Warning for buyers

Don't worry about taking your eyes off the road. The display in the base PiP, at least, is so bad that the street names are unreadable all the time, and most of the rest is unreadable in sunlight. No point in even looking at it! Some of the problems could be fixed in software, but I've been holding my breath a lot longer than you have with no result.

Richard

 

I also find the Nav to be horrid. Very clumsy to enter information, voice commands not well supported, inaccurate location information. The free google maps turn by turn on my android phone is FAR superior and its free. The main problem is they force you to get the nave in order to get other features like Entune... so you really don't have a reasonable option to not get it.

 

Yeah it's awful. Is it just me or does the NAV not auto zoom? My 10 year old Garmin zooms and unzooms depending on your speed. This piece of garbage forces me to manually press the zoom buttons as I enter and exit the freeway. This seems like a basic functionality.

The forced smart phone Entune for local searches renders this NAV worthless to me after the 3 free years are up. No way I am paying a monthly fee for a a substandard NAV that works no better than a $150 Garmin I can buy right now. That means the old Gen2 NAV is better than this garbage.

 

We have had the 2012 Prius 4 for 3 months and use our nav system as the primary system for travel now. It's somewhat unfriendly to enter destinations - but seems to navigate clearly and accurately. Huge screen that doesn't fall off the dash or move around every time you make a turn, or need charging all the time. Or need storage someplace. Toyota also made it easy to switch between audio and nav. So we like it. We're about to transfer our best Garmin Nuvi to our other car and give away an older Nuvi spare. I don't know if I'd like it as much if I felt I paid $1,000 for it, but we just paid a lot for the car and got a great car.
We're in Vermont and temps last week were in the 20's and 30's F and we got over 50 MPG on all of our trips, including one from Stowe to Middlebury that was over 60 mpg. (no grille blocking). Our lifetime mpg is 52. Very, very happy with the car.

Cliff

 

I have had issues with accuracy. Not every time for sure but I think i have around 9k miles on my car and 3 times so far it has taken me to the wrong spot by about half a mile. I then had to use my android phone device to get me that last important bit. Once you get burned a few times you get a bit worried to trust it. Ironically i think the best nav is the FREE google maps on phones. Apple just had to go back to using them as well due to issues with their attempt at a map program. I think the biggest issue they need to fix though is the horrible entry feature. you should be able to just type street and city without specifying a zip code like on all other gps I have used

 

I too advised toyota on some of the issues with the nav. They gave me what felt like a canned response. hope you get better luck.

 

I found on my C (somewhat counter-intuitively) that turning the contrast all the way down helped quite a bit.

 

I know that is one thing that works fairly well. If you are playing the radio you can just stay on the nav screen. It will show radio functions along the top of the nav screen. You can even use the entune with pandora at the same time. If you are on nav and want to thumb up or thumb down you just hit apps/pandora make the change then hit maps again.

 

completely agreed I LOVE my car. only 2 gripes are the GPS which I would have opted out for if I could and the Entune software which I have now bypassed. if you look at the reviews on entune downloads in android store they are .... not positive to be kind. ( which on an off topic reminds me. If anyone is having trouble with entune dropping connection frequently and/or draining battery power on your phone there is a workaround to eliminate the need to run the sw on your phone that has helped me out a lot. Can only be done on a Verizon phone since that is the only settings I know.)

 

I prefer to use 2d maps setting at 0.5 mile scale.

 

Yea, the Garmin will always be better. I use mine mostly as a map and with those settings you can make out the main roads from the side streets, and see enough map to gain your bearings by recognizing parks and unique shaped intersections.

 

The garmin has a lot of stuff that the Prius Nav doesn't have. Esp. the speed limit. But - having the Nav in one place, and not falling off and running out of battery and requiring cords is worth the missing features, to me. I know thats just me - but I really hate the wires, having to afix it to go anywhere, and hiding it when we reach the destination, and then setting it up again. Oh yeah it finds the satellites a lot faster.