First Long distant journey - appalling SatNav

[andiabs]

Hi All,

Did my first long distance drive today from Cardiff into East London.

Firstly - not impressed by the mpg - had to refill on the way back, but I won't be doing the trip often so not too concerned.

The main point is the SatNav - truly terrible. It had me going all routes in central London, luckily I know the drive and shed an hour of the ETA but even on the drive back on the M4 it had me coming off at every junction to go some convoluted way.

Question - Does it learn, or can I teach it to go, the best route or am I stuck with this rather strange piece of technology as is?

Thanks
Andrew

 

[tlongdon]

Sadly it doesn't learn.

And happens to be one of least intuitive satnav's I've come across.

Which is why, 3 days in to owning the car, I bought a Samsung Galaxy Tab on a cheap data contract, a very good dash mount, and now use Waze for all my satnav needs.

 

[andiabs]

Yes, I ended up using Google Maps as a comparison on the way out of London and the difference was amazing. Maybe a hack is in order.

Oh well, guess I can go back to good old intuition.

Thanks for the reply

 

[maby]

The user interface is a bit clunky, but I've never found the routing to be particularly bad. Like most sat-navs, it does like to keep you on major roads and if you know the area well, you can usually find shorter routes on side roads.

 

[Stvtech]

You do have the option to set route preferences, i.e. fastest, shortest, etc., which does make a difference to the way it routes you.

I was about to spit my dummy this week when it wouldn't accept the postcode for Portmeirion (LL48) because after typing 'LL', it only gave the options of LL1xxx or LL2xxx - then I realised you have to select 'Wales' from the country drop-down!

It routed the same as Google does, but I still used my own route which I know by heart, putting 'Miss Trunchbull' on primarily to give me an ETA.

 

[outofyorkshire]

If you think this sat nav is bad try driving a Land Rover :lol: for a so called 'luxury brand' theirs is even worse :shock:

 

[gwatpe]

Having just come back from a longer road trip, I found the SatNav lacking with route selections and ETA calcs. only gives one option, compared to a usual 2 or 3 on a Navigon GPS, and the ETA only works when there is a known speed limit for every section of road. My travels had road sections with no recorded limits, and the ETA was greatly overestimated. By hours.

Updated maps are supposed to be available, so will see if anything has changed for the AUS shipped PHEV's.

 

[jaapv]

It is just as bad as my previous Jaguar's was, which is not surprising, as it is Naviteq technology. Mitsubishi is not the only one to use them.
Mine managed to lose the way in South Germany and had me going around in a circle.

 

[ronnob]

It is not, as someone pointed out, the most intuitive but it is still MUCH better than my previous 012 reg Mercedes that had not been modified to take a full UK postcode so no real complaints from me - a few niggles and gripes maybe.

 

[Dave13]

I've just completed my first journey in my new car, I set the sat nav up out of interest to get me home, only a ten mile journey but it worked perfectly fine, right to the door. I'll reserve judgement until I've done a proper journey where I don't know where I'm going.

 

[simonrh]

320 satnav guided miles in mine yesterday and the obvious failings are still the rubbish phone integration, the rubbish TMC and the rubbish ipod integration.

The satnav did what it said on the tin and was accurate and easy to use. I like having motorway junction rolling list pop-up on motorways as my ford didn't have this but my previous-previous car did. The only thing on the satnav that seems daft is, when navigating using a postcode, it asks you to pick a road everytime even when there is only one option. I think it would be a safe bet that, if there is only 1 road listed in a given postcode, that is probably the one i am after!

 

[andiabs]

Thanks all, think I need to find an hour this weekend to test it all. Am sure I can work with it before long.

 

[tun]

To be fair, the sat nav that comes with it isn't "all bad" In comparison with with my previous 2 cars, it's actually quite good.

Probably we are now too used to Google Maps or nav on our smartphones. We can't compare with that. Even with Android Auto or Apple Car I think they will never be as good as the nav on your smartphone.

 

[hdasmith]

Even with Android Auto or Apple Car I think they will never be as good as the nav on your smartphone.

Why wouldn't Android Auto and Apple CarPlay be as good as it being on the phone?

I have just installed a CarPlay radio in my car, and while I like Apple Maps, which has a good clean interface, I do wish Apple would open this up to other navigation aps. I also have Navigon on my iPhone which is better. Is this what you meant?

 

[tun]

Even with Android Auto or Apple Car I think they will never be as good as the nav on your smartphone.

Why wouldn't Android Auto and Apple CarPlay be as good as it being on the phone?

I have just installed a CarPlay radio in my car, and while I like Apple Maps, which has a good clean interface, I do wish Apple would open this up to other navigation aps. I also have Navigon on my iPhone which is better. Is this what you meant?

You have answered your own question

At the moment Android Auto and Apple Carplay is still a very "close" system and has limited apps connectivity. Furthermore, we are too used to our smartphone, so any Nav unit on the car will always feel "different" and probably won't have the processing power of a smartphone.

 

[Hypermiler]

To be fair to the satnav I think the OP must have had "shortest" route selected. It is annoying that you have to set the choice of route in the navi menu rather than be able to choose it after you have put in your destination - probably the thing that irritates me most. Why not give the shortest, quickest, easiest etc options once it knows where you want to go? - sometimes the difference is huge and sometimes very slight. I am happy to take the shortest route but not if it will double my journey time.. not sure what the parameters for "eco" are...

Cheers
H