Navigation Disappointment




now i almost don't wanna give up my w212 next week.
it has tomtom maps which I find very good.
But my E coupe which i had before this one (a 2011 blt) had very very sh*tty gps.
(no idea what the (map) brand was.)
Itt was so sh*t that i constanly had to drive with a portable tomtom.
it seems that with my next w213 those days will be back again..???
Last edited by Egonvdv; Jul 18, 2017 at 12:57 PM.
Funny you should mention this. I own a 2014 Land Cruiser 200, and the nav is positively horrendous. Traffic udates appear when you've been in the jam for half an hour, it sends you off the ooframp only to have you enter the motorway on the opposite ramp, the voice has a really thick Dutch accent, and using voice to enter an address is neigh impossible. I find it dramatically bad.
I used the GLS nav when I tested the car, and found the nav to be a real upgrade.
Pete




(I've gone through all menus but can not find it...)
The only way to get this information is to slide the pointer on the map to the symbol that shows an incident
and then select it to get the information. (This in itself is already quite difficult to do when you are driving,
as you need to be exactly on the symbol..)
you have to repeat this for every single incident on route.
The UK maps seem okay in my e Class Coupe.
The Best of Mercedes & AMG
It gave you proper notice coming up to exits, not at the last minute like with Comand Online, and when entering the address it gave you a complete overview of the possible routes so you actually had a clear idea of the routes you were heading on.
The comand online just shows you a zoomed in immediate direction and you cannot easily see what the general route is.
It's also much more fiddly to scroll across the map. Apart from the size of the screen and the live traffic the nav functionality of Comand Online is poor .
Google Maps on CarPlay, even if it’s not perfect, is way better, almost always up to date, and displays traffic, suggesting the fastest way to my destination.








On my Mercedes, I agree with all the comments above, amazingly poor. How someone could design a system where you can't see the route before starting is proof that the Germans should stick to brewing beer.




I also find the lane guidance much better in COMAND. I'm now running the 2020 maps that just came out the other day. With 2019+ models they can be downloaded and installed by the owner, so no need for a trip to the dealership to update the maps anymore, and I drove on a stretch of highway with new express lanes. It now advises when to enter/exit the express lanes. Pretty cool. Haven't seen that on Audis or even prior to updating my maps. Maybe the express lanes just weren't in the map yet, because of how new they are, and now they are in the 2020 maps.
Last edited by superswiss; Jul 14, 2020 at 01:41 PM.
I also find the lane guidance much better in COMAND. I'm now running the 2020 maps that just came out the other day. With 2019+ models they can be downloaded and installed by the owner, so no need for a trip to the dealership to update the maps anymore, and I drove on a stretch of highway with new express lanes. It now advises when to enter/exit the express lanes. Pretty cool. Haven't seen that on Audis or even prior to updating my maps. Maybe the express lanes just weren't in the map yet, because of how new they are, and now they are in the 2020 maps.




There's even another level to the parking POIs. For parking structures it actually displays the fill level on the map. There are three lights next to the P symbol that are either red or green to show how much of the parking structure is occupied. Of course this only works for parking structures that publish this information, but it's very helpful in cities for example. Similarly, although, I don't care much it shows the price of fuel next to the gas station symbols and it actually is smart enough to show the price for Premium and not the price for Regular.
There are so many things I have discovered over time that I'm using Google Maps/Apple Car Play less and less. I used Google Maps exclusively at the beginning in Europe, because the Mercedes Me services were not active during my ED trip. It was great to have that option. I also used Waze a bit more on some longer trips to see where the cops are, but at least in my area it turns out Waze mostly shows where the cops used to be, and since I got a new radar detector that actually works well I haven't used Waze again. Once my car got to the USA, I felt the COMAND navigation wasn't working so well. Specifically the map seemed outdated, but then I got two OTA updates in a row and discovered that what the VPC installed on my car was two versions behind. As mentioned above, the map updates also include voice recognition updates which noticeably improved the system. It wasn't working very well at first. The online services also improved over time, even though they are clearly still working on them, but initially the online searches seemed to be a crap shoot and slow. But now they've gotten very good and find all kinds of places by just using the "Navigate to..." voice command, and they are also faster now. If all else fails one can always look for a place in Google Maps, Apple Maps etc. on the phone and then tap share and quickly send it to the navigation system. It actually sends it via Bluetooth if you are in the car already and the phone is connected so it pops up within a second on the navigation screen and from there it can quickly be added as a waypoint or the final destination. I had to make use of that last weekend, because the online searches seemed to be down temporarily.
I think there are so many awesome features in COMAND not found in Google Maps etc., if you take the time to discover them and use each one to your advantage. I find that many people who complain about these systems haven't really taken the time to get past the learning curve and just quickly dismiss it. They don't even give it a chance based on how crappy many of these systems admittedly were in the past.
Last edited by superswiss; Jul 14, 2020 at 07:51 PM.






