Hello,
I recently purchased a 2018 Mazda 3. I felt the asking price for GPS was way too much. I have found them on ebay and amazon and wondering what others' experience are with them. The descriptions say updates for 3 years. Is it 3 years updates the same if I had purchased from the dealer as well?

 

Our 2016 Mazda3 has the factory NAV, it is pretty much worthless. For my part, when we take a trip in our Mazda, I take along my old 2012 vintage Garmin GPS, suction cup it to the windshield and ignore the one in the car. The old Garmin is superior to the unit in the car in pretty much every metric you wish to measure. If I had to buy a new GPS today I'd buy the Garmin 61 LMT-S (which has Lifetime map updates) for $238 and call it a day.

 

I understand the complaints about the Mazda navigation system. I can't stand how difficult it is to enter a destination while driving. The voice recognition is limited. Not being able to use the touch screen while driving diverts more attention from driving then the other inputs. Despite the disadvantages, I prefer it to using a phone or a Garmin on the windshield unit. I made sure that the kid's Scion iA had the Mazda system so they weren't looking at their phone when driving.

For my weekend MINI convertible, I purchased a Garmin DriveAssist 51 LMT-S. I can list as many complaints with the Garmin. It does have better re-routing suggestions, a better approach to traffic notifications, occasionally tells me about the weather if I hit enough buttons. The best feature of the DriveAssist GPS is the built in camera. It temporarily records every drive and saves the recordings of accidents.

The Mazda system is bigger, in a great location and does the basic stuff fairly well. The Garmin is smaller and further away from the driver and has a lot of extra features, many are gimmicky or not accurate (I get 10 times more false alarms that true warnings for lane departure, forward collision potential, driving the wrong way on a one-way street. It even tried to call my wife informing her that I was in an accident when I hit a medium pothole.)

I would take the Mazda system for $400 over the Garmin system for $210.00 (on Amazon). But I can see the argument for either system.

They say you can hack into the Mazda system to install other apps, but I have not let my son try this approach.

Let us know what you decide.

 

Hmmm, well I guess to each his (or her) own. We have four drivers in our family and we all universally hate the Mazda system.

With the above said, if you then couple the GPS's almost complete consumption of the multi-function screen to the exclusion of say, sound system and/or trip computer functionality, this makes the Mazda system pretty much worthless.

 

Does your Mazda GPS update past the 3 years?

 

Before you even think about paying for GPS, take a car so equipped out for a drive and try to use it as a GPS, and then once set, try doing things with the audio system and reviewing the trip computer. This is an exceedingly poor design.

 

But I wouldn't want to listen to music while trying to get directions from the GPS........

 

The voice is pretty much a novelty; I don't know a single person who hasn't shut off the GPS voice, regardless of whether factory or after market, after a while. Personally I cannot turn it off fast enough; just too annoying.

 

I am about to hit 3 years so I will update just before the 3 year mark. I doubt I will bother with updates after that point. I assume that I will have to purchase the latest SD Card.

The navigation system does take over the entire screen but it can be changed back to the radio and depend on the voice commands and the heads up display if you have it. The volume dial changes from controlling the audio volume to controlling the navigation voice volume when it is announcing directions. (this was frustrating until I figured it out - I kept trying to turn down the radio to hear the directions and the radio volume stayed the same but the navigation voice volume went way down.) I have never heard of someone disabling the navigation voice. I agree that without the voice directions, the fact that navigation takes up the entire screen is a much bigger problem.

A question that I would have for the group is: Do you need to buy it from Mazda or can we trust the $164.95 SD card available on Amazon and other aftermarket suppliers?

I can find a lot to hate in the Mazda navigation system, the latest Garmin system, the Garmin system I bought 5 years ago and returned after 2 week and the Garmin system I had for 10 years. I tried a Tom-Tom system and hated that because it didn't work like the Garmin. The only one I really liked was the first one I bought when Garmin first started selling them. It had a 2 inch screen, it was 3 inches thick, it was incredibly slow and it exceeded my expectations because I was comparing it to navigating by folded maps.

 

How do you find out when the last update was done to your factory GPS