Junedave

I am very disheartened with the Nav system. It's the first time I've had one built into the car. My old 2009 Garmin which cost all of $180 has the entire US mapped and would guide me right to my front
door. The Lexus system gives up 2 miles from my home. The Lexus Nav system is worthless when away from any major city and only has major highways mapped in rural areas. I expected more from an automobile of this class. The LS owners must be really mad. Just had the most recent update installed and can't see any improvement. Love the car but really feel let down.

jcat_350

When you say most recent updates installed, are you talking about a software update to the unit or did you purchase the most recent updated Nav DVD?

If the DVD is old, that could be a problem. You didn't say what year your car is, but you probably connect your Garmin to the computer to update it. You need to do the same for the Lexus system except that it's a physical DVD, not a downloadable file, that holds your maps.

Junedave

The car is a 2012 luxury edition ES350. The update was performed in November by the Lexus dealer. Supposedly it was a download from Lexus. My cheap Garmin has never failed to have route guidance no matter where I am. My brother-in-law just purchased a 2013 Avalon. I can't wait to see if his Nav system has guidance where my Lexus fails to. The Lexus dealership agrees with me that they have had numerous complaints about the Nav system not providing guidance in rural areas. You can go on Lexus.com and see that there are extensive areas all over the US that are not yet mapped for the Lexus system. This is unacceptable in this day and age. I think if more customers knew about this, they would not spend the extra money for the built in Nav system.

RickC5

We live in Western Colorado, and the NAV in our '08 ES works at least as good as our older Garmin does in this area, if not better. That isn't to say that it's perfect, just that it works fine for us out here in the west. Got us all the way to Long Beach,CA & back last summer with only one hiccup--it couldn't locate a brand new hotel.

My wife took the Garmin on a trip to West Virginia a year ago, and it couldn't find its way out of a paper bag back there. It was constantly claiming it couldn't find the satellites, and when it did find them, lots of streets were simply not on the map. This was in Morgantown, WV, where the streets haven't changed in a century.

IMHO, nothing is ever perfect any more. Some stuff is better than other stuff in certain conditons.

jcat_350

That's really odd. It appears the maps on the 2012 come on 6 USB sticks. Have you confirmed whether the dealer did all 6?

If not, I'd give that a try. But if that is in fact the latest update and it doesn't have maps of SC, I'm really surprised at that.

SW17LS

It depends on where you live I guess. I've had 4 Lexus/Toyota vehicles with nav going back to 2003. I've never really been in areas where there is no map coverage, unless its a new subdivision built since the map database was created. My 2010 I never updated, and my 2003 I only updated once. The 2004 Prius was never updated and it was fine until we traded it in 2011. I have taken them to rural parts of PA, WV, VA, NY & MD as well. One time in rural VA guidance was suspended because the roads were rural gravel roads. The roads were on the map, just the guidance wasn't supported, but thats the only time.

I have a portable Garmin unit I use when traveling, and our Jeep has a built in Garmin system. I *hate* the Garmin navigation, I hate the interface and the cartoony style of the maps. All what you're used to I suppose.

unklexus

Well, if you want to try something different, grab a tablet and put Copilot on it. A nav display on 10.1" is truly awesome, regardless if it's accurate or not. :P