Another large collection of pictures, detailing how the navigation system works in GBMINI#5. Note that you can also talk to the car (!) which might arguably be an easier way to drive the complex navigation system – but for now, let’s push, turn and click the joystick 🙂
When you’re not being guided somewhere, the navigation display will show a map around your current location; the bottom of the screen shows what audio is playing (here, Sirius satellite radion channel 22 “1st Wave”, as well as the time. I think “TI” means that traffic information is available). Top left is highlighted white, indicating it’s the selected control for the joystick. You can rotate the joystick left/right to decrease/increase the map scale (currently “1/4 mls” whatever that means), and you can click the joystick to go back to the navigation menus (as indicated by the left pointing arrow).
So let’s choose a New destination; The display shows recent destinations, which we could select by rotating then clicking the joystick – but we’ll just click now to enter a New destination (which we could select from our address book, or specify step-by-step). An address is specified by State and Town and optionally also by Street and perhaps House number or Intersection.
The last destination is shown – so here, we push down on the joystick to select the last address, then select and click on State to enter a new State; we rotate to the State we want, then click to select it. Next, we move to Town, and click to enter a new Town. We’re given an A…Z list which we can rotate through and click the joystick to choose a letter; as we do this, the list of Towns reduces to match the partial entry we’ve made; once we’ve entered a few letters, we can select the Town by pushing down in to the list and rotating to the Town we want, then clicking to select:
And now, we might want to enter a Street – if so, we proceed in the same way by selecting letters from the A…Z list, homing in on the address we want, but instead, we’ll just choose Start Guidance which will now navigate us to the center of Peabody, MA … it took GBMINI#5 9s to do the calculation, and then the display shows us the map once again, but with the right half showing diagrammed route directions (we also have audio prompts):
This display shows that we need to turn left on to Gee Avenue, then bear left; at the bottom of the display we see our ETA and distance to destination. Again, the top left is selected (highlighted white) so we can spin the joystick to zoom in/out.
We can also push the joystick right, to switch over to the symbolic menu top right of the screen; we can silence audio directions, call up traffic information, and change the map style – the “back of car” symbol is supposed to represent a “perspective” map view – believe it or not, these maps are “perspective” but they’re nothing like as clear/useful as the TomTom maps I used in California last month!
You can click the “back of car” to change the map view; here now we have “north up” which shows a flat map with North at the top (note how the symbolic menu has changed):
Other ways to get guidance include a Route list; I quite like the “Arrow” view mode, which hides the map and simply gives information on the next turn – but this is because I find the “perspective” view so much less useful than what I’m used to on TomTom … Anyway, the Arrow view has a neat “countdown” bar which shows the distance to the next turn as you approach it, shrinking down to zero as you reach the turn:
Other navigation features include planning the route in a different way – for example avoiding toll roads. The “Dynamic route” choice means that the route will be automatically altered if necessary, in response to traffic information. Otherwise, the navigation is supposed to prompt you at the last exit before the traffic problem (I don’t have much traffic driving home to work, to test this feature!)
We can also manually call up a traffic information list, and read details about it – but this is a rather long-winded / un-intuitive user interface!
Finally, there’s this rather curious display that shows latitude / longitude and altitude; the only way I’ve got this to appear is to start and then cancel guidance, so the right half display changes from showing the next turn to showing this information (and if I go away from this display and then return to it, the information is gone and the map once more fills the whole window!):
In my opinion, the navigation system – like the audio controls – would benefit from a different user interface. The whole business of pushing the joystick left/right/up/down, rotating it, and clicking it, makes for an over-complex interface. Worse, many times you might expect to use the joystick to do something, you can’t – for example when looking at traffic information, you might expect to be able to step from one traffic issue to the next by pushing the joystick, but no (instead you have to push up, click, rotate to the next, click again!)
On the other hand, having navigation fully integrated to the car should give a better product – for example it should be possible for the car to successfully navigate through the “Big Dig” tunnels in Boston (but I haven’t tried it yet). And the traffic information should be helpful on busy routes (with no need for wires, like with TomTom).
Another interesting feature is that it can start giving you route guidance before it’s finished calculating the route – I asked it to plan the route from home to Monterey, CA and it started giving directions long before it was able to give me a route list. But then, it took 40s before it could offer it’s initial directions, so I guess that feature is necessary (or I’d have perhaps been waiting minutes!)
I’ve hardly used the R56 navigation system at all, but so far my opinion would be to not order it in another MINI, but stay with TomTom – much less expensive, and more user-friendly! But I plan to continue comparing these two systems, in the months ahead …
M&I / GBMINI 
It’s funny. Out of all the nav systems I’ve used over the years, the TomTom is the only one I’ve almost thrown out my window… on more than one occasion.
I find the new Nav to be a must order for a lot of reasons. Most importantly it’s a large window into the operating system of the car (as opposed to the small one non nav owners are subjected to) that allows for far greater control over the car’s various settings. In short it’s a much better conduit for information than the tiny little radio screen.
The navigation itself is inferior to my Garmin 660 and the user interface in general is probably a generation away from something close to what an iPhone owner would expect. But all that aside it’s aesthetically and functionally a must have based on my time in R56’s with and without it.
One of the biggest issues I have with the interface (beyond a few inconsistencies) is that it can be sluggish at times and thus you can easily confuse inputs for non-inputs. That said, after five months the entire system is pretty much second nature to me. I pretty much don’t have to think about doing anything within the OS, Most of the time my hand just falls to the joystick and starts the process without much thought given or I just use the voice command.
Is it smart enough to pre-select your current state/town when you start to enter an address or do you have to scroll all the way down to mass every time you enter an address? That’s annoying enough when other nav systems do it, even worse without a full-alphabet touch screen!
I find it amazing that car manufacturers get away with putting out such inferior software and so much more the price. I went third party even when gps units went for $700 and MINI charged $1700. Now you can get them for $150, yet MINI charges two grand!
I’m surprised Gabe prefers Garmin. Though they’ve done a good job of catching up to TomTom, I still find Garmin’s less intuitive and ergonomic.
I baffled why the built in nav can’t have graphics on a par with a $150 unit. I’ve seen graphics on other cars systems that was on a par with the popular third party navs. What was Mini thinking? Was this deliberate in order to make the graphics look like their ad campaign? I think they would be well served to license the software from somebody else if this is the best they can do. A touch screen interface may improve the interface as well.
As far as the screen size, a bigger window into the interface might be useful, if you have something that needs a bigger interface – like nav. But I hardly see it as a must have if all you are dealing with is a radio and the OBC. Better for an ipod, better for bluetooth address book? perhaps. But without the nav the screen space just isn’t that important.
If we are going to bring aesthetics into it I also don’t find the combo speedometer/display, and the lack of a traditional speedometer needle a satisfying design solution. Its like one of my favorite parts of the car is compromised by a video screen. The only consolation to me is that there is just no easy place to put a third party nav unit in the R56 interior, which is a compromise in itself.
I have the 1st gen OEM Nav on my cabrio, and in perspective view street names are not displayed (only road/highway numbers). My understanding is that the R56 Nav behaves the same way. I’m in the city most of the time and this makes perspective view useless, and I always need flat view mode.
Definitely the user interface needs work, but at least it is a step forward from the 1st gen unit, which has so little integration with the car and only a rotating knob for input. Unfortunately we are dealing with the company that conceived iDrive…
A huge step backwards in the R56 Nav is that street names are all drawn horizontally instead of following the angle of the street, as they do in the 1st gen Nav. I feel that this is the single most serious problem in the R56 Nav. In areas with streets close together, it becomes nearly impossible to identify which label belongs with which line on the map. Here is an R56 display where it is already difficult (how do I embed images here):
Here is a map from my R52. Horizontal labels would be completely hopeless in this case:
A problem in both 1st and 2nd gen Navs is the POI (Points of Interest) database on the Navteq map disc. If you want to look for a business, say Home Depot, you cannot simply enter “Home Depot” but you have to search under whatever category they might have cataloged it in the database. The directory is very poorly organized, and you might not find your destination simply because you cannot find the category (which is sometimes just plain wrong). There is a huge ongoing thread on NAM on this topic (approaching 400 posts): http://www.northamericanmotoring.com/forums/showthread.php?t=119125
Gabe,
Appreciate your feedback – I’ve not spent time in a non-NAV R56 so I don’t have that point of reference. Even so, for $2000 the NAV system should be much better than it is!
Josh,
The NAV remembers the last entries (State, Town, etc) so you only need to change what’s different.
BTW: The new TomToms also now restrict to a current State, and remember it.
Correct, no street names in “perspective” view; I’ve seen that POI discussion on NAM – but in fairness, 2 out of 3 times I’ve used POIs on my brand new TomTom, it took me between 5 and 20 miles away from where I planned to go! Wrong POI data might be even more useless than hard to find POI data – with TomTom I now look up the address online, and enter it directly.
My little Mio C220 does the job. The most important thing it does is shows me the side streets as they pass by rather than just the directions, in case I choose to take a different route on my own. Then it just recalculates the route. Cheap at $190 (was down to $90 for Black Friday) but not as nice looking as an integrated unit.
I’m sorry, but the TomTom units have got to be THE WORST portable GPS units I’ve ever used (and their customer service is absolutely horrible – TomTom is the only company I know of that distributes viruses along with their top-of-the-line GPS products and doesn’t think anything’s wrong with doing that!!!). Their TeleAtlas derived maps are complete and total garbage here in North America. It has been shown time and time again that NavTeq-based maps (those used by Garmin and by MINI/BMW) are FAR superior.
I absolutely LOVE Garmin’s GPS units. IMO they far exceed TomTom’s in every way. Also, in my side-by-side testing between the two, the Garmin units ALWAYS outperform the TomTom units. Mostly because of the TomTom’s really poor TeleAtlas maps, but also because the TomTom’s User Interface is terrible as well.
With that said, the same side-by-side comparisons of the TomTom and Garmin units against the nav system in both my 1st gen and 2nd gen MINI shows that the MINI’s built in system works much better when routing. Sure, the MINI nav system’s UI leaves a lot to be desired, but I’ve yet to find a portable GPS unit that routes anywhere near as well as the MINI’s nav system does. When I’m in an unfamiliar location and I’m really trying to get somewhere, I’d take the MINI’s nav system over any other by a long shot (2nd I’d take a Garmin GPS, and finally, I’d walk and use a paper map before I’d even look at another TomTom).
Another thing that can be said about the MINI’s nav system is that it is one of the fastest systems I’ve yet to encounter at doing route calculations (and route recalculations). My reference is to the 1st gen nav system here though. I have noticed that the nav system in the 2nd gen MINI has become MUCH slower.
— MIKE
Ian,
Does the NAV “speak” the street names?
Kevin,
No it doesn’t and I’m actually glad that it does not.
When you’re using a nav system in unfamiliar territory it’s much easier to understand “turn left in 800 feet” than it is to understand “turn left on Main street”. Especially if there are multiple streets in the area and the streets aren’t signed properly (as they never seem to be). Personally, I’ll take a non street name speaking nav unit any time.
In fact, I usually turn off the speaking of street names in my Garmin units in order to make things easier to understand when I’m in an unfamiliar area. Not to mention the fact that most TTS systems badly butcher street names anyway.
Wow, GPSWars.
I, personally, can’t imagine ever owning one. I have conversed with Ian before on this subject. I think the next trip across the pond to europe will probably merit an EBAY buy and hopefully sale when back home. I think that would be the only scenario I could ever see for using one of these. A “Lost in Florence” Italy trip could have used one but… we probably had a lot more fun getting Un-lost. If, if, I ever get an iPhone I think that would be all I’d need.
As with most of this stuff seems it either goes the way of the Pet Rock or gets swallowed up in some other form as people tire of them or the next “i” whatever comes along.
I will say they have a made a giant leap since the 1980’s when I first saw one in use. It was used buy Ivan Stewart’s off road race team, well until they were outlawed along with chase helicopters.
Seems there are enough distractions while driving why pile on more. My 2 cents.
MMM
BTW………. why would this be a “MUST” unless you lived in Tanzia? A must, that’s funny.
Ian, thanks for the continuing write ups on the R56. I look forward to your straight forward in depth reviews. I’m sure the months ahead and changing seasons will be very interesting and informative. RB/MMM
I used a Tom Tom add on software for an old HP PocketPC device (ala Josh Wardell) for two years and now use Garmin Nuvi 660, which is far more reliable and user-friendly than the older Tom Tom software.
Both systems, as well as built-in nav units in Porsche/Audi/MB pale in comparison to the simple interface in my wife’s Lexus IS250. The only thing it lacks is a “perspective” view, other than that it’s just about perfect. I have yet to have significant hands on time with i-Drive or the MINI’s new navigation. As a potential R56 MCS vs. 135i owner, I’d be interested to hear opinions from those who are familiar with both Toyota/Lexus and BMW/MINI nav units.