What a crap Nav system.....

Ol'Rattler said:

You can't pay as you go for data? It's not like data is super expensive. Some "cruxes" back at ya.

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Americans such as you do not realize that you have cellphone plans which are far less expensive than they are in Canada. The world does not end at the US borders!

Even in Mexico cellphone plans are cheaper.

Yeah - if you're used to paying like $50/year for phone plan, I can see how even the low-end $40/month plan for 1GB of data would seem like a lot.

I used to be data-constrained, but after getting burned more than once by taking the "shortest" route and getting stuck of hours, I'm more than happy to pay what it costs to not worry about it.

40/mo for 1 gig, let alone 2-3-4 gigs is stupid expensive and the US cell companies are milking a golden cow with their consumers, myself included.

Took a trip to iceland, a 15 gb sim card with 60 min world wide calling was $15 bucks. Verizon wants $5 a day to use my own data in I've already paid for while in Canada.

Currently in Mexico, I'm paying 100 pesos (us$ 5.00) for 21 days unlimited Mexico calls, 2,300 minutes to USA and Canada plus data and 300MB internet.

Don't have a Telcel (Mexico) SIM card for your unlocked phone, that's about $ 6.00.

I use the VW navigation on my 2015 GSW TDi as a "general" navigation system so that I have an idea where I am the travelling or searching for addresses.

I've found that it's not great for wanting to "quickly" find a route, but if you plan in advance, kind of like using an old school map, it works well enough.

Due to our high data rates here in Canada, I use HERE WeGo in it's Offline mode when we do road trips. As long as you have the address, I find it to be excellent for navigation. You can download each province or state individually much like google.

And that $100 update for a current SD navigation map is ridiculous.

I have yet to use my NAV to direct me to a route; mostly, I just use it as above - to give me a sense of where the road is going, reminder of what the speed limit is (although outdated at times), and what elevation I'm at (not sure why I *need* to know that - I just do. )

We did figure out some things that made me wonder before. There is an altitude readout but its in yards. Who the hell uses yards for altitude? We use feet in the US and I think even the english use feet. Others use meters which I can understand but don't use myself.....but yards? I tried to find something in the setup to fix it but while I can choose miles or kilometers I can't choose feet or yards for altitude.

We learned that the right hand knob on the unit changes the scale. Not a very intuitive thing when everything on the stupid system has a button, slide or other touch screen feature to operate. The system likes to default to looking about 4 feet in front of the car. So far I find that I still like an overview map instead of having some voice telling me to turn right in 200 yds.

Oh well. Some like it, I don't. I can keep using my maps.

Frank

I started driving my '01 daily again and you know what, it makes me appreciate the Nav in the '15 just to have traffic there at a glance. It's not great, but it's better than none!

Haha - I'm the opposite: I have a Pioneer 8000NEX in my Mk4 (so granted, not exactly a fair fight, but still...) - it's such a relief to use compared to the abomination in my Mk7, which feels like it was designed in ~2002 (low-res graphics, 15fps (at best) animations, and as mentioned above - have fun looking up a destination. We're still at zero-for-alltime in successfully seeking a destination on that thing. We inevitably give up and pull out a phone or iPad.

I'm stuck with a single-DIN in the Jetta because of boost/egt/oil gauges placed there. I do have an aftermarket radio, but wish I could have gotten something with nav!

adjat84th said:

I'm stuck with a single-DIN in the Jetta because of boost/egt/oil gauges placed there. I do have an aftermarket radio, but wish I could have gotten something with nav!

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No you don't, buy a Garmin GPS for about $ 125.00 and you'll have FREE lifetime map updates provided you update at least once within two years.
If the model number is for example 1234 LMT, L ifetime, M aps, T raffic.
The traffic feature tells you about traffic problems in many areas, FREE.
Additionally most newer GPS are quite thin and you can take it with you wherever you go!

The damn POS in the VWs is Garmin based at almost ten times the cost of a standalone Garmin, but has none of the features my standalone Garmins have.

I had nav in my '12 NMS and never used it because it sucked so badly.

Here is the nav in my S trim GSW, powered by Waze. Works far better than VW's expensive mess and was free with purchase of my iPhone 8 Plus :