Randyjaco

After 6 months of ownership of my E350, I have come to the conclusion that the GPS is the worst I have ever used. Other than installing a Garmin aftermarket unit, what can I do to get better GPS? Is there a way to get into the settings? We took a trip last week, it would only take us to our destinations via Interstates. The route home selected by the GPS was 30 minutes longer than the route that I selected. About 20% of the destinations I request can't be found, even street addresses? I frequently find that I have to use my phone GPS. Is there some way to cast my phone GPS/ functions to the MB screen/ communications system?
Any suggestions??? My phone is an Android.
Randy

joshg1001

Cant you just use android auto?

ua549

That isn't GPS. It is the navigation software. Virtually all GPS is accurate to a few meters in 3 dimensions.

DFWdude

Did you receive the "Comand Manual" that comes with the car (additional to owner's manual)? The Comand manual tells you how to select your preferences in navigation, which would select the type of roads you wish to use, whether to follow toll roads, etc. If the Nav is currently set to use Interstates only, then it will process those routes based on that preference. The manual reveals all...

I do not have a W213, so my W212 navigation will be different from yours. But mine has preference options, so I suspect yours does too.

wagonsrock

Apple CarPlay is a fall back you should try if the MB Navi sucks in your area. Here down in DMV region it works OK, but traffic is more detailed in Google maps. Generally, I've found that no navigation picks the best rout, and if you know local routes with back roads you will always do better. 1st world problems ...

mickhoog

Plug your phone in to the USB port that has the symbol for CarPlay/Android Auto, you should be able to use Android Auto.
Currently are you using voice to input the name when it doesn't understand where you're going? Or it can't find it full stop when you search for something using the COMAND controller?

superswiss

First off as others mentioned, there are several route preferences. There are three main preferences. Shortest route, fastest routes or eco route. What's yours set to? I always have it to fastest and it honestly has never let me down. Google Maps etc. rarely finds a better route and if it does, it's through residential neighborhood streets that are not meant to carry the traffic. Car navigation systems stick to main roads. Second, is your map up to date? MB releases new map updates regularly. The 2020 V19 maps just came out the other day. Your home region should get updated automatically eventually, but other regions and the updated voice recognition data has to be downloaded from the portal. There are several other settings like have been mentioned in terms of which roads to take, how many occupants in the car to determine if HOV lanes can be used etc. I'm running the latest 2020 maps now and went on a drive yesterday. It now even advises me when to take express lanes and when to get off to make my exit. Haven't seen this before. The particular express lanes I drove along yesterday are fairly new, so perhaps they are now in the map data, because I haven't seen this before. The system actually works rather well if you have it configured properly and the maps updated. There are also many ways to enter a destination, including online searches, which in my experience work quite well at find places by name. I did have an issue yesterday, where online searches seemed to be down for part of the day, but normally I just use voice commands and say "Navigate to <name of place with optional qualifiers like town and street>" and it's quite accurate at finding the places. One can also send destinations directly from the phone and then they pop up on the screen and can be added as a new or intermediate destination. I had to do that yesterday, because of the online searches being down, so I just searched on my iPhone, hit Share, selected the Mercedes Me connect app, and bang the place was on my navigation screen and I could add it as an intermediate stop. Traffic is also quite accurate in my area. It does help if the maps are up to date, otherwise the traffic data may not match the road map. Quite honestly, this is one of the best built-in navigation systems I've used so far. Also love the integration with the digital instrument cluster.

If all else fails there is the Smartphone integration for Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. It does seem you are not really aware of the capabilities of the system as a whole, so I wouldn't be surprised if your experience is due to user error.

hyperion667

I agree OP, it sucked in 2011, 2012 and 2014 from my experience.

JTK44

Superswiss makes excellent points:

If you plan to use the MB navigation system make sure "Fastest route" is chosen: also make sure that toll roads, ferry's etc. are enabled - otherwise nav will send you on two lane roads!

At times I have found voice recognition perfect: other times I wind up shouting at it - if you know what I mean.

I have used both the MB navigation with live update and WAZE: I find WAZE just better and the maps fill up the entire screen. With WAZE I can expand the screen to see ahead just like the MB navigation. I have found that the voice recognition on WAZE to be far better than the voice recognition on the navigation on MB. I have Sirius installed and use it for trips. I can toggle between Sirius and WAZE.

Hope this helps.

chassis

Mostly agree. The M-B COMAND navigation regularly routes me onto roads that are obviously closed, as indicated by Sirius traffic on the native M-B COMAND screen. When verified on my phone using Google Maps, the road indeed is closed. Poor implementation.

BMW iDrive is far superior in every way.

superswiss

Just to be clear. There are several different generations of the MB system mixed together in these responses. The old COMAND system with Sirius traffic is not being discussed here. The system in the W213 uses traffic from TomTom via its data connection, which is far better. MB is no longer using Sirius for traffic data. Sirius was never that great when it came to traffic data quality. They only provide traffic for Interstates mostly. Also as mentioned above, there was a big change in 2019. The COMAND system can now be updated by MB over-the-air, and they are doing so for the map data for now, but additional updates for the voice recognition and map regions outside of one's home region can be manually updated by downloading updates from the Mercedes Me portal and install them in the car via SD card or USB stick. Updates come out about every 6 months.

Looks like OP has a 2020, but I think they need to read the owner's manual for starters to understand all the features of the system. Those who still have one of the old COMAND systems need to accept that theirs is ready for the museum at this point. What has been standard practice in the past is no more. MB and others have realized they need to update these systems moving forward and push out updates over the air.

Also, Android Auto and Apple CarPlay are now standard and supported by all the new models. So if somebody really doesn't wanna bother with COMAND, they can always use Google Maps etc. via Android Auto or Apple CarPlay. Then there is MBUX which not all models have yet, but that's yet on another level. The latest COMAND 5.5 is fairly similar, though, but MBUX takes voice recognition to another level and also introduces augmented reality navigation.

DFWdude

I politely suggested this in my earlier post.
Some are quick to criticize the older systems. But I'm not so sure on this. I suppose my Comand-based, 2016 system (with 2019 maps) is ancient, technologically However, it keeps logs of "Last Destinations" used, and my current list contains more than 150 "last destinations" on file, some of which have been recalled and reused several times.

Thinking back on this -- to include two, 1,000+ mile trips cross country -- I recall just one instance where the Comand system failed to send me to my chosen destination. This 1/150 performance means a 0.6% failure rate, hardly worthy of disdain. I find the system particularly useful in identifying destinations "by POI" using voice recognition. It has found some of the most obscure roadside restaurants (dives, really) while I am 800 miles away from my home turf. So I wouldn't describe the database as useless, either.

superswiss

I do agree with this. I've had built-in navigation since about 2004 and each served me well. Back in the days, they didn't even have traffic data, but they still got me to where I needed to go. I never even really bothered with updating the maps. Yes, eventually I came across new and updated streets that weren't on the map, but GPS should only be a guidance, so if the roads aren't quite exact that is not the end of the world. Heck we used to navigate using paper maps.

My previous car had SiriusXM traffic, and while it wasn't the best it got me around several bad congestion and even highway closures over the years. I still remember coming back from a road trip to Portland, OR hitting bad traffic on Interstate 5. My nav routed me off the highway and so were clearly several other cars ahead of me, but they all turned right at the end of the exit, while my nav directed me to turn left. We ended up on this beautiful empty country road that ran parallel to the Interstate for quite a while with literally nobody on it. My guess was all the other cars ahead of me were using Google Maps or Waze and all got routed together to another road, so now they were just kinda stuck with each other. It does sometimes pay not to run with the herd. There's increasing evidence that apps such as Google Maps and Waze actually make traffic worse, because everybody is using them, so everybody gets rerouted the same, and these apps route traffic onto roads that were never designed to carry traffic and then actually cause even bigger congestion and delays.

Here's one of the articles that goes into this phenomenon. The biggest problem today with traffic management is that all these apps do it in isolation, so travel times and traffic are getting worse. Traffic needs to be managed at a higher level and all these systems should cooperate with each other and the traffic authorities to improve traffic flow overall. I'm hoping that after COVID, many people will continue working from home. Traffic is an interesting study, and it's an exponential problem, meaning it takes only a few more cars to cause bad congestion, so even getting just 10-20% of cars off the road could mean free flowing traffic again.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technolo...narchy/555551/

Randyjaco

Hey guys, thanks for all the input. Sorry, I didn't reply earlier, somehow I didn't get subscribed to my own thread. The car, 2020 E-350, is my wife's ride. I am not the primary driver, except on trips. I will locate the Command manual. I didn't know it existed. I did go through 2 sessions with the tech guy, but there was way too much information to absorb in my old cranium. Let me work through your suggestions, I am sure that I will be back with more questions. BTW, we are bi-tech format. I am Android and she is Apple, which always complicates things.

My car didn't come with the Command manual. I found it online but will contact the dealer for a paper copy

superswiss

There's actually no separate COMAND manual anymore for the W213 and other models with the updated COMAND 5.5 system. It's all in the single owners manual. There's a separate AMG Owner's Manual now for the AMG models, but everything else is in the main owner's manual.

https://www.mbusa.com/en/owners/manuals

tvstaff

The system in my 1 year old 2020 GLE 350 is absolutely horrific. It works about 25% of the time if you fight to repeat yourself. Its so hard to get it unfrozen when it gives you a wrong address. "End Route Guidance" "Cancel" just don't work. I own two mercedes a GLE 350 2020 and a AMG 450 Convertible. I'm so sorry I bought Mercedes.
After this horrible experience I will never buy another Mercedes Benz. What poorly made, cheap, junk these cars are. Both fully loaded are not worth slmost $200,000. REAL JUNK

Elvisfan0108

You spent almost 200k on junk? You should have known better.

skytop

Here is a flash for you Randy....ALL factory GPS are deficient, provide incorrect driving instructions, imperfect, conducing, difficult to use, and always DISAPPOINT.
Connect your phone with ApplePlay and use the finest GPS of Google Maps. You will be smiling again.

The G Man

The 2020 Mercedes GLE has the new AR navigation system. Most German first year technology will have some issues, hopefully there is a patch to fix them.

Elvisfan0108

Traffic was a problem in the Tampa area. The GPS almost always told me that 75 was backed up when it wasn’t. Eventually that got sorted out. I guess it was a reporting problem.

The G Man

Most of the time, traffic info is more accurate in the phone app than factory navi. I am not sure where Mercedes get their traffic info from but its not as accurate as say Google map. By the way, is MB traffic info free or part of a subscription? Thanks.

superswiss

The data quality can always vary from region to region and it affects all GPS systems including Google Maps. For example GM frequently shows traffic on the streets in my neighborhood with little to no cars actually on the roads. It seems to mistake people walking their dogs as slow moving cars. Recently there was this guy in the UK if I remember correctly who made the news dragging a cart full of cell phones down a street and Google Maps pretty much immediately showed a massive traffic jam and started to reroute everybody. He wanted to draw attention to just how fragile this data collection is and how easy it is to spoof.

MB uses HERE Traffic now. Together with Audi and BMW they acquired HERE from Nokia a few years ago. HERE is the former Navteq company that was acquired by Nokia. They are actually a leader in high resolution maps for self driving cars and have the best offline platform. The Car-to-X technology also feeds into it, so the more MBs, BMWs and Audis on the road the better the data is where Car-to-X has been rolled out. The traffic data is quite accurate here in NorCal, at least during the times I'm on the roads. Even if I'm not actively navigating it accurately announces upcoming congestion, and this data is also used by DISTRONIC to proactively start slowing down when approaching the end of a congestion. Works rather well I must say.

The issue with all the phone apps is that they run in isolation w/o a deep integration with the rest of the car's systems. For example Google Maps became useless during my ED trip driving in a long tunnel system w/o a GPS signal. The built-in systems fall back to the wheel speed and other sensors in the car to continue navigation in the absence of a GPS signal. GM also frequently freaks out in downtown areas around here with the GPS signal bouncing off tall buildings or being blocked to the point where it completely loses my actual position.

Google Maps is admittedly better for neighborhood driving on streets where there is no official data source for traffic data, as long as it doesn't mistake pedestrians for cars, so I do use it if I really have to get somewhere in time during a busy time of the day. But most of the time, the MB navigation actually does a better job for, and takes full advantage of all the displays I have instead of being confined to just the center display, and I don't have to first plug in the phone and open an app to see the traffic around me. I can just keep the map displayed at all times from the moment I get into the car.

Elvisfan0108

In my car, traffic is included for 3 years. Don’t know what the cost will be after that. I understand that on 22s it was only included for a year.

superswiss

That is correct. Used to be 3 years complimentary for all Mercedes me services, but now it's only 1 year. On the other hand they still haven't rolled out the Mercedes me Store in the USA, so we can't actually renew officially. I've heard you can call them and they'll extend the complimentary subscription in the meantime. My three years are up this September, so I'll see what the deal is then.

Elvisfan0108

I have the automatic slowing down for exits, etc off. That’s too much for me. Especially the speed limit recognition. Too many times there are speed limit followed by minimum speed signs. The car picks up the minimum signs. Speed limit is 70 and my dash shows 45.