- Average user rating: 3.0 stars out of 23 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
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8 out of 9 people found this review helpful
1.0 stars
"Bring a map"
Pros: Big screen
Cons: Poor navigation skills
Summary: I had the Z1 installed over the Easter weekend and I plan to have it removed this week. I do not recommend this unit. In my opinion, Pioneer has spent the majority of its energy in protecting itself from liability rather than on useability and reliability. I have read that the green parking brake lead can be grounded to bypass the 'grey out' of multiple functions. The pioneer representative in the store I spoke with has bragged that they have built in speed sensors to prevent dvd and multiple nav functions use even with the ground bypassed. This appears to be true, but unfortunatly tying the Z1 into my electronics appears to have made my digital speedometer no long accurate. I own two Magellan 700's with with it agreed exactly prior to installation, but no longer. It does appear that now the Magellan and Z1 give the same GPS speed, and agree with each other now so the loss of accuracy is now in my Porsche. I can't prove it yet, but I feel it is due to the install. Guess I will know when I get it out. As for grounding the green wire to the parking brake, I didn't do this. None-the-less I get error messages frequently that have to be cleared by repeatedly touching ok. The messages indicate that there is an error in the parking brake wire installation. They occur both at start up, which by the way takes quite a while, and even on the road when not even using the nav. I took it back to my installer who verified correct installation, says he is going to talk with pioneer about this issue.
Routing is inferior in my opinion to the 700. I have been led multiple times by the Z1 off Interstate/Toll roads onto housing subdivisions and occasionally dead end streets when a more direct route was just to stay on the road and intersect another main route. It has even tried to get me to retrace my route when I was almost at my destination to go by some route it stubbornly stuck to...would have added over an hour to a 15 minute trip. A route from Daytona Beach to Jacksonville would have taken me on US 1, a 35-40 mph road a significant portion of the route whereas the 700 properly led me to I 95 and 70+ MPH travel. Changing the estimated road speeds or "fast" "main" etc setting doesn't seem to make a noticable difference. If you are stopped, with parking brake on and after clearing the error message you have the option to choose between several route options. It is hard to tell just looking which is the best choice as there is just a small outline routhe to look at. But, even when you choose the best of available it is a pain when you just click "fastest route" on the 700 and pretty much get the best route each time. The Z1 estimate of time en route is almost always off, but as you get closer and closer to where you are going it begins to agree with what 700 says from the outset. Seems the Z1 on this route took shortest distance regardless of speed. But this isn't consistent. Once I had to navigate in Jacksonville, the Z1 took me a roundabout trip through downtown that took 20 minutes, including 4 re-route attempts to avoid dead ends the system wasn't aware of due to bad nav data. Contrast this to the superior rounting smarts the more current 700 I had as back up showed a quicker turn for a 5 minute trip. The Z1 also, in city traffic, advised me of turns AFTER I had taken it. I also got lots of turn advise with multiple roads that just say "keep right" or right turn with no way to tell which road.
So many functions are greyed that the poor routing, out of date data can not be compensated for with routing on the road, even though I had a companion who could have handled this while I had full attentionto the road. The voice commands are spotty and freqently result in a "zoom in" instead of a "set as destination." If you are parked in a quiet car and it works much better. I also subscribed to XM and Nav traffic. I can't see any effect of having the nav traffic when I traveled to Orlando. In all conditions and for all routes in the time I have owned the Z1 the 700 was in my opinion superior, more reliable and had by far the best routing.
The unit was professionally installed, by SoundAdvice (Tweeter) and the install was rechecked by the installer. I have not changed or modified anything. Bring a map.
