My Week with the Z110BT

[mikeinnj]

I have now had my Z110BT installed for one week and have put 1,000 miles on it by going to various places in the middle of the night with friends all over Jersey, PA, etc so I have had lots of time to stress test all of the different features and see what is good and what is not so good and what is downright nasty.

 

First, my setup:

2007 VW Jetta Wolfsburg 2.5

Avic-Z110BT

GEX-P920XM Tuner

iPod 5.5G 30GB

4GB SD Card with MP4 videos/MP3 folders mixed

MSN Direct Tuner

 

The Good:

-The VR seems to work better than my old F700BT with 3.0 esp for iPod controls.

-The unit boots VERY quickly and is ready to navigate and change sources by the time I get my seatbelt on.

-The iPod has YET to drop for no reason upon bootup like it did with the F series.

-The XM channel changing seems a bit faster than the F.

-The bluetooth connects within 40 seconds of bootup, more than quick enough.

-Phone calls end immediately upon pressing the hangup button, no more lag there.

-MSN Direct pulls in News, Weather, Traffic and Gas prices VERY quickly in my area.

-GPS positioning is super accurate with speed pulse hooked up and linkage to 10 satellites.

 

The Bad/Annoying/Quirks:

-You can not directly enter a destination as just a street by hand, you must have a house number. The only way I can tell it to just go to a certain street is through the voice control method of 'Find an address'.

-The voice control will not start until you go to the map screen and press 'ok' at the nag screen. After that you have to wait or pressing the VR button will result in the 'Please Wait for VR Engine to Start' message.

-After entering a voice command, the source will often stay attenuated/muted for 10-30 seconds after the command has registered. Though, this does not happen EVERY time, about 40% of the time.

-You can not change 2D/3D map views from the map screen, you have to go into settings to adjust this.

-The movie times take FOREVER to load and are spotty in my area, not the unit's fault though.

-The map screen does not even show minor roads until zoomed in VERY close.

-The voice recognition for the contacts on my phone just straight up SUCKS. It seems to work a bit better when I over enunciate the words and say them quite fast. The F series was better at VR for the phone.

-The routing sucks pretty bad, better than the F, but still not as good as the Garmin that I had with my Kenwood 5120 and 8120. However the multiple route option kind of makes up for it.

-The maps/GPS software look very dated compared to iGo on the X/F series.

-The placement of POIs on the map are WAY OFF in my area. I'm talking about a half mile to a mile off (Central Jersey).

-If you are playing video off of SD and do a voice command, the command will take almost a minute to register. It works normally with music on SD.

-Not all MP4 videos work off of SD. Anything with a decent or close to HD resolution will cause the 'Some Tracks will be skipped' message.

-Finding POIs lists them in order of distance but there is no indication of direction from the current position like Garmin has.

 

The Ugly:

-The VR engine has randomly failed to load a few times today and a few times over the course of the week, of course I was demoing the unit for people when this happened. You go to press the VR button and it says the 'VR enging starting please wait' message, but it never loads. It just keeps saying that every time you press the button until you power off the unit and restart it.

-The iPod VR dictionary updating has hung twice for me. It says the 'Updating VR Dictionary' and will stay that way for good until you restart the unit. I gave it like 20 minutes to update it one day and it never finished. I restarted the unit and it then completed just fine in 30 seconds. I only have like 3000 songs, not too much to index.

-Several times during rerouting me after not taking the unit's directions, the thing just refused to continue rerouting me. It just acted as if there was no destination programmed into it. The green route that it had initially was still on the map, but I was no where near it and the unit seemed to not care that I was miles away from the planned route.

-MSN Direct traffic is very outdated in my area. I drive to Newark/NYC area several times a week and so far it has said that traffic is flowing freely on roads that are congested. XM Navtraffic with my Kenwood 8120 was SPOT ON for this.

 

Overall, I'm most pleased with the responsiveness of the unit and how quickly it boots. I am not so thrilled with the navi functions and the maps seem to be quite aged. I am contemplating selling this and getting a Kenwood 6140 and saving $4-500. The Garmin may look like fisher price but it works. The VR is nice when it is available. Finding POIs and changing albums with the VR is GREAT. Though I mainly use this for Navi, iPod, and XM. The things I would miss about the Z110 would be the iPod VR, the MUCH more polished interface for XM/iPod, and the MSN for 'wow' factor in showing it off. Tough decisions...

[Matt -- HB Cali]

Nice write-up. It seems the navi on this unit is sub-par at very best. Mine had me going the exact opposite direction on one of the streets I had to be on to get to my final destination. I think Pioneer really dropped the ball on the entire navi functionality of this unit. They can say it has VR and millions of POI's and 3d and all of that, but when you get down to it it's really a horrible navi deck.

[spyfox]

So the gps guidance still work weird?!!

You would think that since I bought my first unit Pioneer would have redone the logarithms behind the route guidance.I have an old AVH-7500dvd conected to a avic80dvd and soemtime the route suggested are beyond strange!

I remember before the last gps update, "testing" the unit with a route I knew.Basically a strait line, well the unit told me to make a right go strait for half a km, then make a left go half a km, then make a left again getting me back to the first street I started on!! Basically making a U and turning a 2 km route into a 4 km one!

Since the update it better but sometime the route suggested still dosen't make much sense.it is espacially tru when I try to cut thru a residential area instead of using a main road it always try to re-route me to the main road.

I drive a cab and If I was to follow the gps without questions sometime the clients would slap me behind the head!

 

I'm planning on buying a new HU soon and the gps problem make me wonder if I should buy a Kenwood DNX9140 instead.

Like you said the maps seem like they were made by a 5 years old but the guidance seem dead on.I like that the unit as 5.1 surround sound and an ir with a remote.

What I don't like are problem with the ipod feature(problem skipping tracks when the art work is loading)and it seem that you have to go thru a lot of menu page to get to the function you want(the phone function seem to be the worst).I also don't like the way the user interface and the maps look.

The z110bt UI and maps look much better in my book and I like the short cut menu.

I would buy the z110bt with no problem if it was not for the gps.With the job I do and with clients in the car the route guidance as to be dead on.

I'm so thorn!!

Maybe I'll end up buying a z110bt with a protable gamin gps!!

[spyfox]

I looked at your other post(major navigation issue) and as far as the disappering letter goes ,that foncton work on my AVH-7500dvd connected to a avic 80dvd gps but they have taking it out on the z110bt!?? Doesn't make much sense but they also took out the 5.1 surround sound processor, the ir, remote control and tv tuner(this one I understand)all fuctions I have on my 8 year old head unit.

Sometime I just don't get Pioneer.

[Matt -- HB Cali]

I looked at your other post(major navigation issue) and as far as the disappering letter goes ,that foncton work on my AVH-7500dvd connected to a avic 80dvd gps but they have taking it out on the z110bt!?? Doesn't make much sense but they also took out the 5.1 surround sound processor, the ir, remote control and tv tuner(this one I understand)all fuctions I have on my 8 year old head unit.

Sometime I just don't get Pioneer.

 

Yes, the removal of the grayed out letters on street name input is another major disappointment. In fact the street I was going to was called De Bie St., but everybody calls it DEBIE St. As you can imagine it took me 5 min. to figure it out, I tried Debby, Deby, Debie, Debbie, Debiee, Debee, every way you could imagine to spell Debie. Finally I just put in De and then I was able to go to the list and found a De Bie St. Sure enough that was it! And after all of that the directions it gave me were ridiculous. It's almost like Pioneer is f'ing with us all with this deck.

 

I don't mind so much about the 5.1, remote or tv tuner but the horrible address input and retarded navigation "logic" the unit uses makes it a total bust. I would definitely NOT buy it if I were a cab driver, or had to rely on accurate navigation instructions for any other profession. You'd quickly be out of gas and/or your job.

[CamelTowing]

I used to sell that setup. It was over $2000 for the 7500dvd, plus another $1800 for the navigation. Nobody is going to pay that much for a nav system anymore. Its pretty understandable that they took out the processor and tv tuner to keep prices down, but it would still me nice if we could buy them seperately. And the lack of a remote is a fuckin joke. They probably have a billion IR sensors somewhere, why not throw it on there?

 

I looked at your other post(major navigation issue) and as far as the disappering letter goes ,that foncton work on my AVH-7500dvd connected to a avic 80dvd gps but they have taking it out on the z110bt!?? Doesn't make much sense but they also took out the 5.1 surround sound processor, the ir, remote control and tv tuner(this one I understand)all fuctions I have on my 8 year old head unit.

Sometime I just don't get Pioneer.

[mikeinnj]

The 9140 is not without its more serious issues with maps disappearing, leaving only the guide arrow, also the street names not showing up at all in many cases. Garmin has apparently admitted to this being caused by bad design in the chipset department, possibly causing a future recall in the event that firmware update can not fix it. Also, like you said the album art taking forever to show is still an issue, and to me the voice control is a joke compared to what Pioneer has, for iPod/AV atleast.

 

For me, I'm still judging whether or not to jump to the 6140 which is much more basic but does what I need it to do and does it well. I had the 5120 (Which is basically identical sans the bluetooth) and I loved it. However, I jumped the gun and sold it while it was still worth good money in order to pay for the F series when it came out. (BIG BIG BIG mistake there )

 

It's a tough decision. I'm taking another road trip tonight and want to make a final decision on what to do by tomorrow night after my trip into the city.

[Blade]

Just wondering if all Pioneer units have this problem with the Nav, or is it just the z110? Have other model units received updates which have been able to show improvements to the Nav' logic process?

[Blade]

 

It's a tough decision. I'm taking another road trip tonight and want to make a final decision on what to do by tomorrow night after my trip into the city.

 

 

Just curious Mike, did the NAV perform any better/worse for you on your latest trip?

[mikeinnj]

The nav seemed to perform quite a bit better during the last week. Playing around with the multiple route option definitely helps. I found the MSN Traffic reporting to be fairly accurate, the only problem is, the incidents update like RIGHT before I encounter them. Like my 50 mile trip home showed the traffic as a green light when I started out, but it turned to yellow then red RIGHT as I hit the traffic. MSN Direct is more to blame in this case.