Ok so last week my wife and I took delivery of a 07 TCH loaded up just like we wanted which includes the DVD Navigation system. Well a friend of mine has owned a Lexus RX Hybrid for a couple of months now and he warned me that the DVD Nav may be a waste of money...I am here to tell you that I think he is right. His previous SUV was a Mercedes M class which also had Nav and that system is great...the Toyota system leaves a lot to be desired.

On a trip this weekend we decided to have the nav system give us the route to test it out even though we knew where we were headed. Right off the bat I could see some flaws, it told us to proceed to the highlighted route which is fine but then the route was poor. We live only 1.5 miles from the 322 bypass of State College here in PA but it wanted us to take 322 buisness through town...it would have been a 5 mile trip just to get to 322 business. So we ignored it and when we got on the bypass (this is not a new road and is a high speed limited access road...with access right near our home) it did reroute so that's all good. From that point it was pretty good until we got colser to our destination. Our trip was to Altoona PA which has I-99 running right past it...we had been on I-99 for about 15 miles when it told us to exit the highway at the Tyrone exit and take US Rt 22 business to our destination. Since we knew where we were going we also knew there is an exit from I-99 with in 1 mile of our destination. The Tyrone exit is like 10-12 miles before that exit and Rt 22 business has full access and TONS of stop lights. Now you may be thinking well you had 3 picks and you picked senic...XXX...nope, all three routes were the same...which is another issue because there IS a common senic route from State College to Tyrone which can actually be faster if traffic is light.

We messed with the settings allowing everything and still no improvement in the route. I read on another forum that there is an update to the DVD coming out in June and I negotiated in our deal for the car that we can buy it for dealer cost if I feel we need it...I wonder if it will actually help. For reference we have DVD revision 5.1

So does anyone know if there is something I may have missed? Why is the system avoiding major highways and selecting buisness routes?

John