GPS - two questions

You might be living in a small city/township/borough where a single zip code covers the entire municipality (and perhaps a few other neighboring ones as well), so putting the city in isn't a problem for you.

Within NYC, there are 5 boroughs. For the "city", the nav system typically uses the mailing city name. AFAIK, 4 of the boroughs use the name of the borough as the mailing city.

Manhattan has 43 distinct zip codes within the "city" known as New York, NY.
Brooklyn has 37 distinct zip codes within the "city" known as Brooklyn, NY.
The Bronx has 25 distinct zip codes within the "city" known as Bronx, NY.
"Little" Staten Island has 12 distinct zip codes within the "city" known as Staten Island, NY.

AFAIK, only Queens uses the individual neighborhoods as "cities" in the nav system because that's how Queens-ites label their mailing cities. But even then, a large neighborhood like Flushing has four distinct zip codes.

And just to test out how well the nav system worked within NYC, I typed in "Brooklyn" into the city field. The bad news is that it only spits out one zip code for you (in my case, 11201). The good news is the nav system will correct the zip code if you put in a street address that's not within 11201. So inputting the "city" first actually isn't a problem for an address in Brooklyn.

The problem is that this doesn't always work in Queens. You can't type in "Queens" because the nav system knows of no city known as "Queens". Neighborhoods blur together in Queens, and the nav system only seems to have the select larger neighborhoods in its database. Residents might input their mailing city only to find out the GPS database does not recognize their "city". So they're left to find out which of the neighboring mailing city works. And if you choose the wrong mailing city, then you can't actually input either the street or address (or both) because the nav system does not know of such an address within this city in its database.

That's why I say the zip code is the way to go. No, it's not an actual "need", but it definitely makes inputting the address into the frustratingly slow nav system (where mistakes are not corrected, forcing you to backtrack) foolproof. Well, not entirely foolproof. Sometimes the nav system doesn't even recognize the inputted street address in its database, meaning you have to pick a possibly nearby street address in its place.

(The frustrating slowness is another reason why I never bothered to answer the OP's questions. Sorry about that OP, but I really do think you're better off going with a Garmin or smartphone map app than dealing with a bad nav system).

 

Thank you.

 

You're welcome. I hope you were able to see and understand my point of view here.

 

But, inputting the ZIP is easier and quicker

 

I never said that it wasn't.

I said that to use the device, it is not NECESSARY.

AND IT ISN'T.

What we have here is a failure to communicate.
I quit.

 

WAZE will say out the street names. You have to go into Settings, and change the Voice to one which includes street name support. Not all of the voices do, that's all.

 

As a somewhat veteran Toyota nav user, here are my $0.02.

First, I am very confident the Nav in the Base and the Advanced/Technology package are drastically different.

Quick history - I had the the DVD-based 5th-Gen nav in my 2006 Prius, and while many criticized it for many reasons, I found it had a very clean and high res interface, easy to use, and worked well. Drawbacks were over-zealous motion lockout, lack of speaking street names (though ironically if programming a destination by voice, the Text to Speech (TTS) would echo your street name commands back, so I am not sure why this TTS was not offered during guidance??) or traffic support and of course the high cost of map upgrades but again, this was 2006. I did upgrade the maps a couple times in the 10 years I had the car, usually going to eBay a few months after the new disc was released and getting it for a discount, and then selling off my old disc.

Advance to 2016, I was shopping for a used PiP. I visited someone selling a 2013 Base, and I noticed the screen was smaller, and much uglier than my 2006, looked like an old Garmin portable slapped in the dash. Ugh. I then saw a 2014 Technology (Advanced) model with 'premium' navigation, which looked very similar to my 2006, but is "6th gen".

The 'improvements' are the following;
- HDD based rather than DVD (however, now forced to go to the dealer, and now nothing to sell off....)
- support for announcing street names
- support for traffic (though XMtraffic is required and is pricey)
- less aggressive lockout function (ie can now access address book in motion)

Inexplicably, they have gutted the voice commands from Gen 5 to Gen 6. I used to use a number of common voice commands in my '06, including Entire Route Map to quickly get and overview, call for different routing choices or detours (Quick 1 / Quick 2 / Detour), or even call out a POI like 'Gas Station' to show them on the map. ALL GONE. Pretty much the only command to use with Nav now is 'Enter an Address', or 'Nearest (POI)' (???). For the life of me, I don't understand why they did this.

I do have the original maps (2013), so I supposed there is the possibility some of this may change with an update (?), but I am not holding out hope.

Lastly, as a side note, I am a huge supporter of Waze, that truly is a fantastic app, and is still amazing it is free and uses very little data. (Yes, I am a technology geek and often use both at the same time, usually with the Toyota at a higher zoom out). I rely on Waze for accurate ETA's and traffic routing, as that cannot be beat. Not to mention always evolving maps, including ability to make your own edits! I do find Waze weak/buggy when trying to set more than one destination (max 1 waypoint), and also has a maximum route of 1000 miles. So, the Prius is still a bit better on VERY long road trips.

The perfect solution would be if Waze would support CarPlay, and the Prius in turn would support CarPlay. However, I know this is first a sticking point between Google and Apple (and Apple wanting to protect their own Maps app), and secondly with Toyota needing to believing adding the licensing for CarPlay will increase sales beyond what they currently do with Siri Eyes Free on current model Toyotas (not the PiP).

Anyway, sorry if my post went a bit OT, just some thoughts on Toyota Nav and my experiences.

Cheers!