This is our first car with Voice Commands and either we have to learn how to use it better or it is very disappointing.

Sometimes you ask a simple question and it responds with something completely different. Just to check it we asked for nearby shopping as we were going past a shopping center and it responded that it didn't find any.

Maybe you gotta be really specific? Wouldn't know but I'll definitely be experimenting once my car comes in.

My wife and I both tried and we tried saying it different ways with no results

Hey Ed with Woodfield Lexus,
Make sure that expanded voice commands is selected in or under the "Voice" section in the navigation system. You have to say "Find Nearby" then what ever you want to say. You can't say show me or find or just shopping. Once you know the system it works pretty good.

Not sure where in IL you live but you can always swing by the dealership and I can show you.

Ed Vale
Service Manager

Hi Ed,

Thanks for the support offer. I am in Mount Prospect. We have only had the car a few weeks so let me get all my questions together and we can stop in and only bother you once.

Mike

I've also had problems with the nav not finding results with voice commands when it can find them with manual entry. My guess is that lexus is still working out the kinks with the new system.

Mike,
Not a problem. Look forward to helping you.

If "Expanded Voice Commands" is not turned on the system works horrible....it's comes from the factory turned off? Turn it on and give it a try

Ed Vale

Voice commands are indeed poor. I had a 2006 Avalon with better voice commands. The Gs has fewer and missing some important ones. Oh well. The toggle handles all that's missing in voice. Kind of hobbles voice usage in this car...

I can't wait to download the updated voice response version that gets a little more personal.

The one with the sexy female voice that says stuff like: "Make a right turn onto the next street...would you like a nice massage later, Vasili?"

:tongue-in-cheek:

My 2012 LS is better than my 2013 GS. My wife and I both agree.

In my experience, MyFord Touch has a far superior vocabulary. Also, the Lexus's response "Pardon?" sounds very condescending.

the nav in general is poorly designed, it doesn't always find the best routes. it likes to reroute me onto the highway and loop back and cant simply tell me to do a quick uturn. the old Garmin Nuvi tells me the best routes.
It might be the setting but I've looked everywhere and turned on all possibilities (i.e. tolls, highways, shortest route, etc..) Just not liking the Nav on the RX350, hopefully it will improve in future models.

My personal experience is if you can get Enform to work reliably Bing is a better choice for searching for nearby points of interest. The voice recognition seems good, and it seems to do a much more flexible google-like search of keywords than the restricted set of categories of the built-in nav POI db, plus of course the searched database is as up to date as the internet. Unfortunately it's not quite so easy to get to as just pushing the voice command button on the steering wheel!

Yes, I just used voice command and said "Enter an Address" which is right there on the pop-up list and it didn't understand. I tried it twice. I have no accent. I just gave up. I said "Play Adele" and it started to call my boss. My boss isn't Adele and would not have been happy that I called him on a Sunday.