I updated my 2015 to the new 2020 NAV. version. Changes I noticed were real time weather showing on the display and navigation taking me exactly to my house instead of 2000 feet down the road. Cost close to $200.

 

$200.00 to find your way home is a bargain.

 

How much did you pay for your iPhone?

 

I am not an iPeople.

 

Well certainly your Android phone cost most than $200.

 

Unfortunately, I can remember some nights when it would have been.

 

Usually towards the end of the year the Nav updates go on sale. I purchased one for my car and paid $99 for the flash drive update.

 

That's right. You don't need an unlimited data plan to use it. I would think by far the most data usage would be to pull mapping data. But you can easily do that by downloading offline maps while at home or any place you can get a WiFi connection. I've already done that for all of my local areas and when I go to Google Maps and select that I wish to drive to say, Payson, Google Maps will warn me that there are some areas along my selected route that may have spotty coverage and suggest I download those areas for offline maps. So in this way, you don't need an unlimited data plan. An SD card perhaps, but not an unlimited data plan.

That said I definitely do have an unlimited data plan as I use my phone for lots of things and benefit from it.

 

That's largely a function of the size of your offline map(s) and how far off the intended route you go. Then again, even in spotty areas, one can often stop at a gas station or restaurant and use the wifi there to refresh the offline map or make new ones dynamically online. BTW the cell signal is not really used to navigate. Your phone's GPS is used to navigate so in that aspect it's as good as any other navigation app. What it needs is mapping data to navigate on routes/roads/etc. Having the maps downloaded for offline use solves that problem. However, in spotty areas, you will lose dynamic traffic routing and GM tells you that when that's the case.

 

Paying essentially $0 using your phone is an even better bargain, especially when you factor in the many, many uses that a modern smartphone can be used for thus justifying its price. Sure if you buy a $1000 smartphone and ONLY use it to navigate then that's an expensive option, but if you use your smartphone wisely you can make it worth way more than $1000 to you in the functionality you get from it.

 

My observation was a sardonic response to Vetteright's comment " . . . navigation taking me exactly to my house instead of 2000 feet down the road. Cost close to $200." See, post 22.

That is, one would expect he could find his way home if within 2,000 feet of his house.

 

I think I like the other choice.

 

The HUD integration is great, but if it doesn't know which road your on then what good is it? The voice directions from Waze, Google Maps, Apple Maps, etc means I never take my eyes off the road either.

 

Everyone is different, and should use what works best for them.

I think GM could do a better job with their in-car Nav systems, but we've driven 250k+ miles in our Corvettes over most of the US and Canada while using them, with good results.
We also have two other brand in-car systems, 2 Garmins, Waze, and Google Maps in our phones and iPad. All of them work fairly well, none of them are perfect.
When traveling in groups where people were using other systems, I noticed that others could sometimes program their destination quicker than us, but they had far more "WTF is it doing now?" moments along the way than us. Probably user error, but these people weren't dummies.

For myself, I keep the voice commands on Mute and either listen to my tunes when enjoying a cruise, listen the to NPP when running the twisties, or talking with my wife when she's along.
I find voice commands to be more annoying than helpful. My wife loves 'em.

 

While HUD integration is nice (and I hear doable if GM would get its head out of its ***), it's hardly essential.

 

'Cept that often some people will cling to one way of doing things without exploring the full capabilities of another way. I find a lot of people, especially old farts (and I R one myself but not in this aspect), get very confused and intimidated by new technology that they have not used before. Often they don't bother to explore it at all like go through the menus and settings, perhaps read a bit about the functionality, etc. They are just not natural explorers. As I'm in tech I have that natural curiosity about it to start with so I explore. And there have been many times when I've turned some guy onto certain functionality in an app they never bothered to use fully nor configure and they say "Gee I never knew you could do that with that!".

And there's often the rub. What do you mean by good results? Most people say "Well it got us to the correct destination", to which I respond, "Just about all nav systems do that". Where it becomes more important IMHO is getting the directions in there and other helpful things like multilane guidance, telling you the store you are about to drive to will most likely be closed by the time you get there, how well the voice recognition works, etc. Getting there is only 1/2 the battle, again, IMHO.

Being a dummy and being good with tech are two totally different things. Another example, I'm not a dummy but I'm not a good cook either. Nor am I a good mechanic. But you touched on my point there - programming your destination quicker shouldn't be an issue. You say "Hey Google, navigate to X" and you've programmed your destination. Rarely can you do that with the factory nav (at least in my car).

Like you, I find the voice directions an annoyance. I'm constantly glancing at the middle screen so I'm usually aware of upcoming turns. Again, HUD turns would be good and I wish somebody at Google would knock whoever is the appropriate GM engineer to say "Support this already!". Meantime I do have one use case in which I use voice directions and that is when I'm on an interstate highway and the next exit is 10-20 or more miles away. I turn on voice directions so that I will be notified then tune out to tunes, podcasts, or audiobooks and maybe glance at the scenery expecting the voice to notify me of a turn before it's too late. And then I tend to turn off voice directions again as I don't like them telling me to make the little turns at the exit, etc. IOW it's only for long hauls where the next turn is far away.

 

For me the most interesting aspect of this topic, which appears regularly, is the depth of feeling many exhibit.

Navigation apparently evokes primal fears of getting lost, coupled with the male terror of asking for directions. We are touching deep, fundamental, visceral, lizard brain instincts.

 

I mute voice as I find it annoying. I have only seen 1 occurrence where the OEM Nav did not know which road I was on. I have found the OEM Nav to be more than capable to meet my traveling needs.