Thoughts on the navigation system

Yes, I know, I never enter a zip anymore. I was just trying to say that if you enter a zip and enter the wrong one, it then may not find the street/number. I ran into this before I figured out that a zip is not needed. I was given a mailing address and it turned out the Prius had the street/number in a different zip. It couldn't find the address until I used the "wrong" zip, so now I just ignore the zip field altogether.

 

Two weeks ago I purchased a '14 Prius Three with navigation. I've used both TomTom and Garmin units for nearly a decade and was surprised to find how woefully inadequate the overpriced Prius system is. Short on features, map about two years out of date, voice recognition is poor at times, sent me miles out of my way when only a few miles from home, and has announced "turn now" several times when I was already in the middle of an intersection. In short, it seems to be years behind stand-alone systems. So I will be using a new TomTom in my Prius.

 

That's pretty much my assessment too.
If you have a smart phone with GPS electronics, consider the Google GPS app.
I find it to be accurate, friendly and free......at the moment.

 

The nav on mine tracked my up-to-date Garmin Nuvi 2555LMT almost mile for mile for over 7,400 miles on our recent trip. There was only one place where they disagreed, the Nuvi suggesting a shortcut south of Riverton WY. After taking the shortcut, I can see what the Prius did not suggest it, it was a back road if hills and curves. The Prius warned at 2 miles, 1/2 mile and then feet whereas the Nuvi warned at 1 mile and then feet. I do recall turns here and there being in the intersection, but I was in the turn lane and didn't have the Nuvi on speaker all the time to compare that part. There are other reasons I will continue to take the Nuvi, but I will use the Prius to do the navigation because of the integrated speaker. It is simply easier to play with the Nuvi while the car is moving and too many options are locked out of the Prius when moving.

 

Car Navs never keep up with portable Navs, which is why in-car systems that act as monitors for your portable devices are probably the wave of the future. I had low hopes for the Prius Nav, but it came with Package III, and I wanted all the other Pkg III features. While it's really not the greatest, surprisingly it's become my main Nav, because
a) It's more convenient than digging out my Garmin all the time
b) Prius Bluetooth screws up Google Nav audio from the phone, even if you plug it in via aux cable. But Google Nav has always been unstable for me anyway.
c) The voice recognition feature comes in handy for mid-drive nav "emergencies" where you weren't using nav but suddenly don't know how to get someplace from wherever you are. I.e. suddenly remembering another stop or missing a freeway entrance. You can just push a button and say, "Find next Lowes" and if you're lucky, you'll end up at Lowes.

That said, there are features that should be much better than they are.
# 1: When you want to stop nav, you can't do it by voice on the current non-HD navs. (Apparently pre-2012's could do that?) It takes two finger presses in different parts of the screen. While you're driving.

#2: The POI's are a mess. Not too bad for Lowes, but try a chain with a lot of stores like a supermarket, drugstore, or even Staples, and you get a long list from which it's a mess to find the right one Much easier to figure out with Garmin or Google, which show addresses on the list. With Prius Nav, you have to find the right one on a map that only has a few roads drawn. Basically, the density of the map isn't sufficient for the density of the POI's. (Maybe this works better in less densely populated areas, but it's a mess around here.)

Anyway, if I'm going somewhere really unfamiliar or distant, I still pull out the Garmin. But for local driving, Prius Nav does come in handy, and it comes with Pkg III in 2012 or later. (I believe in 10 and 11 it's bundled with the backup camera.) But I wouldn't pay extra just for that Nav, and they should really improve some of these basic features.

 

Your Nav reroutes in traffic? Mine just seems to taunt me with announcements of severe traffic between Exit ## and Exit ##, even on the interstate. Do you have to select something on the screen to get it to reroute, or does it just do it automatically?

 

They all do this, so it's not unique to the Prius system. And they'll often take you on side streets instead of main streets. You'll wonder where in they heck are they taking you until you drive the main street and see how many traffic stops, etc., there are. The most interesting drive we had was the NJ Turnpike where our older Garmin kept telling me to get off the "express" lanes. If you don't know, the express lanes don't have as many exists, so you have to kind of know how far you can go and not miss your exit. Since I had no idea, I followed directions and was on/off for 10's of miles. The same thing happened in Houston 2 years ago with a new Garmin (maps were up to date). I'll find out next year how the Prius handles both of these routes.

 

POI access while the car is moving is the biggest single problem IMHO and why my latest Nuvi sits on its bean bag mount near the small left window. And it's really bad at finding non-chain places even though the non-chain place is in the database and it finds it easily if you stop and search manually. I get the safety aspect, but the voice system then needs to be much more robust than it is. If they're that worried about safety, they need to come up with a way for a passenger to work it or seriously enhance voice commands. I use the Nuvi to find a place, then use voice to enter the address so the Prius can do the navigation. And even though I like the audio integration, I would not have purchased built-in nav separately.

 

I don't know how to enable traffic routing or sign up for it and wouldn't use it if I did. I get traffic on my Garmin, but don't route based on it. Much of my traveling is done along I-10, I-40 and I-10/I-20 between Phoenix and Savannah with Houston being the only real problem area. We then go up/down the East Coast on I-95 as far as Key West and West Point. In 5 years, I've only had to detour twice; Houston and Baltimore. I guess that does make me pretty lucky.

 

I think you can turn that "feature" OFF.......if that really what is happening. Routing based on traffic info. that is.

Most (but not all) of the weird routing I've had, with any GPS, is because I've selected "shortest route" which routes you through places you wouldn't even normally drive to achieve shortest.

 

Interesting comments. I got a 2014 Prius IV with the Nav system and so far it's worked perfectly. Of course I don't have anything to compare it to since I've always used..... GASP!!!!!! paper maps!!!!! with no problems. As a matter of fact a few times I strayed off course and the Nav system got me back on track. So far so good for me. Maybe I'm just in an area where it works fine, but it worked great twice when I was finding spots in downtown Boston. We'll see what happens down the road.