nav voice recongition is garbage

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Mazda CX-5 Touring w/bose-tech
like the title says, voice control works pretty well in main menu and phone,
but once you're in nav, its is absolutely atrocious
i never was a fan of tomtom, always thought they're stuff was overly dumbed down, lowest common denominator type devices/software, and its proving to be true. even trying to use it manually on screen it is too basic, you can't select poi's other than super general categories then scroll thru pages and pages to find what you're looking for....(braindead

i'm almost to the point of just not using it anymore and putting my phone mount in the car to use google nav

i seriously hope there's enough complaints about this that mazda or tomtom has to do something about it
 
i never was a fan of tomtom, always thought they're stuff was overly dumbed down

Each to their own I suppose. But when it comes to GPS's I think two things are important.

1. Quick input
2. Smart routing

I don't mind technical, complex devices. But a GPS input should take no longer than a pause at a red light. And for this, the TomTom does it's job. Roughly takes 10 seconds to input an address. I completely agree with you stromdriver, going to a long list of POI is painful (and not TomTom like). But you can switch to a search mode which is a 'little' better.

For routing, I throw challenges at the GPS. It's easy to show stupid GPS over clever ones.
Sydney is a complex city with hopeless design (thank you to the British). GPS systems HATE Sydney. And no GPS system knows the back streets of my old neighbourhoods and it's shortcuts like me.

Throwing all the GPS systems through the rat traps, knicknacks, and backtracks of my neighbours hood none know the good routes.
Except.... TomTom.
The routing is extremely clever, although that said..... It's proven in Europe (where tricky routing is required). And TomTom is married with maps from the various countries (TomTom has no control over the maps in most cases).

So I know it works great in Australia. I cannot speak for Canada and the US.

Now to the voice recognition....

All the current TomTom products have been prepared voicewise for the Australian market. The Voice recognition is pretty well trained.
This is NOT the case with the Mazda NB1.

They've rushed the product to the market and have not yet had a chance to include the proper Australian voices (i.e. computer voices).
As a result, we have to use the British voices and recognition, which have far less ability to recognise Australian pronunciation.

So far .... 3/10 for Voice.
 
yeah i had it try to find a local pub called 'marble hill inn' and it kept thinking i wanted taco bell, and when i went to the full poi lists for nightlife and restaurants, it never showed it, this place has been around for decades....

my old cheapo standalone mio gps did a better job than this tomtom does
 
I've used the portable TTs for many years and do not have my CX yet. The POIs are poor but were at least well classified into sections. Is it possible to download third party POIs? There were thousands of examples. This was possible with the portable version.
 
yeah i had it try to find a local pub called 'marble hill inn' and it kept thinking i wanted taco bell, and when i went to the full poi lists for nightlife and restaurants, it never showed it, this place has been around for decades....

my old cheapo standalone mio gps did a better job than this tomtom does

POI's are not the responsibility of TomTom. It's the resposibility of the users to source up to date POI's and install them as required.
TomTom will provide a standard set of POI's - and the quality and content of this varies per country.

POI's thankfully are interchangable between devices and there are websites dedicated to the update and correction of these.

There are a LOT of POI websites. Google searching will come up with options.

This is in a similar manner to the fact that TomTom is not responsible for maps either. The maps are the responsibilty of map makers in each country. They then onsell the rights to use and update to GPS manufacturers in each country.

The allows a small selection of companies to produce maps for various GPS and physical map makers. Even companies such as Google and Microsoft will source data for their maps from these same providers to update their own maps.

At the end of the day a device will interogate the maps and POI's *YOU* put into it.
And with all data - Garbage in, Garbage out..... You'll only get the right result if your data is accurate and up to date.
 
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I've used the portable TTs for many years and do not have my CX yet. The POIs are poor but were at least well classified into sections. Is it possible to download third party POIs? There were thousands of examples. This was possible with the portable version.

Yes. Nearly all GPS's devices must allow this because POI's are from third parties in the first place.
 
i think tomtom is responsible for pois personally especially catagorizing them so its not just huge selections you have to scroll thru

but another problem has popped up, did a system update with mytomtom software, and now everytime car starts it asks about sharing usage data with tomtom, it keeps popping up whether you accept it or deny it, that is insanely annoying, its bad enough that stupid legal safety notice comes up everytime you start car, now this?
 
I just bought this car about two weeks ago and am so frustrated with the whole dash! I am used to the garmin Nuvi and maybe that is why I think Tom Tom is such crap. It seems to me, that not only is the voice recognitiion is so flawed, but I think Tomtom in general is poorly setup. The reaction time for the touch screen is pretty slow too. I have had multiple emotional break downs because of this gps. I get lost very easy and rely heavily on gps to get places in the city and rural areas of Portland. The input method, whether verbal or by hand is not easy to use. I think this is more of a Tomtom issue, but I noticed my Mazda has errors with Tomtom too. Whenever I am talking to Tomtom and I pull up to a stop light or slow the vehicle it cancels the voice recognition and I have to start over. I timed it once and it took me 45 min to find the destination I was looking for. I gave up and used my phone, which is illegal in Oregon when you're driving. Sometimes, if I am looking to meet friends at a restaurant and I say the name of the restaurant Tomtom can't find it, and the restaurants have been around for years. I don't like how when you say the name of a place it automatically directs you to whichever place it thinks you said, instead of giving you a list of what it may have heard. Also, with Garmin I was able to type in things like "albertson's" and it would give me a list of all the albertson's near and far. With Tomtom you have to find it in a long list of POI's which is dangerous while driving. There are so many issues with this thing I can't even list them all. For the money I paid for this car I expected more and better service from Mazda. If I could do it again, I would not have bought the integrated gps and I would put an after market Garmin in it. I am deciding if this would be worth it. Right now I am using my Garmin, mounted on the dash.

T
 
i suggest going to mazdas site and filing a complaint, then calling tomtom and complaining to them about the voice commands, i'm waiting for a call back from their level two support about it
 
i suggest going to mazdas site and filing a complaint, then calling tomtom and complaining to them about the voice commands, i'm waiting for a call back from their level two support about it

You would think it would be easy for TT to do a software update to (A) Catagorise the POIs into manageable groups and (B) Stop the voice recognition from canceling when slowing up. Perhaps they will listen.
 
You would think it would be easy for TT to do a software update to (A) Catagorise the POIs into manageable groups and (B) Stop the voice recognition from canceling when slowing up. Perhaps they will listen.

i haven't experienced this voice command stopping when slowing, when i talk to the tier 2 guys i'll be sure to offer my litany of fixes
 
i haven't experienced this voice command stopping when slowing, when i talk to the tier 2 guys i'll be sure to offer my litany of fixes

Just to clarify. I only suggested this after reading the previous post. I don't know how common the problem is. I haven't got my CX yet.
 
Just to clarify. I only suggested this after reading the previous post. I don't know how common the problem is. I haven't got my CX yet.

I believe the UK version will be far better than the issues we're experiencing abroad. We're lucky here in that TomTom has been very good to the Australian market. They've ensure every single one of their products has a lot of Australian voice input. They even had a national competition to get a perfect Australian voice to be inserted in all the products.

The Mazda TomTom though was rushed to market.

It's obvious that the development was lagging the vehicle, and the result has probably impacted all non European markets - including the US.

The voice recognition in all TomTom products in Australia are programmed to understand and speak the Australian accent. This includes the iPhone. Their products are unbeatable, even by Australian GPS companies that you'd expect would do the Aussie accent well.

Mazda.... No, we won't get the full voice implementation here for many, many months. The Voice in the current device is trained for the UK, and we can only get the UK voice for street signs. Heck, it even defaults to miles when it comes out of the factory.

I suspect the problem all of the American forum members are having is related to the same issue.

Folks.... TomTom is a European product. Europe comes first! The US and Australia will have to wait.
It's a brand new device.

Give it time!
 
In the US the technology package is a good value, I just use touch pad for Nav data entry.
 
well after waiting almost 2 weeks for tier 2 support at tomtom to call me back i called regular tech support, after another hour and change on teh phone, they basically passed the buck saying that the problem is with the 'speaker' in the car and that its mazdas problem not theirs because its supposedly not the hardware....
they completely disregard that it understands some of the basic commands but not names of many streets or business, let alone numbers....
i'm completely aggravated by this, i emailed the customer assistance guy i've been dealing with at mazda and told him about this crap.
i even demonstrated for him over the phone how it just completely misunderstands most things you say, trying to drive to an address it started finding a poi that didn't sound anything like the address...

i would never ever buy a tomtom device and i will tell anyone that asks me about gps units to stay far far away from their s***
 
In the US the technology package is a good value, I just use touch pad for Nav data entry.

Then why pay for the voice recognition? There is currently a law suit out of California about the navigation "safety lock" when you hit the break and then gas. Basically, the system they are selling is voice recognition while driving. This feature is not working. So TomTom and Mazda are fixing the break, gas issue with voice recog, but the voice recog in general won't be addressed. I doubt ever really. I wouldn't be surprised to see another law suit about it. IMO the product doesn't work. No excuses. If its made for a European market that's fine, then keep it in that market and don't sell it in the US where it isn't working and then tell me that I have to wait for fixes. That's like the movie "A Christmas Story" where they keep telling all those house wives to buy the gravy boat because eventually the rest of the dish set will come out, and it never does.

Kinda bums me out. Not sure I would buy this car again if I had it to do all over again.

T :(
 
Kinda bums me out. Not sure I would buy this car again if I had it to do all over again. T :(

If you scour the internet, you will find that NAV systems are more or less craptacular in many vehicles, unless you go premium like Audi. Discussion forums and car mags all have bad things to say (right now the hate is on the Forester it seems, but the Ford MyTouch system is also a source of irritation). Even the 8" screen in the Santa Fe Sport is belittled by some car mags. It a huge source of disappointment that so little thought is given to a good, simple navigation/phone pairing system.

For whatever reason the car companies must give the audio contract to the lowest bidder, who then takes the new audio interns and partners them closely with the new legal interns, to create the products that we see in these cars. But even many aftermarket units are known to be slow and buggy, so I'm not sure what the solution is. In the end all I would want is to strap on the iPad and have it integrated into the car audio, that would likely solve most of my problems.
 
like the title says, voice control works pretty well in main menu and phone,
but once you're in nav, its is absolutely atrocious
i never was a fan of tomtom, always thought they're stuff was overly dumbed down, lowest common denominator type devices/software, and its proving to be true. even trying to use it manually on screen it is too basic, you can't select poi's other than super general categories then scroll thru pages and pages to find what you're looking for....(braindead

i'm almost to the point of just not using it anymore and putting my phone mount in the car to use google nav

i seriously hope there's enough complaints about this that mazda or tomtom has to do something about it

I'm with you Stromdriver.
 
Thanks Jabba! That is really good to know because I was contemplating selling my CX-5 for the Kia Sorento. Saves me a ton of money just sticking with what I got. I do like the iPad idea.

T
 
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