There's nothing traditional about the dozens of buttons on today's manufacturer installed radios. I like the relatively clean dashboard I get from having the Navi option. A 2-gig flash card renders i-Pods obsolete. And, whenever I want a cheap laugh, I ask "Oprah" (she tells me what to do) to "Find nearest Hookers". She always suggests some libraries or universities.

 

Mine is named "Judy". Judy rarely understands me. When I ask her "Find nearest Chinese Restaurant", she replies "Fan speed off" or something similar. I'll have to try the "Find nearest Hookers"... maybe she'll suggest a restaurant?!!!

 

It's a matter of personal opinion, but I actually prefer the in-dash unit over the Garmin I have in my Ridgeline. Fiddling with touch screen really isn't that hard once you spend 10 minutes to learn how the menus are set up and the fit/finish and larger screen make a difference (my Garmin mount broke after less than a year). As for the voice command, that hasn't impressed me much. I've yet to have it work right and I speak clear, concise English with excellent grammar. No charge for it with the exception of the legalized armed robbery for DVD upgrades. That's my only major gripe. New maps for a Garmin are ~$75 tops, and the Honda DVD is at least twice that.

 

That's not relevant to this discussion. You must not have looked at the NON-NAVI option in the Civic Hybrid - it's a classic, two-dial set-up with simple load-in button, just as I wrote ... clean look.

 

I have yet to have the Voice Response respond accurately to my commands. It's comic relief really...if it wasn't so humorous i would have Honda look at it since clearly its defective.

 

I've pretty much stopped using voice commands, except to say street names, which actually doesn't work too poorly if you're stopped and there's no ambient noise.

 

Yes, it could be defective but then again I am not totally sure that the NAV unit is of the same quality as the units developed by Honda (and IBM) and used in the Acura MDX and Odyssey.

Originally, the unit on the HCH had received great reviews and I thought the blessing had finally been extended to HCH owners too. Sadly, Canadians cannot get the NAV option at all and I am unable to verify whether or not the software shows any resemblance to IBM's Via Voice (either in behavior or features).
My take is that if the lineage is there, the unit should be pretty acurate, if not then I would perhaps not even bother hitting the proverbial dead horse any further.


Cheers;

MSantos

 

Really? As long as you know what it wants you to say my unit works pretty well. Do you have a strong accent? I have a pretty heavy New England one, and the lady we bought it from had a pretty strong southern one, and it still seemed to respond to anyone who said any of the commands. Have you tried any of the simple ones such as "radio on" or "temperature 70 degrees?"