Warning for buyers

The NAV in my BMW was very good. It had a great voice that did not irritate me. The graphics were very good. The Prius has a Touch screen which is much better. The voice command may need to get used to your voice to work better. I hate the fact you have to stop to enter A destination. The bing and NAV integration is perfect. I figured how to delete a Destination jn navigation in the screen. Can't get Voice command to do that. Got voice to work with go home voice command. The fact that I can display my text messages and voice command to dial any phone in my address book is awesome. T is OK but not perfect. NAV integration in the car is much better looking than from any phone or external device.

 

When you "show" your new car to friends, family members (and maybe even random strangers sometimes), etc. and give them a quick drive around there are only two things that they can really "see." The little display that shows the battery, engine and wheels spinning...and the NAV screen. You'd think Toyota would want every Prius driver to have the best marketing for the public. This really only works in a Prius and doesn't much apply to a the other cars in their lineup (Camry, Corolla, etc.) After driving a Prius for 12 yrs people are still interested in them.

Mike

 

100% wrong. The 7 inch hdd "better" nav has less functionality and viewing options than the "inferior" 6 inch nav. I.E. the 6 inch nav has better voice command recognition (full sentence address recognition), and 3d map view ability.

Also the 7 inch hdd nav is available in the 4.

So yes I have the "much better" 7 inch model. If you think you are pi$$ed off at the crappiness of your nav, you can imagine how enthused I am to have mine. I am also a tech junkie (I bought the 5 with tech package just to prove this) and have been nothing but disapointed at the boat anchor nav i got.

 

7" is fine for me- unlike the 6" system you can do split screens and I typically have the audio displayed as well so I know what channel I am on when I change from the wheel.

You might be saying: whats the point of a larger screen if you are breaking it in half- the answer to which is that in order to get the 7" screen on a IV you ALSO get the HUD which displays turn by turn directions right on the windshield so there is almost no need to ever look down.

The voice is annoying- more so then in the genII but it is a small price to pay.

 

The HUD is a nice feature with arrow displays I have it also. You can also lower or shut the voice off. There is also 2 beeps before a turn. The upgraded NAV is nice since it is built into the car but I agree there is better out there but the HDD NAV gets a passing grade from me.

 

We have had Garmin for 5+ years, and have found the transition to the Prius NAV system the only disappointment on our new 2013 Prius. Have found the voice recognition to be much better than previous experience with a BlackBerry voice recognition, and the Bluetooth link to my wife's new BlackBerry Curve is great. Our main complaint is the very poor time estimate that it generates -- almost always off of the real world travel time. And for some bizare reason, the shortest route option gives a totally ridiculous time to destination. Some one needs to fix this software!

 

He time assumption can be changed in the set up. The default assumptions can be adjusted by the User.

 

Sorry for all of you going these troubles, I feel for you. I never even gave the NAV upgrade a passing thought because every time I rented a vehicle from ANY maker, I saw how their GPS systems sucked badly compared to my Garmin, and subsequently to my smart phone. Also, on my phone not only can I “voice command” GPS locations and phone calls, but I can also “voice command” reminders, shopping and to-do lists, and appointments. I saw the NAV “upgrade” as paying a couple of grand to go back about 6 years in software development. Not interested.

I do get that some people like the idea of using the car’s bigger screen and not dealing with power cables (I’d like to have this myself); but when you can get so much better navigation on your phone, the crappy car NAV should be free, not an upgrade. And then the outrageous costs of upgrading the database at the dealer!!! (This is free and occurs automatically on your phone). You have to wonder who the target market for these NAV systems are: I can only theorize that these are people who were tech savvy up to the year 2007 and for some reason never bought into the smart phone/tablet revolution. Or those who REAAALLY want to use a bigger screen and have no cables about.

Auto makers should give up trying to re-invent the wheel. It’s already been done, and much better. They should just focus on mirroring the display of any smart phone into the car’s display. IMO the only software engineering auto makers should spend time on is making sure the car’s touch screen works with the mirrored display from the smart phone, and allowing the smart phone to use the car’s sensors and data for apps.

 

Very well put! How did such a shining beacon of sanity end up here?

Richard

 

The Solar package included the HDD Audio/Nav automatically without changes, so I have the HDD system. Here are some WOW's!!! Disclaimer: I could just be un-educated and didn't read the specific line in the manual of how to do something correctly, but this is my experience so far. I'm really not trying to rant.

Note: I have a Samsung Galaxy S3, a HTC Evo Shift 4G, a Samsung Galaxy 7.0 Tablet, and the original iPad.

1) Phone number contact sync is automatic with either my Samsung Galaxy S3 or my older HTC EVO Shift 4G, but not all of my contacts sync'd via the Galaxy S3, while the HTC Evo Shift synced them all. I had to manually edit a lot of my contacts on Google to make them finally sync with the Prius via the Galaxy S3 - (strange). However, even though the contacts synced, only a few contacts show the associated picture on the Prius even though most all of my contacts have pictures associated with them. It has to be a BUG, since other Cyanogen Android users are having success transferring all contact pictures. I have no idea why all of them do not come over since it makes no since why a few contact pictures would transfer while most of them would not. The HTC Evo Shift sent zero pictures.

2) Navigation??? Well, contact address book sync is, ummm, MISSING??? I thought in this day and age that my contact's addresses would also transfer somehow to the Prius Nav automatically, but I must still be dreaming of the next generation unit. So, I assume that this isn't even a feature at all on the HDD Entune system? The only way I could get an external address into the Nav was using the Dumbtune, oh sorry, I mean Entune app. But, even Entune did not make any entries into the Address Book on the Prius. I guess I don't have to relax my tap, tap, tap, finger technology just yet. Even though the Prius Navigation works, it is missing some standard voice command features like a suspend guidance or any voice command to stop the current navigation. It's annoying to have to touch the map display to remove the destination in order to cancel guidance since there is no voice command or anything else to just 'suspend' guidance. The voice commands are so annoying that I probably won't be using voice commands with the HDD unit that much since it doesn't even compare to all the voice commands I was able to use in the 2005 Prius I had before. Not to mention how very annoyed I am with the, "PARDON" voice prompt!!! AND, you can't just say 'CANCEL' when you get annoyed, you have to TAP cancel on the screen or long press the voice command button on the steering wheel to shut the thing up. I'd give anything for a 'SHUT THE xxxx UP' voice command!

3) If I'm reading the stuff on the Standard Entune/Nav compared to the HDD Entune/Nav system correctly, then the HDD Entune/Nav is much different then the standard Entune/Nav. The HDD system uses XM for data offerings like Traffic, Gas Prices, Sports, Stocks, and Weather. So when my limited trial period runs out, unless I pay a monthly fee to XM for this data, there is no way to get thit data on the HDD system unlike the non-HDD which from what I gather that use the Entune app for this data.

4) USB tethering is obviously for iOS devices since most vehicles like Toyota's are nothing more than an iOS accessory device (HA), and the iPad was seen as an iPod device. BUT for Android, well, if you have a new technology 4.x and above device, the USB port is just nothing more than a charging port. My HTC Evo Shift 4G came up in USB mode since it was Android 2.3 and supported the Mass Storage Mode, but both the Galaxy S3 or my Samsung Galaxy Tab's using Android 4.x in MTP mode are nothing more than charging bricks.

5) Bluetooth is the one mostly sweet spot so far. At least Bluetooth Phone and Multimedia seem to work no matter what combination I through at it. Metadata over A2DP seems to be limited to the specific Android music application I was using. For example, Pandora running on the phone transmitted no metadata, while the native music app and even Google's Play Music app provided metadata on the Prius screen. MP4 video podcast files didn't display any metadata via any combination of Phone, Tablet, or app I tried over Bluetooth. And, depending on the Podcast app I was using, turning the radio tuning dial rendered different results. So, out with Kiescast and in with Beyondpod since the original iPad is just too darn HEAVY to tote around.

6) Text messaging via the Galaxy S3 did display SMS text messages on the screen, as well as, reading back the message via the Prius audio which is pretty cool!

7) Entune, well I only have one comment at this point, who cares! The app drains my battery. It has a very annoying system prompt on my phone all the time so I have to KILL it after I use it. It doesn't even read my phones contacts to transfer their addresses that way since it doesn't transfer them via contact sync (above). Pandora does display rather nicely on the screen, but I thought the audio quality in either standard or high quality mode via Entune sounded a little worst than the native Android Pandora app in standard and high quality mode running on the phone over Bluetooth.

8) DVD Playback! Just don't forget to set the parking break, and may the Force be with you!!!

Another cool thing that I did which isn't very practical, was to pair my Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 in both Phone and Multimedia mode with the Prius. While in this mode, I was able to use the Talkatone app to make a call from the Prius using the Tablet over WiFi via Google Voice.

Bottom line, I believe that the HDD Nav/Entune system needs to go back on the boat to Japan for some retrofitting.

 

Samsung yuk. Buy Apple the job you save may be your own.

 

Ok. So the factory gps is sub par.
I have the pri 2 that comes only with a radio cd mp3 player.

Can someone give me a model to replAce or pay someone to replace that with one that has good navigation and allows me to set an image as a background image since that's seemingly difficult to do on a factory unit. You just get the power off screen.
Thanks for the input.
Ww

 

At least you can replace the default Entune application by the "Toyota Proxy", which does not drain battery.

 

for this reason I buy garmin or tomtom gps from bestbuy with the 3 year protection plans. you'll always have the most current gps available.

 

Get an Apple iPhone and us Google Maps. Best NAV

 

I have an iPhone and I don't think the phone needs to be plugged into the USB for the sync to work. Had the phone in my pocket and could still browse playlists and such via Bluetooth. So far as I can tell the only advantage to plugging the phone in is for charging.

As for the NAV overall I'm happy with it (2012 IV with the "HD" NAV). I never really use the voice commands so that doesn't bother me (seems to be the source of many complaints). In my experience the NAV system has been just as good as any other system I've used. Price wise it is certainly more expensive than a standalone Garmin or the like, but I got it as part of a package with the Heads Up display and such. Personally I love the HUD and wouldn't want another car without it. Combined with the NAV it's great for getting me to an unfamiliar location. Lets me keep my eyes on the road with a clear indication of exactly where and when I need to turn.