Ok, I've tried the navigation three times just for fun. I knew how to get to these places, but I figured what the heck, maybe the navigation might steer me around some of the aweful construction, so I tried to get the system to navigate me there. Using the voice recognition was a laugh.

"Navigate to Giordano's".... Did you want to go to "fred's fish market?" replied the nav.
"No... navigate to Giordano's"... Did you want to go to "Shell?"
"No... navigate to Giordano's"... Did you want to go to "Peters Fun House?"
(sigh .. repeat this 20 times)
"No... Navigate to Giordano's Pizzaria"... Did you want to go to "Carol's Beauty Salon?"
WTF?
I finally got frustrated and just asked for "Pizza"... and none of the results were anything remotely about pizza at all -- not even a pizza hut that we just drove by.

I finally switch to using the keyboad. Oh. No Giordano's found. Odd, one of the largest pizza places in Chicago, and not in the nav system. Mind you, this is the third place I've tried to use it on, and the third place not in the nav system. Studio Movie Grill (Wheaton)... also not in the nav system. So, the nav system doesn't have my local movie theater, nor pizza place. It also doesn't have Tire Rack HQ in Indiana either.

Giordano's (St. Charles) has been open for for at least 5 years. Studio Movie and Grill has been open for at least 2. Tire Rack since 1979 -- I couldn't even put in the address for tire rack, I finally had to call onstar and they sent me to the street (no address). Is it possible my car got shipped with 50 year old maps, or is this just common?

BTW, all these places are found in my apple maps, and all 3 of my navs on my phone (Waze, Google, GPS Drive). For $795 (+whatever onstar charges monthly for real time traffic data), I feel like chevy should have just taped an iPad to the console and had gotten much much better results.

 

I had a 2011 Chevy truck and the Onstar directions are awesome. Really nice to just press a button, get a human, and have the directions downloaded to the truck (which didn't have GPS). I've got a 2012 BMW X5 and the navigation is horrible. I mean really, really bad. You can't effectively search without knowing the zipcode, it is missing lots of common places. The CTS-Vs nav is also bad from the limited experience. The X5 won't communicate with my android phone to get the phone book or a send directions. I wouldn't pay for nav on any new car unless I had to get it for other options I wanted. A $100 smart phone is better than any nav I have used.

 

I forgot to mention, I also tried inputting the address to Giordano's via voice...
"3641 Main Street, Saint Charles, Illinois"... Did you mean "Park Place"... Seriously.

And Giordano's was even in my contact list on my phone, perhaps I should have searched contacts instead, maybe.

 

First of all, voice recognition isn't great. You have to speak in a way the computer understands. The C6 couldn't understand me. My Nissan Leaf has trouble too, you have to speak a certain way. My Nissan sales representative has it, works for him every time. I have always put the in the address and havn't had any guidance issues. You have to read and re-read the book several times to get the most out of navigation systems. I still havn't gotten the most out of my systems, sort of slop through it.

 

Yeah, I fully understand the voice recognition, I was working with Kurzweil (Ray Kurzweil) on theirs 20 years ago, so I'm very familiar with the tech. But even implementations back then were better than this (running on a 486 with 32MB of ram), including the built in speech recognition in Windows, and the built-in one in my X-Box One.

 

So, is it worth spending $795 if you can have OnStar send directions to your screen?

 

The Onstar connection works very well. I have been quite impressed with the fast and courteous action from the operators and whatever I ask them to find shows up beautifully in the built-in Nav system.

I have not had the same voice recognition problems as the OP, but I have definitely suffered from the same lack of obvious and well-established POI names in the database.

Renewing the Onstar Directions & Connections package at $30/month is a non-starter for me, but it would be worth it at a significantly lower price point.

By the way, funny anecdote about voice recognition... Today I needed to navigate to a place in Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina. Yes, that's a real place. The Nav system had no problem understanding the city name when I spoke it. But the human operator was at a loss. "I found your business listing on Main Street in... Umm, how did you pronounce that? Yes, that's the one. Downloading it to your car now."

 

Voice recognition has a ways to go. I wind up screaming F you at the nave in our Denali.

 

2010 GMC Sierra

On Star is good BUT I am not paying them 300+ a year for directions 50 bucks maybe

 

hmmm apparently still GM hasn't fixed this since the C-6

 

I have had just as much problems with Siri as I have with the Nab voice control.

Actually, in my experience over the past few months the voice control is much better that my past few cars.

My big complaint with the Nav is the ease of use. I can't seem to get it to remember my home address, rather it keeps trying to pull from the contacts on my phone which does not have the address. Also other things that are typically easy are not so easy.

 

I am so glad I have never been really interested in Nav systems. I won't pay for a built-in system like that.

 

 

I agree with using onstar, so easy to just press the button while driving down the road, tell them the place you want to go by name or phone number, they confirm it with you then send it to your nav. Quick and easy, worked flawlessly in my cts-v.

-adrian

 

LOL! I gave up on that part of the Nav system. If I'm looking for a place by name, I use the OnStar app on my phone, look for the place, and then hit "Send to In-dash Nav". MUCH easier.

 

can you send the address to the car via google maps? (I do this frequently for my X5)

 

I don't have nav on my Camaro, but I could send directions to my dash via OnStar. Is this the same in the Stingray? Can you use OnStar without factory nav?

Cost-wise, that might be more sensible, if so.

-bZj

 

It's protecting you, next time ask for Gino's East

 

Is the C7 Nav similiar to the C6 Nav, where you have to be in the right zone? That would affect the search results.
The voice recognition has never worked with my southern twang.

 

I ordered the 2LT with Nav, just for the resale,if it works great if not no big deal.