I see what youre talking about but there reallt is no difference.

 

im not sure if its bigger but i can tell you its lcd not plasma

 

Just to clarify, (and with capitalization and punctuation added at no extra charge) it's surely not a plasma screen. The smallest plasma screens are 42 inches, and they generate quite a bit of heat (some even have built in fans). Only recently have LCD screens approached and even exceeded that size, but at higher costs. Because of the way they are made, LCD screens are used for the smaller formats, and plasma screens are used for the larger formats. So, as a general rule, if it's smaller than 42", its an LCD screen, and vice versa. (This is for direct view sets -- rear projection systems are something else altogether.)

The 350 does have a 9" screen, and from the photo in the brochure, although it does not appear to be 16:9, it does appear to be wider than the (old) standard 4:3 aspect ratio, but even the Lexus brochure notes that it's an LCD screen. Today, any format other than 4:3 is called "wide screen."

Some of these salesmen should spend their down time reading their own material.

 

The primary reason why plasma is not found in any nav screen on the market and LCD is, is that plama tends to suffer burn-in quite easily. Meaning if you display the same familiar images on the screen for any significant number of hours, then you'll see a ghosted image 'burnt' into the screen on occasions when something else is being displayed in its place.

A lot of restaurants in this area (including my own) are starting to use flat panel TVs to display specials of the day and such. I noticed that one of our local movie theaters is doing such and seems to have made the mistake of using plasma. Their screens look horrible now..... all sorts of burn-in. It's so bad it actually makes it harder to read what's actually being displayed on the screen at the moment!

Probably the #2 reason is they have a very defined lifespan in terms of brightness. After XX thousands of hours (depending on the panel, but it's a relatively low #, especially for a car display), the brightness of the display will have worked its way down to HALF what it originally was... that can be a problem, especially in the daytime in a car.

Heat and power usage are other downsides, as well.

And finally, LCD displays of such small size (6-10 inches is the range found in most vehicles today) are just NOT that expensive. I doub the manufacturer's cost on a 9" display in the RX is over 100 bucks. Granted that's not including the rest of the nav equipment... but we're talking the actual display screen, only.