An average guy knows that factory goods are always inferior when comparied to after market products. Thats why I got a gs300 with out the NAVaid system and got a Kenwood Excelon DVD,TV,CD,Navaid with Touch screen GUI. You get voice guidence and great popup windows down to the last foot of travel. It tells you where atms are gas stations, AppleBees and a whole libiary of POI. Granted I did pay for 4k for it. But I agree that the lexus Navaids does leave you wanting.

 

investigate who the manufaturer of your 4K kenwood branded system is...and then investigate who the manufaturer of the OEM system is. They are the same.

 

Manufacturers might be the same but when the OEM goes in to negotiate a quanity discount that negotiation procedure oftentimes results in an inferior product. Maybe in this case, the middleman, DENSO, got a better price by agreeing to provide their our system programming.

 

Does the lexus navaid automaticly creat a new route if you make a wrong turn?

 

YES, it takes a moment, typically, for it to ascertain that you have gone "off-route", but it fairly quickly computes a new route.

 

I am not exactly sure what type of DVD player Denso / Lexus uses. However, if it can support DUAL LAYER DUAL SIDED DVDs then over 16 Gigs of space would be available for future updates. The current DVD is a DUAL LAYER SINGLE SIDED DVD which is capable of holding just over 8 GBs. I have an Alpine DVD unit installed in my 4-Runner. Alpine tells me that the next DVD release would have TRUE COMPLETE COVERAGE of the U.S. and that their units CAN support DUAL LAYER DUAL SIDED DVDs providing over 16GB of space !!

 

....except that I've found, to my surprise, that the factory DVD units in both Acura and Lexus vehicles to be better than my Aftermarket Alpine DVD unit!!!!.......and Alpine makes the unit for Acura - go figure!!. I owned an Acura 3.2TL with Navi for 8 months until it got stolen. Personally I think this was the best Navi system I've used (Except for coverage - again not their fault, but Navtech's). After getting used to the "usefulness" of a Navigation system, I decided I had to get one for my 4-Runner, and since Alpine makes the Navi unit for Acura, I thought to myself if the Acura unit is so good, then then the AFTERMARKET UNIT must be SUBSTANTIALLY BETTER........I was wrong.....big dissapointment. The Alpine unit is much quicker in calculating and recalculating, but other than that : the display modes, sorting functions, organization of the POI database etc. is far inferior to Acura. Many intuitive features that were available on the Acura version of Alpine's unit are not available on the AFTERMARKET!!!!....and this is Alpine's one and only TOP-OF-THE-LINE model.....and the biggest joke being the Acura version is only a $2000 option and I paid nearly $4000 for my Alpine!!!!!

 

Hopefully I won't get dragged down into the depths of some of the recent nasty posts, here, but I can tell you that after getting a lot of run-around from Lexus USA, my dealer and other dealers around the country, I have finally received word that Lexus IS planning a DVD update for Devember of this year. At that time I was told to call my dealer for a part number (that probably won't work, though!).

I'm hoping the POI database is updated and also that more map data is included. I have no word on what the updates are, however. There have been major strides in recent months in terms of miles mapped for display (check out www.navtech.com for one such announcement). This has been my major complaint; the database for touting seems more complete than the one for display so one often is routed into areas with no maps (even in a city with newer roads/subdivisions).

My $0.02 worth.

Dave

 

Because my RX is a 2000 model sans nav, I have run DeLorme’s Street Atlas 7 and 8 - as well as their AAA Map’n’Go Ver. 5 and 6 - from an onboard laptop for nearly 18 months with great success. These products have proven excellent, particularly for exploring 2-lane America.

Installed from one CD to the HD, Atlas intermittently pulls map data from a second CD that covers the entire US in incredible detail. Location database is good, if a little limited, however location accuracy is quite good. City street detail is quite complete, even in VERY small towns. Large cities are equally well detailed, and in the far backwoods of Wyoming I found that practically any drivable road was thoroughly mapped. Even dirt roads in state and national parks were accurately charted. Routing is reasonably good, considering that the system has no local knowledge of traffic patterns. Voice directions are occasionally confused, but they are easily silenced.

The signal from the Earthmate GPS antenna conveniently placed to look up through the moonroof is partially attenuated by the metallic UV coat on the window. This is not a problem in rural areas, but in cities where spurious RF seems to interfere with acquiring and maintaining satellite signals, frequent loss of tracking may result - just when you need it most. Instructions indicate preferred placement of antenna is on dash, but finding a secure location to minimize bright yellow case’s reflection in the windshield is a real challenge.

The DeLorme AAA product is also GPS-capable, but is best used as a trip planner. Its detailed database of motels, restaurants, even stores along the route is excellent, but precise location should be taken with a grain of salt. Errors in placement of facilities are generally less than 1/4 mile, but can result in considerable eyeball time on city streets. Recommend you transfer addresses to Streets application and navigate from there. Because all software, including maps in Map'n'Go is on a single CD, it includes local detail only in major cities and minimal information on intersecting or alternate state and county roads enroute. I suspect this is similar to the data delivered on the newer OEM navs.

Memo to Lexus:
1. Here's your product target. You CAN put an incredible amount of map data on a CD, the DVD version should perform considerably better than these posts seem to indicate.
2. How about a floppy drive, or at least a port so we can plan trips on our home computer, then dump route directions to the nav? Would allow much more detailed selection of route (fast, short, or scenic), full planning for fuel stops (exit services) and even location of POIs with a larger screen and a better GUI – without all the pre-trip fiddling. Or would this require too much cooperation among software developers?

Looking forward to my ’03!

 

.....the POI database in the Lexus/Denso unit is A JOKE. It hardly has anything (they claim a FEW HUNDRED THOUSAND businesses across the U.S.). By sharp contrast the Alpine and Acura POI databases contain over 5 MILLION businesses each !! . This was my main complaint to Lexus. That is because the Acura/Alpine units use both Navtech's (very small) and INFOUSA's (largest database of businesses in the U.S.) data in their systems . Lexus of Cerritos told me that Lexus was going to release an updated DVD in July/August which would remedy this shortcoming, as Navtech has signed up with INFOUSA to compliment IT'S OWN database recently. However, August has come and gone and I've not seen anything released. Hopefully the December release you talk about will be up-to-date!

 

Yep, the others (Alpine/Acura) are known to have good POI databases. That's one thing I hope will be improved. I, too, was told July/August. I was also told "never" and I have been told just about everything in between. I got this latest from Lexus Corporate after I asked for a "real" answer and "don't answer until you know." Frankly, they probably still don't know...

There should be updates at least once a year and on a schedule. They should also be available off the Lexus web site (like Acura does) for a *reasonable* fee (not $500) and should also be user-installable (my three-month-old system has a database from early 2000 in it). I will not pay $100 for the dolts at Lexus to put a DVD in a drive. They probably mounted it such that one has to take the trunk apart, though... also probably need a special tool to open the DVD :-)

Oh well... we'll probably have this conversation, again, in December.

Dave

 

i got my lexus without the navi..now the question...which aftermarket product do i go for?? here are the options :
1. Delorme StreetAtlas 2003/2004 with Earthmate
2. Deluo with Routis Navigation software.

Both will work with my laptop and are under $200/-(cheapest I could find )

Any input would be appreciated!

I used to have X5 and one thing I can say for sure is that its navigation sucked big time!!!!

Thanks!

 

Garmin 2610. I have the nav built into my rx-300 and the Garmin beats it hands down!

bob

 

I also have the Garmin 2610 and I'd have to agree with steelgtr

 

Do you have a pic of the Garmin installed in your RX? Is this the one the Garmin site says is for dealers only?