BRZ Navigation accuracy and features

[MEP]

Absolutely hate the navigation system. I'm constantly losing the signal, the address search is way too picky, and the routing is can be down right retarded. And I've used Honda, Acura, Lexus and BMW navigation systems extensively, so it's not a user error.

[Meehow86]

I've gotten some pretty silly routes from my nav. But I've never had the signal drop.

[Shinryu]

Originally Posted by sklimo

I searched but didn't find anything. How do you change the voice??

I think it's something like this:
Map -> Menu -> More... -> Setting -> Sound and Warnings -> Voice Language

I've got three English voice options, one male and two female. I think the default female voice is the only of the three to say street names, though. At least, the other female voice does not say them, but I prefer it that way.

[Myv]

It works great up here in Ontario, Canada. I'm not sure how to get the traffic thing to work though, do you have to sub to some service?

[sklimo]

Originally Posted by Shinryu

I think it's something like this:
Map -> Menu -> More... -> Setting -> Sound and Warnings -> Voice Language

I've got three English voice options, one male and two female. I think the default female voice is the only of the three to say street names, though. At least, the other female voice does not say them, but I prefer it that way.

[ngabdala]

I'm not sure how it works in Canada but here in the US we get 3 months free of the XM Traffic Service. Unfortunately, for the vast majority of us, the dealership
was negligent in activating our 3 month trial.

Originally Posted by Myv

It works great up her
;e in Ontario, Canada. I'm not sure how to get the traffic thing to work though, do you have to sub to some service?

[Chauntalei]

Originally Posted by jimbobrand

I used to have issues loosing signal every now and then but havn't had the issue since I took my car in for the TSB.

My situation, pretty much. Before TSB, signal was intermittent and flaky. After, it's been rock solid.

[cwik]

Originally Posted by MEP

Absolutely hate the navigation system. I'm constantly losing the signal, the address search is way too picky, and the routing is can be down right retarded.

Absolutely agree, and the address search is a great point. When you can type "ikea near seattle" on the crappiest of android phones and have navigation in seconds, yet you fight for minutes with the BRZ to entire a fully qualified address, I reminded at how good google maps is. And yes, I know phones have the luxury of making server calls, but still.

When it comes to navigation, it seems like 50% of the time it's amazing, and the other 50% of the time it just loses all sanity for absolutely no reason and doesn't recover... it either keeps search for a signal while it shows me as stationary, or it just drifts off and never corrects itself.

I once set it up for a trip from downtown Seattle to one of the ferry terminals in Vancouver BC (more than 156 miles). In Bellingham, after 90 miles on the I-5, it thought I was in the mountains, 30 miles east of where I actually was. After restarting the car, it recovered perfectly. So bi-polar! Too bad there's no "reset GPS state" button for when it does start drifting off.

Even if GPS experience worked 100% like the factory expected, the software and hardware are junk. No multi-touch, a full second lag between touching the screen and seeing an effect, and the convoluted menus show just how dated the whole experience is. Today's free android phones are better.

There's just so many bad UI choicest with that unit. When you get a call, there's a hangup button, and a pickup button. Naturally, they make these the size of your fingertip and leave the other 98% of the screen unused. Oh, and they place them *right next to each other* so that if you miss by 1/4 an inch, you're going to hit the wrong one. This means that when you get call, you've got to put your thumb and pinky finger on the left and bottom sides of the unit so that your hand stays level with the unit (just in case you hit a bump in the road), aim your index finger properly, and then tap. Don't forget about the 1 second delay, so you tap, finally focus back on the road, hear the phone ring again, go bonkers trying to set up your hand again to make a second tap, and then hear it pick up. And they say hands free is safer :P.

Radio selection is the same story. You have 8 or 9 stations, all stacked vertically. So if you miss your tap by 1/4 an inch (say you hit uneven road), you're selecting the wrong one. Why not set them up in a 3x3 grid so that the tap targets are less error prone?!?!

I even took my BRZ in for that recall and it didn't seem to change anything with respect to the GPS experience.

Your mileage may vary, but it's one of the few things in my BRZ that feels half-assed.

[Scooby South]

not a big fan of the NAV.... my Trusty Garmin is more accurate and faster... that and the time on the OEM unit drives me nuts.. if I put a place in both my Garmin and OEM.. the Garmin will calculate the trip with 5 mins of actual arrival.. the OEM unit will add 30 mins to the trip.. as the trip progresses... the time on the OEM unit will walk back and eventually with 10 miles of destination will show an approximate same time as the Garmin.. DRIVES ME BATTY...

Bill

[e_cc]

The nav has not been wildly inaccurate for me but it is slow to respond to commands and the usability is terrible. It can really use a UI overhaul and is by no means a joy to deal with.

[DeepHunta]

Nav sucks on BRZ. I didn't buy the car for the nav anyways.

I would lose gps signal mid-route but it was since fixed with a trip to the dealership and voicing out my concern.

Fixed under warranty and no more issues.

UI still sucks. I wish it had a little nook where phones can be propped up. I would rather use my phone's gps.

[LeeMaster]

Originally Posted by ngabdala

I love the GPS unit. What I like even more is that I can speak the destination and it always gets it correct, even with the windows down driving 75+mph, tons of wind noise in cabin, and it hears me perfectly.

Wind noise and using voice to speak my desination on my iPhone 5 or Android phone does not pick up or grossly misinterprets what I say.

The gps always gets me to where I need to be.

How do you do that??? Everytime I try to speak to the damn thing it always say, "please repeat".

[Shizuma]

The BRZ's GPS is bar far the worst GPS I've ever used, the user interface seems like they read the book on all the things not to do on a UI and did them, they apparently borrowed the processor out of a Casio wrist watch so it horribly slow, especially if you want to attempt to use the voice recognition, it has a hard time getting GPS lock at times and occasionally loses signal, POI sucks, the touch screen is very sensitive so I feel like I have to jab the screen so hard i'm gonna brake it sometimes for it to recognize the button press, honestly as a GPS system I have absolutely nothing good to say about it, I generally use my phone for GPS as it's vastly superior to the BRZ's GPS in every way. Ok, I take that back, there is one way it's superior, it has a "slightly" larger screen than my phone, but really, that's it.

[PMok]

I agree that the Navi could be better, even compared to my 2006 Lexus navi it's noticeably "cheaper" feeling, hard to believe it's meant to be "2013 technology". But after I spent a little time reading the manual and playing with it I can appreciate it a little more and it rarely steers me wrong. I did get the TSB done because it was always losing signal and doing crazy stuff before the fix.

One cool feature you may not know about is that you can program alert points on the map and it will give you audible or visual warnings as you approach. So if you know of a fixed red light or speed camera location you can program it and the system will warn you as you approach, etc. I also use it to set warnings for dangerous spots like hairpin turns on my favorite twisties...

How to set an alert point (on U.S. BRZ OEM Navi):
http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=33450