Carscoms Dave Thomas compares the Acura RDX navigation system to Samsungs BlackJack Smartphone
Transcript
Hi, I'm Dave Thomas with Cars.com. We're inside the Acura RDX. This is one of our favorite small SUV's. We're going to showcase its navigation system. Acura does make one of the better nav systems out there.
And so, we're going to show you the difference between finding a location using a car nav system, which in this car is a $4,000 option, versus something much cheaper. To input a destination to the RDX nav system, it takes numerous mini-screens and many turns and pushes of a large singular knob. Also, if we weren't inputting such a well-known location like Soldier Field, we would have had even more trouble. The RDX did give a number of route options though. There are two downloadable programs I've tested on my BlackJack, Google Maps, and Live Search. We decided to try out Live Search for this demo, but both work in a similar fashion. The smartphone is easy to use if you're used to text messaging and using your thumbs to type. Both Live Search and Google Maps are also more intuitive in finding your information than those car based nav systems. The phone gives step-by-step directions for the touch of a button, but the big drawback is that there's no actual GPS in the phone. So it can't track where you are or where you're going to go next. Plus the screen is pretty darn small. So, for those who just need quick directions and hopefully have a navigator in the passenger seat, this is a terrific tool. <v Male Announcer>For additional information on this car or any other, go to Cars.com and our blog, Kicking Tires.
