Usability of the 11.6" screen?

The glare off the screen never bothers my eyes, but it does make it hard to see what's on the screen at times. At certain sun angles, it's not good at all.

The controls on screen are pretty easy to use and the what physical controls there are work pretty well. (temperature is one of those)

 

How about vent mode, is that on the screen, or physical button?

I'm not even happy with our 3rd gen: it has a button, but it's a single button you have to push multiple times, to cycle through the vent modes displayed on a small LCD. Miss the one you want, and you have to go through them all again.

I just love doing that when we're accellerating into the curvy Barnett Highway, dark night, in a downpour, with the windows fogging up.

 

Several buttons on the screen. Can't set it without looking at it.

 

Changing temperature using voice is very easy, just touch the voice button on steering wheel and after the beep say "72 (or other number) degrees".

 

What is vent mode? Fan on, AC off? Never used that on the Prime yet. Really necessary on a car with variable speed AC. Used it all the time on my cars that didn't have it.

 

SFlow is both on the big screen or via steering wheel/instrument cluster. Recirc/outside air is only on the big screen that I've seen.

 

Perhaps there are PriusChatters fairly close to you where you could check out those persons' cars?? As Uncle Bob would say, ROAD TRIP!!

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Why is this so hard to use, especially since you hardly ever have to use it?

 

Totally agree with Mr. JoachimZ, look at all the features!! The Advanced has lost the knobs and buttons for controls, something I miss and the GPS like all built-in GPS systems I've used so far, for me, is useless, HOWEVER, I do love all the other safety etc. features only available on that model. It's the unfortunate marketing of useless crap with really cool features. I want a CD changer, no got; whatta ya gonna do?
I love my Prime!!


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Thanks for the tip!! I use voice for lots of stuff in car or on phone; didn't know the protocol was available for temperature!!

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Just tried out the temperature voice commands; worked like a charm! Took a bit more to figure out the "Climate Control Off" syntax. Thanks again!

 

For me, it gets what I tell it correctly about 1 in 10 tries.

 

Even with the phone commands??
I do notice that if I leave my windows open, there's a big drop in voice command accuracy.....

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Like what? Whether I ask it for temperature changes, addresses, POIs, or music, it misses about 90% of the time. And I virtually never drive with the windows open. Sometimes it misses hilariously, like not even close.

Heh! I just asked it to "show me the charge schedule". It interpreted that as "play song"!

 

I can't speak on the ease of use, but most of us were taught to keep our eyes on the road, and touch screen interfaces generally increase the amount of time eyes are off the road in order to use them compared to a knob or button.

On a personal note, I used to get car sick if the cabin air was still, so I like a quick way of turning on the fan regardless of temperature settings.

 

That is just not true. This is easier and faster than any of the manual controls I've had on any car I've ever owned. Most of those require much more fiddling and looking away than this does because, for one thing, it's simple, and for another thing, it's hardly ever necessary.

If it's in auto mode, the fan is on. Period.

 

I don't have to look for the knobs to my archaic, non-auto climate controls at all.

Until it has reached the set temperature, then the fan drops to low. When my brain sees the scenery zipping by at 60mph, and starts wondering why doesn't it feel the air moving that fast, I need the fan turned to max.

 

Wow, has your dealer offered to help?
There's obviously something wrong with the system. It should be fixable. What type phone do you have? I have Samsung S7, and just say for example, "Call Bob Smith". The system asks for confirmation, and that's it, the call is made. I have asked it, "Tune 1070 am", and it confirms and gets me the channel. Haven't tried temperature yet; just found out about that today.


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I've never been to "my dealer" and I never will.

I haven't taken my Prime to another dealer since I got it.

I doubt it. It works sometimes. It's just a really lousy system.

I have a Samsung S5, but that's irrelevant because I'm not talking about the phone's voice recognition (which is near perfect), I'm talking about the car's. I don't even have to have the phone with me and the car's phone recognition system should work. And it does - about 1 in 10 tries.

 

Yeah, the phone's not needed to use the car's voice recognition system. Too bad, you're not getting this thing to work.
I've had trouble finding a Toyota dealer anywhere close to as good as my Honda dealer. I had to give up on them when Honda stopped offering decent hybrids.
The mechanic I have at my current Toyota dealer, Toyota Place, seems to know his stuff; I'm just not in there that often!
If you ever run into (figuratively!) another Prime owner, compare your systems; if you're down my neck of the woods, give me a yell, and I'll do likewise. When the thing works, it's very cool.

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