After 4k miles, I'm beginning to really like the NAV in my 450h. The lock out in motion is a pain, but the traffic alert and detour routing is wonderful. Only yesterday it sent me around a wreck on the bridge in Cincinnati, and I really enjoyed watching the masses stewing as I crossed the Ohio River on an adjacent bridge and popped up on the first exit after the traffic jam. Sort of mean, but better them than me, right?

Making peace with the NAV seems to be mostly a matter of getting beyond the Garmin.

Anyway, now I like the Lexus NAV.

 

The Lexus nav is actually not bad, above average in my opinion, but if you consider the nav lock out, then its below average overall.

 

Install the PrestigiousSociety Nav override and it's all good. I did and it's great.

 

Dont you have to take the enter console apart to install that thing?

 

Cool. I've been warned that will mess with the warranty and that install is a big deal. What has your experience been?

 

Doesn't the satellite radio provide the traffic alert not the Nav system?

Wes

 

So let me understand this... First pay $2.5K for the navigation option that sucks because it locks you out of doing anything while the car is moving. Then pay $300 plus the installation hassle to override the system so you can at least use it. Mind you, this voids your warranty if the thing ever malfunctions. We are looking at around $3K plus a lot of aggravation for the thrill of using a mouse gizmo that you will eventually get sick of.

NO THANKS. I'm sticking to my $200 Garmin. Thank you very much

 

XM provides the data, the NAV decides if it is a problem based on the route and offers detour options.

It's saved me hours of bumper to bumper twice now in two different cities.

 

Well, when you put it that way, it does seem like of bad

A friend of mine use to get into fights with his wife over this stupid override. The wife is driving and she wants to pulling over and enter destination, my friend say he know where he is going and dont need to stop. Sometimes he is wrong and all hell breaks loose

 

Your friend and his "wife" should get some counseling so they cut down on the arguing like 4th graders in a moving vehicle, and they can send Lexus the bill since it's clearly the fault of the NAV system.

 

No warranty issues, takes an hour to install, seamless, plug-n-play. The $ is well worth never having to stop and allowing the passenger to enter in telephone and NAV info.

 

We've had Lexus nav systems since 2001 in an RX; back then it was treated in LFS' leases with zero residual value. Except when it came time to sell our two RXs ('01 and '04) after buying them from Lexus - when it helped the private party resale value tremendously.

I've had TomToms, Garmins, and Magellans - and I still use a fairly new Garmin in my Mustang GT.

IMO, nothing beats an integrated OEM system for recalc speed, audio quality (yes, I know its dumb that the new 2010 Lexus nav is unable to mute the audio system when it speaks up - but try setting its preferences to only announce thru the driver's side speaker - that helps a bit).

And I certainly agree with the other posts that when the nav system integrates well with traffic conditions, that's a major plus. And from what I've seen in our 450h, that feature works as advertised about 80% of the time.

 

I found out during a recent 2500 mile trip that the NAV-TRAFFIC only works in metropolitan areas. While on I-4 going through Orlando it did alert me to an accident however. I wish the NAV-TRAFFIC had worked on I-95 in Georgia. I drove for about 30 miles through a construction area and the NAV-TRAFFIC showed absolutely nothing.

NavTraffic might be worth the extra money if you do a lot of city driving.

 

Jeff,

You stole my thunder. I was working with a friend at a car auction a bit ago. Vehicles with NAV got all of the attention. No NAV -- no bidders.

$2K, yeah, that's nuts, but much if not most of that comes back at resale time. Just like the hybrid. At the moment, electric wheels fetch more green.

I keep my Garmin for rental cars when I fly, which is more than I like.

My first misgivings were much more learning curve than I thought.

If my 450h had a 75 gallon fuel tank I'd be totally content.

 

I can see XM Navi still needs lots of improvement...

I had the problems with my Navi/Real-Time-traffic-update. I do a lot of city driving plus the highway driving, but in where I'm or in the situation I have had, this Navi didn't provide the things I was looking for. In last summer, I found out Google Map or Yahoo Map traffic flow did the better updates; at the meantime, XM said it's no traffic, the roads were actually jammed or in traffic. Sometimes XM showed it's crowded, but there wasn't too much traffic on roads. This made you wonder wether or not the XM Navi could be trusted. (Maybe it's because we have lots of heavily trafficked highway/roads in the city. And, XM Navi couldn't really do the real-time updates based on the data they received.)

Second, XM Navi doesn't display all the major highways information. This is bad. I'd say XM Navi only covers about 40-60% of highways here.