yup. You're right, cvjais. Oh, and your comment was a non-sophisticated bag of letters with commas, hyphens, and periods.

Hmmm ... the TL is a non-sophisticated combustion engine with some wheels and 5 seats. I should have bought a Hyundai.

Until you write software for a living, you'll have no idea how many hundreds of man-years were spent on designing/building/testing/database collection for the Navi in the Acura TL.

Collecting the navigation data for the entire United States is an unbelievably complex and time-consuming task, with the data changing on a daily basis. That's why there's only a handful of companies on the planet (Navteq is one) that sell this data to eveyone else.

Anyways ...

Even though I know my city pretty well (it's laid out in a modern "1-mile square grid" arrangement), I'm surprised how handy the Navi has been.

Just yesterday, I had to drive to a meeting with a room-full of lawyers. I was unaware that there was a ton of street construction around the area, and this area deviates from the city's "straight-street" layout.

The Navi's recalculation detoured me around the construction - getting me easily in & out of some unfamiliar territory. When I got to the meeting, one of the lawyers commented on how getting to the office around the construction was a pain-in-the-bvtt. The other lawyers commented similarly. I said, "I sure am glad that I got the Navi in my car. I got here without a problem." A few of the lawyers mentioned that they were considering getting a Navi in their next car, and asked how well it worked. I gave the TL Navi a glowing review, of course.

The Navi is kind of like climate control, ABS, and the V-TEC. You may not use it all the time, but when you do use it - you sure are glad it is there (and wondered how you survived without it)!

 

I didn't get the Navi, but I wish I had.

My main complaint is that the "standard" LCD severely limits the XM display, breaking the info into several truncated lines which are only displayed one-at-a-time. To see everything, you have to page through multiple screens. With Navi, you get all the info onscreen simultaneously, in its entirety.

Even without the Navi, Acura could have put a much more capable display in the car.

 

well, i never said collecting data was easy.

do you have any idea why ABS was invented?? because most people do not know how to properly brake using non-abs systems, and if you take some time to search you can find some articles about how under the "right" foot non-abs is better.

i have done programming, regex, c, pascal, perl, java, and many others, all not terribly difficult.

when did combustion engines become sophisticated?? you mean the control systems have become sophisticated, like more sensors, etc. pistons, valves, crankshaft, and cam shafts have not changed is a very long time.

do you know about magnetic valve train, now that's sophisticated, so much so the engine does not require a starter.

so yeah (IMHO), i guess i'm sticking to my non-sophisticated statement.
cheers

 

i did not know solar sensor was a navi thing. i dont have navi, i do have solar sensor.

 

folks, you are all jazzed up about what navi does "tracking satellites" "extended voice commands", etc.

if you look at where "we" are today in technology, the navi just seems like some older technology jammed into a automobile. navi is nothing new, just now is available for an extra $2k out of your wallet.

i'm not saying navi is bad, or dont get it. i'm just saying the $2k price is steep.

OK, to appease the navi folks, i'm advocating to GET THE NAVI, it's the best new thing since sliced bread.

 

We bought a Magellin Roadmate for our Odyssey since it didn't come with Navi. After using the Navi on the TL, the Roadmate was almost useless. It was frustrating to use, and lacked many of the features built into the TL. For example, if you want to find the nearest restaurant you have to cancel your route, then plot a route to a restaurant. You can't just display the icons like you can do on the TL.

Also, having the voice commands is a major benefit that the aftermarket devices just don't support.

I would definately recommend the Nav, and I would be wary of thinking that you'll get the same benefit with an after-market solution.

 

I purchased a Navman ICN630 to use in my 03 TL-S. My wife and I travel a couple times a year
and it has more than paid for itself, especially when we visited Washington, DC. I am getting ready
to trade for an 05 TL and would not go without the Navi.

 

Actually ABS came from Anti Skid Brake System, used in airplanes. As you know, braking an airplane full with passengers, in a snowy airstrip is not an easy task. ABS incoporates the same idea in a car.

And yes, under the right foot non ABS system is better, as ABS still locks the wheels, but just for a small periods of time.

 

You're right Navi is a few years old .. the technology that people are impressed with isn't just the ability to track location, its things like the user interface, not just the buttons you push or commands you speak, but the whole experience, the ease of navigating through the system, the intuitiveness, all make this more than just the ability to link up to a few satellites in the sky .... personally I got mine as a toy and now couldn't do without it.

 

My boss is buying a Z06, so we were on the Chevy site pricing them out. The Chevy navi system is only $1600 MSRP.

These navi systems have got to come down over time. Hopefully in the future they will become standard equipment.

 

Our rationale for purchasing a non-navi TL was due to the cost/benefit aspect, as well as the perceived value on down the road (when selling the vehicle).

The cost/benefit decision was heavily influenced by the fact that we've never owned a car with navi - so it was not an option that we would miss. We've got analog versions (maps), and our location and travel patterns don't require a sophisticated navi system.

Regarding the future value of this option, I just can't imagine this system will significantly influence the resell value of the TL 5-6 years from now. We considered the quick lifecycle times of application-specific digital processors, which are quickly obsolesced by the race to faster speeds, and lower prices driven by Moore's law. I remember the funny-looking CRTs embedded in the center stack of late 80's GM cars (Riviera for example).

In typical Honda/Acura fashion, a $2,000 navi system was the only option available when buying the car (aside from available A-spec). That was a little too steep given my above-mentioned views. The biggest unknown is whether or not the navi option would be a 'must-have' by a buyer when I try to sell the car on down the road. Probably not an issue for folks that cycle through cars every 2-3 years.

Discuss....

PS - To prevent unnecessary flaming - I am also advocating the navi option! It is so cool! (but not as cool as six-speed manual / LSD / Brembos)