I've spoken to people who've considered a Toyota GPS navigation system, and
I've counseled against the purchase. Despite some definite advantages (a large,
high-resolution screen, integration into the drivetrain, and no worries about
it being stolen), I've found that its user interface and feature set pales
in comparison to a high-end dash-mounted system from a third party, which
also costs considerably less.
I bought my 2006 Toyota Prius with the factory navigation
system, mainly because I'd assumed that its functionality
would basically compare with the Garmin GPS I'd had for a few
years; turns out, I was wrong.
My main point of comparison is with a Garmin Streetpilot 2620, which I had
the good fortune to have with me on a cross-country drive in the summer of
2004. While the system has its own shortcomings, its overall functionality,
unfortunately, puts Toyota's to shame.
While a full comparison is difficult to make, as part of it is
simply a matter of "feel," I'll try to make my
points as clearly and succinctly as possible. Hereafter, I will
refer to the Garmin system as the 2620, and the Toyota
system as the Nav.
I would like to also point out that the 2620 is an older system
(by at least two generations), and has been improved even beyond
the comparisons made below.
1) No "Along Route" feature
The Nav system's most shameful omission is the ability to find things near
a route. If you are driving along a route plotted on the 2620, you can use
it to find destinations within X miles (the distance can be changed by the
user) on either side of that route.
This exact situation happened to me on my cross-country drive. I was driving
through one of the Plains states when I looked down and realized I had an
eighth of a tank of gas. I asked the 2620 to find fuel and limited it to places
near the route. My 2620 found a gas station a half mile off of the upcoming
exit.
Or this: you realize that you won't make your destination this day, so use
the 2620 to find a motel just off the route, say about 20 miles ahead (so
you can cover more distance that day). Wonderful, wonderful function, and
totally impossible with the Nav system.
Below is a capture of what the Garmin can do. A route was
programmed, and the Garmin is showing those gas stations that are
only within a half-mile to either side of the programmed
route, X miles ahead:
Now, the Nav system does have an "On Route" function for finding
locations, but they must literally be on the route. If
you're traveling a couple of hundred miles on an Interstate that
does not have rest stops with fuel, the Nav system literally won't
see the gas stations you so desperately need, though they're
located mere dozens of yards off of an exit. In the example I gave
above, the Nav system would have said that there were literally no
gas stations along the hundreds of miles to my destination, even as
I passed them right by.
When I've spoken to Toyota reps about this, they've told me that I can have
the Nav system display the Points of Interest (POIs) around me, including
gas stations. This does not help; simply being able to see the POI icons is
not sufficient. How useful is it to see a gas station a mile to my right,
when the nearest exit off of the Interstate is twenty miles straight ahead?
I'd have to drive twenty miles, exit, and wind my way at least twenty miles
back. Showing me icons all around me doesn't tell me which ones are close
to the route I'm traveling—specifically, it doesn't tell me what gas
stations are actually accessible.
The Nav system needs to be able to find places that are located
within easy reach of the current route—mere physical
proximity to the current position isn't enough. What the 2620
does, in other words, is to find what you're looking for,
filtered down by their proximity on either side of the route
you've programmed (which is why the Garmin's function is
near route, not on route).
2) Doesn't display upcoming intersections
The Nav system doesn't tell you the upcoming intersections in normal navigation
mode (i.e., with no route calculated). It would be nice to have a readout
of what cross-street is coming up (like my 2620 does):
What makes this worse is how often the Nav system
doesn't show street names at all! The following is
zoomed in all the way—presumably at its highest degree of
detail:
That nice, big, hi-res screen, and the only street that's
labeled is the one I'm actually on (the name of which is
displayed anyway, below the car icon). Contrast that with the
Garmin:
which even shows most names despite zooming out—and that's with a 3.3
inch x 1.7 inch, 305 X 160 pixel display! Factor in the newer Garmins with
their larger, higher-resolution screens, and the comparison is even more shameful.
Unfortunately, the Nav system's lack of street name display is all too common:
3) Poor Turn-by-Turn display
Seeing a turn-by-turn listing is a real pain. You have to go through multiple
screens to find a complete listing of the upcoming turns—and I don't
mean the next three or so turns, I mean all the turns--and it's not
accessible while you're driving! On the Garmin, you get the following
by pressing a single button, the Page button on the front of the GPS:
You can quickly scroll through it to get a helpful overview of
what you're going to do.
On the Nav system...
Let's make the logic a little more bizarre: having pressed "Map View"
rather than "Route" to get to the proper screen, you now press "Route
Overview." I wish they kept the terminology more consistent.
Now we have the following, but we're not there yet. Now you can press the
"Turn List" button:
Finally! The Turn List:
Of course, you had to do this all while parked. If you dare to actually
start driving:
4) Searches don't update as you drive.
With my 2620, if I look for a destination, results update their proximity
as I move. For example: I was driving along and needed to find a pharmacy.
Stopped at a light, I began my search for pharmacies near my current position,
which yielded results just as the light turned green so I didn't have the
chance to look through them. The next time I was able to stop, I'd driven
several miles and the search results still showed what had been nearby when
I started searching--four miles back! Rather than the system updating results
to show me what was now nearby, I had to cancel the search and start from
the beginning. The Garmin updates the distance and direction information in
real-time, as I drive.
5) The Nav system allows very little customization.
With the Garmin, I can customize the information tabs to just how I want them to be. There is very little I can do with with the Nav system; the problem with "one size fits all" is that it actually means "it doesn't really fit anyone." Your choices are: green or orange print.
With the 2620, I can separately customize the appearance of the route and
the mapping pages (the latter being the screen without a programmed route).
And look at how it lets me change what the map tabs contain:
each one has a choice of eleven headings! (the Mapping
screen has three tabs, while the Route screen has
four).
6) No auto-zoom
Why doesn't the route map automatically zoom to show the current leg of
the trip? The Garmin can be set to display the entire current segment until
the next turn on the map (whether that's hundreds of feet or hundreds of miles),
regularly zooming in as you get closed and closer to the turn (and you can
easily manually zoom in or out). Much better for visualizing your trip than
what Toyota's system does.
7) Announcing exits not to take.
The Nav system automatically goes into a rather puzzling mode when on limited-access roads. For some reason, it announces all the exits I'm not going to take. You're driving along, knowing your exit is ten miles ahead, and suddenly the screen changes and the system announces "stay on current freeway." Each and every bloody exit. Isn't the point of the Nav system to tell me when to turn, not when not to turn? Suddenly displaying an irrelevant exit is simply distracting. I'm not talking about forks or splits in the road (which the user needs to know about), but when you pass cloverleafs, which no one would think to take if not told otherwise.
8) Searches by name don't show their locations
When searching by name, it doesn't show you where the results are
in relation to my current position. Showing me an address (which I have to
manually scroll to see) isn't helpful—the address should only be in
the detailed information screen. What I want to know is, is it ahead of me,
behind me, to either side? Unless I already am very familiar with the area,
how do I know where it is in relation to me? Besides, if I'm already headed
north, I want to find the places north of me
Again, below is the Nav system and the nice, helpful
Garmin.
\
9) Mediocre Detour function
Say you need to take a detour—that is, you want an alternate route
for the next X miles. The minimum detour distance is five miles—it changes
your current route for a minimum of the next five miles. The Garmin
has presets for 1/2 mile, 1 mile, 2 miles, 5 miles, and 15 miles. If the bridge
is out or there's an accident on the road ahead, I'll probably want to avoid
a distance of the route that's more often than not no more than a couple of
miles long.
10) Poorly organized search results
Search results by name are scattershot--even if you're looking for a chain
store, the particular one you want could be hidden among dozens of search
results. For example, a search for Carvel yielded seven screen of matches,
including "Carvel Ice Cream" and "Carvel Ice Cream Bakery," among others—why
is a single chain divided up among a couple of dozen separate categories?).
Inexplicably, there were two categorical results for "Carvel Ice Cream," under
Fast Food and under Restaurants (other), one with a 100 results and the other
with 18, and 123 results for "Carvel Ice Cream Bakery" under Ice Cream and
four under what inexplicably seems to be Seafood. With all those results,
none included the place I was looking for—even though it's been in that
location for 15+ years.
Below are the search results. Though there are a couple of results that are not related to Carvel Ice Cream (e.g., Carvel Ace Hardware), most are—but scattered through multiple listings.
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Here is the nice, simple listing for the same search on
the Garmin:
And why are Coffee Houses and Ice Cream Parlors under
"Other" and not "Restaurants"?
11) The legal disclaimer annoyance
Each and every time you select the Nav system after starting the car, you
have to accept the "I agree to do things safely..." notice. All right, I can
understand that Toyota's legal department screamed to get this in, but each
and every time? If the user sets a routes but make a quick stop, say to get
coffee, the Nav system stops navigating until you hit the "I agree"
screen again when you restart the car. Why? Do they think I might have sold
the car in the middle of a route and a new user who's never been in it is
taking over? Why not do this once a week or month? Or even just once a day?
A side annoyance: if you hit the Dest ((Destination) button to first activate
the Nav system, you get the I agree screen; but hitting "I agree"
takes you to the Map screen, not Destination. You have to hit Dest again.
12) Country chopped up into regions
The Nav system divides the country into regions, and you have to choose one
to work in. Why? Search speed? My Garmin manages just fine without that, actually.
It's annoying to have to manually switch back and forth between regions when
you're traveling back and forth between them.
13) Poorly-designed day/night modes
My Garmin has a light sensor, which switches it from the Day color scheme
to Night. The Nav system works more bizarrely; it depends on your headlight
setting: day mode with headlights off, night when they're on. The main problem
with this is that here in NY the law requires you to put your headlights on
when it rains. So the other day I had the headlights on while it was raining
but still rather bright out and the Nav screen was all but unreadable. The
way around this is to manually set the dash lights into the brightest setting,
which puts the Nav system into Day mode. And when it does get dark out, you
need to take the dash lights out that bright setting, or the Nav system won't
switch out of Day mode.
14) Interaction largely disabled while driving
As mentioned in passing above, the system's interaction is largely gone whenever
the car is in motion, probably as another nod to Toyota's legal department.
Are you driving down the Interstate and realize you need to find a gas station?
Find someplace to pull over: unless you're stopped, you can't use the Nav
to find one (a good trick on the Interstate, where only emergency stops are
allowed). Need to add a stop? Even a passenger in your car can't use the system
to find it (of course, Garmin gives you a remote control, so you can sit back
and control the GPS). What annoys me the most about this supposed concession
to safety (i.e., a reduction in distractibility) is its inconsistency. Why
can you fiddle with the Nav system to switch between differently configured
map screens (compass, turns, and other info), basically "neat" but not very
useful information? You can zoom in and out, scroll the ma—all distractions.
And most of all, the Bluetooth phone interaction. Jabbering away on the phone
is arguably the most distracting thing you can do. Navigation systems in other
car makes don't have this limitation.
15) Doesn't show technical data
Want handy compass and other "technical "information? You get
the basics with the Nav system:
The screen below tells you the satellite status (lower-left, bottom-right) as well as other handy information:
And more
Why can't I save a route? I use that function in the Garmin to plan
complex routes for later. Why is the "Mark" button in the same position
as the "Guide" button so, when you press the latter a second time
(because the system's slowness makes it appear as if it didn't register the
first press) you accidentally mark where you are? Why is there no option for
auditory feedback (a soft beep) when pressing on-screen buttons only,
so that we know our presses have been accepted? (Especially since visual responses
can be slow—see the aforementioned double-keypress). You can set it
to beep when every button is pressed—including the "hard"
(real) buttons, which is silly, since you can feel when they're pushed anyway
(and it's irritating to have the bloody thing beep whenever you do anything,
like putting on the air conditioning). Why is there no auto-complete when
entering names, like in a web-browser's address field? The Garmin has it in
various modes.
At this point, I very much wish I had not ordered the navigation system with
my car; I would, however, wish to have that option with an improved unit in
the future. I am not terribly interested in new features (e.g., traffic
reports, which, from what I've seen, are so inaccurate as to be useless),
but want an improvement in the existent system. If there was
an interesting feature I'd like to add, it's interoperability with a computer,
so that points of interest (in industry-standard formats, such as .loc and
.gpx files) can be loaded in, perhaps via a Secure Digital or Compact Flash
memory card (and having this be platform-neutral, PC/Mac/Unix). Why shouldn't
my car's system have at least some of the flexibility of my 2620, or my eTrex
Vista C?
