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Originally Posted by medicmike
While I have an HCH, not a TCH I can definitely say that a nav system is one of the best investments I've made in a new car. More accurate and convenient than my mobile Garmin unit.
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Well this is the first time I have seen the Toyota system rated better than any Garmin system...or were you talking about the Honda system?
Our TCH is my wife's car and recently she was riding with someone with a HAH with navigation and her comment was that the Honda system was clearly better than the Toyota system.
I have BIG issues with the nav system and have a post here about it...I haven't gone through all of my expierences but they just keep adding up...the best trick the Toyota system seems to like is to have you get off a bypass and to get on a buisness route of a highway...I have had this happen on Rt 322 here in Central, PA, I-83 in the York PA area, US-22 in the Altoona, PA area and in the DC area (don't know the roads there). In all of these cases the system was trying to tell us to get off a 4 lane or more limited access highway and to get onto a high traffic, many lights local road...much much slower. On another occasion it routed my wife 50 min in the opposite direction she was trying to go...she was unfarmiliar with the area so didn't know any better and by the time she hit a road she recognised she was well out of her way. In this instance she had hit "home" so it wasn't like she picked the wrong McDonalds from a list.
In my discussions on another forum I found that Toyota is aware of a major issue with the current software revision and is working on a fix. In the mean time some Toyota and Lexus dealers are giving the previous revision of the DVD (the current revision is 05.1 FWIW which is what came with our TCH). to their customers. I assumed that the DVD only contained the maps but according to a Lexus Master Technician I exchanged emails with there is also a software (firmware maybe) update to the logic of the system which is the real issue. The 05.1 DVD is pretty up to date in my area and I was shocked by this....as an example there is a new road that opend last year and it is on there...so the maps aren't that bad, it's the system logic.
I have personally used the Mercedes system (from a 2002 M class) and a Garmin PDA based system and both were clearly superior in their logic of picking a route over the system in the TCH.
We got the NAV because we didn't have a choice (the car was loaded and came with it)...I am not upset with the purchase of the car as the rest of the car is fantastic but if I knew what I know now and was adding features to the car I WOULD NOT add the nav system.
So there is my $.02
