I was very impressed with the new 2014 accord but the most frustrating and stunning thing to me was the wretched, horrible, disastrous chore of a voice activated GPS. It was like pulling teeth. Press a button - say something like NAVIGATION, press the button again and say something like address, press a button - say street - then give the street name. Press a button - say number - then give the street number. Then press a button and say city - then say city name. Then press the button and say something like directions - it took like 2 minutes just to verbally give an address. On my phone I press ONE button - say 12100 Wilshire, Los Angeles and BOOM - I have directions.


While I'd prefer it was even less work than this e.g. dedicated button JUST for nav - I doubt I'll ever use it to adjust my car temp- this would be a HUGE improvement over the Accord nav for voice input.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p_J6LC5Zh4#t=15

 

Just for clarification... your title says "Acura's"... however you're referring to a Honda Accord. I know they're very similar, but I'm not sure if Acura's voice control is identical to that of Honda's..... someone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. I used to have a Honda Accord coupe, then switched to an Acura TL and the Acura's voice control seems much better to me... and they were both in the same gen 2010/2012.

Does anyone know if the voice control in... a 2014 Acura ILX/RLX/MDX/RDX would be the same as a 2014 Honda accord?

In any event, I agree that they are not great, but better than before.

 

Voice control is the same. It's annoying. We have a '13 Accord with Navigation. The lawyers purposefully crippled the system while it's in motion.

We have a '13 MDX, which has the 'older' system and has 100% of it's functionality while on the road.

Very frustrating.

 

The Lexus/Toyota one in the video is far closer to what Acura should have although I'd prefer they actually surpassed the Toyota. If this was about 6 years ago, the current voice controls would be acceptable but for goodness sake it is 2014. When a 5 year old $100 phone surpasses a $2000 navigation system by a significant margin, Acura is just phoning it in these days. A little effort would be nice.

 

All the Japanese models are like this. My Infiniti was same crap and it sucked. Audi has it right, I hit a button and say "Enter Address" then I say 123 Main St My town Georgia" and it figures it out. They all need to get to that method. Also need to offer Google integration when I hot button and in one phrase say "Online destinations Panera Bread" and it pullls up all the Panera Breads in the area using Google (not the internal Navi database). Auto Nav needs to catch up with smart phones and portable Nav if they intend to consider it any value. The only advantage Auto Nav has is the larger display now.

 

Isn't Toyota a Japanese model?

 

Yes, did they change, I thought when I test drive the GS it had to be entered one piece at a time?

 

It could be that some of the old models were as bad as Acura. In the video they show it working nicely.

 

About 3 min in.


http://www.cnet.com/products/2014-lexus-is-350-awd/


Seems the newer entune (enform) 2.0 based systems can handle it - anything from a basic Corolla to a loaded LS600hl will take a whole address in one go, now.

 

Excellent. I had a rental Camry recently with just basic info screen and inputs and was impressed with Toyota's zero lag and fairly initiative interface.

 

Mine works fine. My only complaint is you need to learn the right lingo, as spelled out in the two-page laminated card that came with the car. I found if I take the time to learn the commands, it works pretty flawlessly, just like all the other tech items in my 2010.

 

The voice system in the Kia Cadenza I test-drove a while back was very responsive and accurate. It also needed only one voice input to pick up on an address. While there is still much suspect about Kia's overall reliability their technology packages are an area in which they shine. I was offered a 3-year lease on a Cadenza Limited ($43,000 MSRP) for zero down/$475 a month OTD - a tempting offer I'm still considering pending TLX evaluation.

 

Everything should get better now that real software companies (Apple, Microsoft, Google, QNX) are starting to get a foot hold in this market.

 

I admit, as long as my current TL works, I could get another Acura so long as the GPS is so antiquated. The only two reasons I want a new car is a better GPS and better gas mileage.

 

You realize that you'll likely pay more out of pocket to buy a new car than the extra mpg is worth...

 

That was probably a good idea, but it isn't executed well (IMHO).

It's easy to get so frustrated trying to do something while the car is moving, you find yourself doing dangerous things because you're determined to get something done.

If there are places to which you travel very often, then you're probably better served by having the addresses already entered in the Address Book, or you can use Previous Destinations.

Also.... AcuraLink uses naturally and logically spoken commands.

The biggest aggravation with AcuraLink, of course, is waiting for "Connecting to AcuraLink...." which can take a little too long if you have to make a quick decision.

I love AcuraLink when the car's sitting still.

I do not like it as much when the car's moving.

The problem when the car's moving is not crippling the interface. The problem is that the microphone is not flush to the speaker grille. This causes sound to reverberate in the housing over your head, and if anything is going on at the time, or you're traveling at any speed at all, it won't work quite as well as you want.

Many of us, when our cars are moving, have got into the habit of calling out Concierge or Agent, and making them send the address to the car.

Although it's the same bad signal and with the same bad reverberation and attenuation, the Agent's and Concierge's analogue brain processing allows them to easily understand you when the AcuraLink server is refusing to understand you.

I do not have enough experience with CUE and the other systems to know if this is a universal issue.

They could solve the problem by having a bare microphone or having a microphone flush to the grill, but of course that would introduce other problems and I cannot pretend to have an ultimate answer.

 

It might indeed be the very best development of all to allow the customer a choice between an interface designed by the manufacturer, or simply allow the car to mirror your iPhone's menu system.

This would simplify music and navigation both.

You'd only need a processor good enough to translate and render the iPhone's GUI in high resolution.

 

And they should be consistent once they've made a decision how to develop it.

A customer moving from a 2009 TL to a 2015 TLX should *not* have to learn a whole new language, and I fear that this will be the case.

 

You can do that in the latest Acura models...as long as you're online with AcuraLink.

:-/

If you're not online, you're stuck with a less than intuitive interface, IMHO. It's not bad enough that I'd refuse to buy the car, but it is annoying.

 

No problem with that. I despise wasting time at the gas station - for that alone it would be worth it.