I'm upgrading from the 2004 Acura TL which recognized the phone numbers I dialed by voice all the time and every time.

I tried using my GS's voice recognition on a long drive yesterday and it was a crapshoot. It would recognize the numbers about 40% of the time. Very often it would insert an additional "8" somewhere in the number. It would also frequently mistake "nine" for "five".

Please, let me know if what I am experiencing is abnormal, so that I could talk to the dealer.

Also, everyone I talked to said that they can't hear me all that great, like I'm on a subpar speakerphone. That's very disappointing, because, again, Acura's system was great. I called my wife six times yesterday and asked her to call me three times just to verify it wasn't a one-time thing.

 

I'm afraid I can't be of any assistance since I will be ordering a GS350 sometime this week and hopefuly it will not have this issue.

I have a question for you. How do you rate the Lexus vs. Acura navigation system? Just curious.

 

My GS350 Nav system does not understand addresses about 50% of the time. I tend to avoid it.

BTW - I have been raised in the Midwest all my life and speak like your TV weatherman.

 

There's no comparing any voice commands to the Honda/Acura system thus far, for ANY manufacturer. If you can believe it, I personally find that Toyota/Lexus is second best, behind Honda/Acura. I do have the same problem too though... the only things that are dead on every time is "temperature" for climate and "go home".

 

is that good or bad?


the voice recog. syst. is total crap. at least from my personal exp. Porshe and Honda make good ones, the rest can go to hell.

 

I do well with everything except numbers.

 

The Lexus system appears to be unnecessarily complicated without being better. The screen has better resolution than on my 2004 TL, but various screen updates seem to take longer. The screen is VERY VERY busy by default, but you can turn off a lot of extraneous information. I liked the text route screen on the Acura much better than the Lexus equivalent. You could review the entire route's text directions before and during driving; I have not yet found a way to do that on the Lexus. So far I can just see 3-4 next movements in the text mode overlaid on the right side of the map.

I did not really have voice recognition for the Navigation system on the TL (couldn't enter addresses by voice), so I can't compare. The voice recognition on Lexus sucks so far; maybe just a bit less sucky than BMW's. The best one BY FAR was on the Infiniti M45 I test drove a few weeks ago. The screen was gorgeous (though not touch-sensitive), the interface was straightforward, and the voice recognition was dead-on. I tried three different addresses and didn't have to repeat myself once.

 

About a month ago, I took a test ride in a new 07 Acura MDX. When the salesguy was using the voice commands, many times the system got the command wrong or it asked him to repeat the command. He was embarassed. And it worked no better with my voice. So to me, the Acura system looks to be no better than the Lexus system. They all need a lot more work to be outstanding.

 

When it comes to complex voice recognition like names and places, maybe you're right, although my short experience with the Infiniti system was great. But when it comes to recognition of just numbers there is no excuse for poor performance. If my 3 year old Acura system could achieve a nearly 100% accuracy in ANY condition that I tried (including heating/AC blowing at top speed), a 2007 Lexus should offer at least as good a performance. Period, no discussion.

 

I just ordered a GS350 today. The demo car lacked the navi which I ordered. I asked the salesman about failure to recognize numbers and he said that you simply have to rattle out the number without any hesitation. If you happen to hesitate, the system will think you are through.

Let us know if that works, I'm looking forward to trying mine out when I get it.

Also, does the system recognize numbers in foreign language?

 

They need to personalize this to each individual's voice. Good luck with that though. I rarely use this feature. Nice that it's there but not really useful for me. Sick and tired of it saying "Now displaying FAst Food icons" when I ask it to change tracks.