I had plenty of choices for the weekend car, but I took the Fit for the single reason that it had a good nav system in it. The lady and I have been looking to take advantage of the first time home buyer tax credit so our search area is a broad swath of the L.A. area.
The nav first came in handy when we left dinner on Saturday with time to spare a run to Scoops Ice Cream, a place way across town from where we were in an unfamiliar area. I 411'd their address, plugged it into the nav and off we went. Two scoops later and we made a mad dash back to the movie theatre.
On Sunday, we had a list of six places to see. With the easy touch type nav screen, I plugged in address after address and it effortlessly guided us to each destination. We didn't find anything we could afford or even really liked all that much, but at least the Fit made the process easy.
Scott Jacobs, Senior Photographer
adantium says:
10:09 AM, 06/29/09
Shouldn't the nav find you an address of a business when you type it in? Why would you need to call 411?
nealibob says:
10:14 AM, 06/29/09
@adantium: that's a good point, especially since it seems to be just as hard to enter an address as it is to find a business in most nav systems. It should be super easy with all those damn buttons, though.
carguy622 says:
11:11 AM, 06/29/09
It's been my experience that the Navi system is more often than not missing the place you're looking for. When I bought my Acura new in '06 with the navigation, I found a lot of places missing or incorrect.
With that said, Honda's system is super easy to use and I'm glad that the Fit still uses the touch screen version, most other Honda products rely on a knob now.
eblock2 says:
11:31 AM, 06/29/09
I actually like the knobs better than the touch screen, not as easy to use perhaps, but safer since you can navigate the menus without taking your eyes off the road. And they can place the screen high on the dash and out of reach where you don't have to look down at it.
richard613 says:
07:10 PM, 06/29/09
I wouldn't get too excited about the tax credit.
At some point it'll end and your purchasing power will be cut. Other buyers with whom you are completing will find their purchasing power cut by a similar amount and home prices will drift down accordingly. "Stimulus" seldom stimulates in the long run.
billt9 says:
08:40 PM, 06/29/09
Garmin seems to be the only brand with enough Points of Interest programmed in.
But then their navs run slow because it has to sort through such a large database. tradeoffs.
jaeger1 says:
06:19 AM, 06/30/09
I'll take touchscreen every single time. Not a particularly well integrated OE nav unit here, though.
milt721 says:
09:07 AM, 06/30/09
@ the first 2 posters
"411" has been slang for "look something up/get info on something" for at least 10 years.