Mike_TX

I took a short trip to a neighboring town today, and I was disappointed to see the Nav doesn't show town names beyond about the 1/2 mile scale. Bigger cities, yes, but even medium-sized towns are omitted.

With previous Nav's, I would keep the scale at about 16 miles when traveling cross-country, and it was easy to take note of small towns and cities on the highway along my route. So if I needed gas, or maybe a restroom stop or whatever, I could take a quick look at the map display and see that there is a berg about 25 miles (or whatever) up the road and plan accordingly.

With the IS's Nav, though, all you see is highway, and many smaller highways even drop off the map once you go past about the 8 mile scale. Whether there is a town there is unknown unless I zoom in to about 1/2 mile, then scroll the map ahead. That's inconvenient at best.

I don't suppose there's a solution, but I still wanted to register a gripe about it.

jcreech

This nav system is the best on the market.

Go sit in a Mercedes or a BMW. After you get used to a Toyota/Lexus or Acura Nav you will kill yourself if you get in a mercedes.

Ramon

Lexus and Acura have by far the best nav's on the market... I may have to give the nod to Acura for having traffic updates on the nav though. Lexus won't get that feature until the LS460 comes out.

shyguy16

Yup, Lexus is top notch, but I've also heard good things about Infiniti's and their bird's eye view in the M45.

kensteele

he just said he saw this with previous navs so something out there is "better." you may want to look into this nav's option to show upcoming exits and services. i'm not exactly sure how the name of the town or the fact that one exists relate to food or gas all over the country but check it out anyway.

Mike_TX

Yeah, guys, I agree the Nav is excellent, but it just doesn't have some of the bells and whistles I've enjoyed in the past. Both my Infiniti (M45) and my previous Garmin units had fetaures the Lexus doesn't. Once you get used to a feature it just takes a little getting used to when it's not there anymore.

As for the original gripe, I have to wonder what good the higher scale views are on the IS's Nav. Once you get past, say, 8 miles or so, so much detail falls out that all you see is the interstate, a few major highways and big cities. I just want more detail to stay on the screen for cross-country travel purposes.

If you use it in and around town to find a restaurant or a friend's house or something, it will never bother you. But go from Miami to Chicago or Dallas to Seattle and you'll see what I mean.

I'll still use and love my Nav, but I just wish it retained a little more map detail.

4TehNguyen

iTrader: (1)

if they crammed a lot of detail then you would get into readability issues and maybe screen resolution issues

CK6Speed

iTrader: (1)

So how does his Infiniti and Garmin navigations accommodate this feature without any problems?

VitB6

I'm not sure what the original poster is saying. If you want to see which exits have a gas station or a a specific fast food place, all you do is press a button and you can find it out. I don't see how back out 16 miles is:

a) any helpful or
b) has anything to with finding a gas station along a highway.

Mike_TX

Right. The Infiniti and Garnins I've owned were NOT cluttered and hard to read when showing this info. It's all in how it's displayed. Both showed bigger towns and cities in bigger fonts and smaller ones in small fonts.

But if you drive your IS out into the country away from big cities, you'll see that the detail becomes very sparse very quickly when you start hitting the "-" button. There's plenty of room for more data on the display - it just isn't there. It's just the way they designed it, but it does leave you with very little info beyond a certain point.

One thing Garmin DOES do with many of their units is to allow you to customize the amount of detail you want. If you don't want much you don't have to have it, but if you do it's available. That's probably the best solution, but it does add a little more complexity.

Don't get me wrong here ... I don't regret getting my Nav. In fact, it has a few features the others I mentioned do not. It's just that I miss the extra detail under open road conditions.

Mike_TX

Look at it this way: If you were looking at a road map, you'd see all kinds of info ... towns, cities, highway intersections, lakes, rivers, RR tracks, etc., etc. I simply want the Nav to do the same thing.

Okay, it doesn't have to have ALL the data a map has, but I just want more than it has. I can't read a map while I drive, but I enjoy looking down at the Nav screen and seeing a simulation of a map, showing where I am and where I'm going. And when I'm barreling down I-70 at 80mph, I want a fairly wide field of view, because I'm covering some territory. 700 ft. doesn't help me much. So I like to set it at 8 or 16 or sometimes even 32 miles scale (like out in Wyoming or Nevada, where there's not much stuff).

But when I do that all I see is the road I'm on, with maybe cities of 2 million inhabitants shown. So if I'm mentally planning ahead for, say, a bite to eat or something to drink or a restroom stop, I can't even tell if there's a town 15 miles away or just wasteland between me and Cheyenne. Yes, I can ramp up the magnification and tell if there's anything close by, or I can ask the Nav Lady for nearby rest areas or whatever, but I'd rather have a more detailed map showing all the time. I know it can be done ... I've had it!

I guess that's too tough a concept for some. Especially those who don't travel cross-country like I do. And Lexus obviously designed the system primarily for in-town use rather than cross-country travel, so it is what it is. I can live with it.

clubfoot

Have you tried enabling or disabling some of the information display options? You may also have to switch map regions to cover different states to maintain detail levels. I run my NAV at 200m most of the time, but I'll have to check to see if it displays towns and such, it does show numbered street addresses which is nice.