Bad bad gps!
 

Just bought a 2014 Mazda 3 BUYER BEWARE!

I would like to add my displeasure to the hundreds of others that have complained about the GPS ....I wish that I had done more research. If I had known that the GPS was so bad, it would have been a deal killer.

No complaints with the car, but the GPS is exasperating.

Many of the essential commands, like moving the cursor to change or find a new destination, or changing the volume setting are locked out when the car is moving.
This moronic "Motion Safety Lock" is apparently not there on Mazdas sold in other countries... Thanks Mazda for singling us out!
This makes the car not more but less safe !!!

I will give give a couple of examples:
As the car speed increases the GPS instructions become harder to hear, there is no easy way to change the GPS volume unless you stop the car because there is no dedicared GPS volume knob. True, there is a way to lower the volume while moving, it is not user friendly. But if the volume is lowered it is very hard to get the volume back on. To increase the volume you must move the radio knob at the exact moment the GPS voice is giving instructions. If the volume is down, then how can you do it. There is no dedicated volume knob for the GPS!
If You know the location of where you want to go, but do not know the adress, you have to stop to designate the location, not even the passenger can do it till you pull over!


If you plan to use the GPS, have the salesman operate the system, while the car is moving, not while it is parked.

I agree the new GPS software is quite poorly designed and buggy too. Initially the Mazda reps I contacted seemed eager to help, but it's been a while since I heard anything back from them. I'm considering filing a formal complaint and other legal avenues...

FYI there is a trick to adjusting the volume. If you switch to the NAV screen and then press the NAV button next to the command stick, it will repeat the last verbal instruction. While the voice is speaking, you can raise and lower the volume by the steering wheel Vol +/- control or the volume dial next to the command stick. (The Guidance Volume slider in the menus is totally unusable.)

Damn ! thanks for sharing your experience
as i am planning to buy Mazda 5
will do as you have suggested

Thanks 'jettoblack',
great hint, it will help.

Where in the world are you all?
Whats the brand / supplier of your GPS unit?

Since GPS is crappy, Not quite sure where in the world I am!

All kidding aside, I live In Texas, I was told that the GPS is Garmin based, a recent change from Tomtom.

I won't say the GPS is crappy, per se (the directions seem accurate enough), but the way Mazda implemented the voice guidance is HORRIBLE and irritates me to no end whenever I use it. I'm constantly fiddling with the volume. Why couldn't they have made it work the way it does in all their other models -- and the way it works in every other car I've ever driven with navigation: Significantly reduce the volume of the music/audio in ALL speakers and pipe the voice guidance out of ALL speakers. They could also improve the clarity of the voice guidance. If they can't make it work this way, they should at LEAST update the system to include an option to completely DISABLE voice guidance so its broken-ness isn't so incredibly irritating. I'm really surprised that so many publications lavished the 3 with such high praise but that NONE of them mentioned how crappy the voice guidance is.

I liken the experience to listening to music with headphones on and having some lady standing to my left, yelling directions at me. :/ It's a very poor, very unpolished implementation that feels incredibly cheap.

By the way, in case anyone ever has to find it, The Home Depot (and every other hardware store) is listed under the Shopping > Electrical, Office, and IT category (WTF?!). How 'bout a "Hardware" or "Home Improvement" category. *face palm*

That may explain things. I've only heard praise from Tom Tom equipped Mazda's.
I really didn't believe it was a dedicated Mazda made issue, rather the actual supplier of the Nav system.

I know its of no help for those people dealing with the crap GPS unit fitted to their new car.

The 2014 Mazda3 uses a NAVTEQ based system, not Garmin or TomTom. If you read the navigation manual it refers exclusively to NAVTEQ. Most other Mazdas, even the 2014 Mazda6, are using TomTom, hence the confusion by many dealers. It's a shame because if they had gone with TomTom or Garmin, maybe it wouldn't have all of these problems..

Apparently NAVTEC maps are used on many older Mazdas
 

https://www.mazdanavigation.com/Cust...port/faqs.aspx
lists several years and models. It does not give me a good feeling that the www.mazdanavigation.com link on the FAQ page has the linked URL mis-spelled, so it does not work. I imagine they make maps that can be used by several systems, so it would be possible for a say a Tom-Tom system to use NAVTEC maps.

Another interesting NAVTEC page is https://www.mazdanavigation.com/MapCoverage/ which lists some areas as Complete and some as Prime. It would appear that Prime is more complete than Complete is.

But anyway, sometimes my Garmin is so bad, I'd be better off with just a compass. I have several horror stories.