2015 navigation system

i can only say that the 2013 hycam is just as bad. your best bet is a new h/u with gps.

 

Your best bet is to buy a good Garmin GPS system from Costco or Sam's and use that. Easy to use, quick to set up and life time free updates. I've found the Nav system in my 2014 Prius 3 to be of almost little use. Had to take it with the car though.

 

I've used the Prius nav alongside my Gamin Nuvi since July of last year and with very few exceptions it calculates the same routes as the Nuvi, so far anyway. I've taken 2 major trips of 7,300 and 5,400 miles. The 7,300 mile trip went from Phoenix to Yellowstone, Glacier, Minneapolis, Green Bay and back. The 5,400 mile trip went from Phoenix to Cocoa Beach, Savannah and back. The single glaring "difference" was a shortcut Google/Nuvi recommended near Lander WY. The Prius wanted me to go through Lander instead of turning on Hwy 135 and it would have cost me almost 30 minutes. However, I can see why the Prius didn't offer the shortcut as it was full of curves, hills and a narrower road. The other differences were because the alternate routes differed by less than a minute. Even Google will calculate different routes at times. I have entered cross-country trips into Google to get one route and then divided that into smaller sections to get slightly different routes for those sections.

My problem with the Prius is the inability to search while the vehicle is moving and the limited voice commands. Since I already had a Nuvi, I use it to search on the fly and then enter the address in the Prius, manually if stopped or by voice if moving. I've also found that using voice commands while moving won't find some local POIs even though they are in the database. Once stopped, it will find the same POI using voice commands or manually, go figure.

Anyway, even though I have the Nuvi, I do a lot of pre-planning using Google Maps. I then enter major destinations in the Prius, so I can use them as we travel and not have to try to search for them while moving, etc. Mind you, I don't always use them, but they're there if I need them. As it so happens, we leave for Savannah again in the morning and I've already entered potential fuel stops between Phoenix and our first night at Cannon AFB NM. I'm kind of anal about gas prices, so I've got service stations entered for Chambers AZ as well as Gallup, Grants and Albuquerque NM. I never know what kind of mileage I'm going to get up the mountains to Flagstaff and I might not be able to make it all the way to Gallup, so I added Chambers because Gas Buddy says it's the cheapest fuel between here and Gallup. tomorrow night I'll make plans for the next day and enter those addresses. I use the Nuvi for changing things on the fly if we see or hear of something worth stopping at.

 

Just used mine for the first time the other day. Got me where I needed to go. Wondering though if I have my phone sync'd via Bluetooth and I route using Google maps, will the turn by turn come through the speakers? I can try but thought I'd ask..

 

Easy to mount too.

 

Have to take back some of my earlier comments. Just drove from Phoenix to Savannah (Ft Stewart) and experienced the first time the Garmin Nuvi didn't offer the same route as Google Maps while the Prius did, this was between Lubbock TX and Shreveport LA. Unfortunately, I followed the Nuvi and wish I hadn't. It took me through Ft Worth and I "think" it ended up being quite a bit longer, for sure the traffic was a bear. An interesting anecdote was that it took the Prius a full 10 miles out of Lubbock before it finally stopped telling me to make a U-turn. That's the longest the Nuvi and Prius have disagreed in almost 20,000 miles of driving with them both.

I also noticed a few other things:
-- The initial Prius "estimated time of arrival" is almost always off, by as much as 30 minutes, though it eventually self-corrects as the destination gets closer. The exceptions are short local trips of a few miles, but even those are off by a couple of minutes until the very end.
-- The Prius "distance to next turn" differs from the Nuvi by 0.5 miles until you get within 10 miles, then it still differs by 0.1 miles.
-- Both units differ a lot in what they consider a "turn", so it's very difficult to compare the list of instructions to see if they are offering the same route.

The first two don't sound like big deals until you consider why the Prius doesn't always offer the same routes as Google/Nuvi. A couple of times, when I compared the 3 routes offered by the Prius, the one that matched Google/Nuvi was considered an alternate by the Prius because it thought the route was 1-2 minutes longer than the one it recommended. Given that the Prius often announces your arrival early, sometimes before you even see the driveway, I suspect there is a difference in the mapping data or the Prius GPS simply isn't as accurate as others. The bottom line though is that regardless of which unit I followed, I always got to where I was going.

Regarding the difficulty reading the dark background, the display can be changed to always use the "day" setting with the white background. I find this too bright at night and I don't look at the display all that often anyway, I just follow the audible instructions.