I was at the local dealership today. The manager knows I like navigation, so he mentioned he had one with the new navigation. I had to take a look.

What I saw is the perfect navigation system, just what I've been waiting for since 2006. I entered a few local POIs and moved around the map using my finger to reposition the map. It was quick, responsive, easy to enter a POI and easy to read the map. I like that you can pull up a business, and the phone number is right there so you can call them.

I even took the time to sync up my cell phone to bluetooth and made a call home to my wife. I appreciated that when I turned on the truck, it knew my cell phone was in my pocket, and synced up automatically. It asked if I wanted to download my phone book, but I declined because it's not my truck. That is a nice feature.

I didn't have time to see everything, but the weather map looked like a real nice feature to have when traveling long distance in unpredictable weather. I know there were times when a storm traveled with me and I would have been better off to stop for coffee and allow it get ahead.

All in all I'm very impressed with what I saw in a short time. I know it is an expensive option, but a very useful option. I've spent a lot of time driving with Toyota/Lexus navigation over the last three years and though I considered it to be a toy at first, now I don't want to be without it and would like something comparable in my truck. I'm very impressed with the Toyota navigation, but this does everything the Toyota unit does and more.

This is the real thing. I think we are going to see more of these units in new trucks.

 

Nice. I'm very excited to finally have NAV. I was aggravated back in 2004 when the 150 came out with no NAV and no LED taillights. Still no LED's 5 years later; but finally a really full-featured NAV system.

Did you use any voice commands with the NAV? Curious as to how well it understands and responds. For example, can you tell your NAV that you need directions, and then just speak the address you want to go to and it inputs? Or do you always need to type in manually an address?

 

No, I didn't try voice command. I've never had success using voice commands with a navigation. It could be me, but I think voice recognition needs some work.

 

You should have tried the voice recognition for this system, while I have been less that thrilled on other systems this system seams to have a 95% hit rate on my commands without any voice training...

 

I find most voice commands word pretty well. When giving a number for an address (is 109 "one hundred and nine" or "one oh nine" or ???) it can be a bit picky. Otherwise, LOVE it.