Not a fan of VC in our car. It seems that VC in most cars need major improvements to be able to live with. If they had VC that worked like the google search app they would have something!!!

 

+1. The only benefit for Nav is the hands free. So many steps

In terms of ease of use, I thought the Acura interface was way more intuitive even in my 06 TL

 

My gf and I got new cars one week apart...I got my GS first, then she got a 2013 ford fusion hybrid. I went to the ford dealership with her....and obviously there were vast differences in the overall experiences. The Lexus dealership had a full cafe with complementary food & drink, a full featured clothing section with Oakley & Tommy Bahama brands and all the Lexus accessories you can imagine. After we had been setting at the ford dealer for over 2 hours waiting for them to get her paperwork processed, no one even asked if we wanted anything to drink...I finally asked if they had any water, the sales guy said 'sure! come with me!"...I followed him to the 'finance guys' cube where he politely gave me a half-roll of quarters, he pointed me to the vending machine and said "bring back what you don't use"...hahaha...we got such a good laugh out of that....but...

I was politely sitting in the back seat while the sales guy was showing her all the features of the Ford Sync...and even after the half-roll of quarters incident, I quickly realized how much better the voice rec system was in her 30k ford than my 60k Lexus. Moral to the story...Lexus, spend less on frills and more on voice rec R&D!

 

Voice command has never worked for me although I try and use it often. For example, when overtaking a slow driver in the "left", or passing lane for those of us who drive to the right, and shout out through the windshield, "Get the effe over to the right!!!!" My voice commands are never acknowledged or complied with

 

just for calls. a lot easier to do what you want to do with the mouse instead of 'trying' via voice command.

although i will say 'nearest xxx' does work well too

 

Only use it for navigation input, calling destination assist, and calling through Bluetooth. All of which are very rare. I don't like how it needs you to say yes or no after every command. So annoying!

 

I owned a 2012 Ford Edge before the 2013 Lexus GS 350. The Ford's MyFord Touch voice commands (Sync) were superior in accuracy and functionality. Unfortunately, it was very unreliable. It's best to think of the 2013 Lexus GS 350 as a good car with an overall technology package from around five years ago.

 

There a couple of commands I've mastered like "Go Home" for the nav and "Call ____" for the phone, but even then sometimes I will say "Call _____" and it will try to play a track off my iPod. I've since put all the phone numbers I call on Speed Dial so I can click with the mouse. I think it sucks, but then again I know I should read the manual. If I commuted everyday I would either be really knowledgeable or really angry because it doesn't recognize the commands.

 

I think voice commands in general can be very useful in avoiding an accident but most leave room for improvement.

 

"Go Home" and "Call xxx" are the only two voice commands I use regularly. I'd love to use the "Play music" commands but my GS seems to take 5-10+ minutes every time it starts to scan the plugged in USB drive before it will accept voice commands for it, and with most drives being only 10-20 minutes long, this makes it pointless for that.

I have noticed voice recognition for generic Bing searches works pretty well... almost as well as Google on my phone. I wish it was Google instead of Bing, but it's better than nothing.

 

I'm disappointed with the VC. It has less functionality then the 3GS for me... It's absurd that they omit nav-pause. I have to use to remote touch or just "close my ears"...Very weird!

 

iPods are cheap on eBay...

 

I agree with that... Does that mean the music playing features work better with an iPod than a USB drive? I don't have an iPod to compare, but if it doesn't have this "scanning" delay, it would definitely be worth it.

 

No scanning delay when connected to my iPhone via USB. iPod should be the same.

 

Yup! A dedicated "iPod" tab comes up and you use it to select your music by Playlist, Artist, Album, Song, Podcast, Audiobook, Genre, or Composer. All but Playlist and Genre are indexed alphabetically with handy ABC, DEF, etc. "buttons" for quick access. Older Lexus sound systems forced you to either page through the lists or to hold down the page button which would then "scroll" your list and you'd have to guess where you were. I had the misfortune of dealing with this on my 2010 ES350 with an iPod with 17,000 songs on it - sheer misery! Another nice thing about the new systems and their iPod interface is that everything remains "live" even when you're in motion.

Note that you connect your iPod (or whatever) via the USB connector in order for digital transmission of music from the player's memory or disk to the Lexus system where it is decoded, converted to analog, amplified and, finally, heard. If you connect to the player by Bluetooth (wirelessly), you lose the indexing capability described above but keep the digital transmission to the Lex. Only when you connect using the AUX connector 3.5mm stereo jack, do you lose both digital transmission and indexing functions. This is straight analog which uses your player's digital to analog converters and only the Lex's amplifier (and speakers of course). I ALWAYS store my music in digital form and, where possible, send it to the most capable D-A converter which I believe is the ML unit in the Lexus. To maintain the highest fidelity, you would want to store your digital music in a lossless format rather than a compressed one like MP3. I hope this helps. Good luck and good listening.

Addenda:

1. Leave the iPod connected to the USB in the car's center console storage and forget about it. But, first put the iPod in a sleeve to protect the screen and buttons from damage. Your iPod will always be fully charged and ready for action when you want it.

2. Because you're not interested in operating the iPod other than via your Lexus RTi controller, you don't have to worry about buying one with screen scratches, iffy buttons, dents, etc. As long as it is functionally operable, you can enjoy full use of REALLY cheap iPods with REALLY big disks that are shunned by those worried about color touch screens, Wi-fi, unit cosmetics, and direct operation. My 160Gb Gen 6 Classic was just over $100, shipping and 17,000 rap songs included!

3. One word of warning: you will want to turn off the Automatic Album Cover downloading from the iPod to the Lexus (in Audio Setup on Lex somewhere) if you have a ton of music and can do without a tiny pic of the cover in the display. The download can lock up the communication between the Lex and the iPod if the data gets garbled or something. Better to keep things simple, no?

4. You will REALLY get a kick out of operating the iPod using the Lex Voice Command system - it is truly cool!