Nav DVD Version 3.60 Brief Review
 

We received our new Version 3.60 orange DVD from Acura yesterday, and I just had a chance to try it out. Seems like a good buy. While I couldn't find any new features (and I did look), the roads and POI's in my area and other places in California are clearly updated. I only spent 15 minutes checking it out, but here's what I found:

* In my home town, Folsom CA, I found that roads and restaurants built in the last 1-2 years that were not on the 3.5 DVD are now included. In fact, I had some "bread crumbs" left over in one new shopping development from a previous trip using the old DVD, but now a road is shown right alongside them.

* In Marysville, CA, a reconfigured interchange that was out of date in the old DVD is now correct. I'm not sure when the work was completed, but I'd say less than 6 months by the looks of things.

* In Vallejo, CA, the nav used to tell us to take a freeway offramp and then jump right back on when we had a route that used the interstate through there. It was clearly an error. That now appears to be fixed (I plotted a route through that area and then zoomed way in to verify that the route stayed on the freeway).

* Now I may be crazy on this one, but route calculations appear to be about 50% faster! No, I did not take the time to run comparison tests. Maybe it's just my imagination, but it sure seems faster. Someone who has more time than I will hopefully test this. Word of advice to the person who tries... BEFORE you swap disks for the first time, measure the calculation time on a few routes, then swap to the new disc and try again. I'm pretty sure once you swap discs, you can't go backwards without a dealer's help.


So for me, this was a good buy. For someone in another state, the data updates might not be as good. Good luck!

how much did u buy it for?

$199. Yeah, it's really too much. But that's what they go for. And we use the navi a lot.

I just received mine and loaded it.

I did do a test with the same address and with the 3.40 disc it took 12 seconds to calculate a route and with the 3.60 it took 8 so I guess there is a small decrease in time.

I'm happy in that 99% of the map complaints I had with the 3.40 disc have been corrected with the 3.60 except for one which I consider to be a very glaring omission.

Here in Austin, US 183 North was slowly being converted from a 4 lane divided highway with lights, to a major freeway. They would finish it in sections. I think they finally finished everything almost 2 years ago. They still do not have the final section depicted as a freeway. I zoomed all the way in and I don't see the frontage roads or the entrances/exits. This is a major highway that I feel should have been updated.

But I can now actually calculate a route to my office without it giving me an error. That drove me nuts as it actually had the roads mapped out fine but it never could complete a route.

All in all I'm satisfied, but it's still not worth $200.

I just received my DVD yesterday. There was a new road that was finished up here that is not in the new DVD. I need to do more testing, but by no means is a MINOR update like this worth 200 bucks. I think it should cost $50 for the updates and $150 for the major software updates (like that would ever happen) considering that you can purchase a brand new standalone GPS unit that contains all of the new maps for $200 these days!

I'm guessing that you guys reported mapping errors to Navteq previously, that were not fixed in 3.60?

Any error that I've seen with routing on my 3.50 version I reported to Navteq with Googlemap screen prints and annotations. They've responded to every one of my reports.

Looks like the disc is $185 on the Acura Navi web site.

Compass Fix. A problem I've noticed with my 06 TL Navi (v 3.50) is that when in heading up mode the compass doesn't always track realtime when changing direction like turning onto another street.

When I test drove an '07 TL-S, the new improved navi tracks as you make a turn.

Has anyone seen this on '04-'06 TL Navi? To you new v3.60 owners, even if you haven't seen this before, could you (or more safely have a passanger) watch the compass pointer as you make a turn and see if it incrementally updates as you turn the corner or change direction?

Thanks

A problem I've noticed with the 06 TL Navi(v 3.50) is when you are on a major highway, close to an upcoming exit on the right, the system says "exit left" when it really should say "keep left". Any one know if 3.60 fixes this problem?

does it still work with all the current available hacks? (nag screen removal, splash screen, etc)?

The splash screen one it does, but the others it does not because the files got changed to much. :(

Oh well,

For me the 3.60 didnt seem to show any changes in my area, but I do large amounts of travel so I hope some turn up...

I just got my 06 in July and it has the 3.5 version. Does this mean that my disk is obsolete? Will the dealer give me a 3.6 since my is only 3 months old?

^^ your car is a 06 soo you got the right version 3.5..and NO its not obsolete!!
and no the dealer wont give you a up-to-date navi disk.if you want it to be up-to-date[3.6] then you have to buy it on your own..

So has anyone else tried out the 06 nav and have you seen any major improvements?

I'll chime in with the other zillion people who have commented on this - why the hell the GPS mapping people try to make a killing on map updates is beyond me. Sure, it takes some time and work on their part, but by charging 200 bucks for it (and all of them do), only a small percentage of people actually buy the updates.

It makes TONS more sense to price these things at about $50 ... if they do that, lots more people will buy them. It's plain old Marketing 101. Lower the price and make up for it on volume. Jeez, once they get the data done, copies of the DVD cost them about a buck apiece.

What they'd find out is that they'd build a lot of customer loyalty if they didn't try to rip us off for the updates! Not that I'm condoning it, but this kind of price gouging encourages bootlegging. :what:
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do the new discs disply real time like the rl's??

No you must have the 4G version of the navi hardware/software for that. The 3.60 disc is just map updates.

so you just buy the disc and insert i take it that this is burn proof

Yes. You just insert it and it will begin to load the new software. It takes a minute or so. I don't believe that anyone has been successful at copying the disc.