Thoughts on X3 Nav system after 5K mile road trip
 

I just returned home after taking my brand new 07 X3 on a 5,000 mile road trip. The car was great to drive and the performance was even better than my 06 was on the same trip last winter.

First, the DICE I installed with Tom's help worked perfectly. With the only exception being the slight interference with the phone system that has been there since day one. Other than that, no problems.

Now to the Nav system....

What can I say. In comparison to even the lowest end Garmin system this thing is really, really bad. There is no comparison at all to my Garmin Nuvi.

The organization of the "data base" as it is, is to say the least; not very easy to use. Just finding things like retail shops, hotels etc takes far too many knob turns and button pushes. That's after one "figures" out the mess of how things are organized and then searched for.

The maps leave more than a lot to be desired. Many state hi ways and other roads were not even a part of the mapping.

I tried many time to search for gas station within a certain range. What I got back was of gas stations (sometimes as many as 99) ordered from those behind me first then those on the side and finally when all the rest of the room in the nav wasn't used up with useless info a few in front of me. It very tedious to say the least and somewhat dangerous going through page after page of useless data while driving down the hi way.
( I know you can always stop, but the useless information is still there and is very, VERY frustrating to have to deal with)

Using my Garmin as a back up all I had to do was push one on screen icon for gas stations then one radio button to search along my route.... and...
all gas station in FRONT of me came up within a few seconds listed from closest to farthest.

Then I simply select the one I want tell the Garmin to "GO" there answer the question (with one push of a radio button icon) whether I want to continue to my original destination after the stop. And, the Garmin takes me there (to the selected gas station) then returns me to my original route without any further interaction.

The X3 nav on the other hand, I have to insert the gas station (after spending many, many minutes finding on IF a useful one even shows up) as a "new" destination then go there, then after stopping for gas select my "old" original destination and tell the thing I want to go there.

Granted I may be missing something in the operation of this thing, but it is in way "user friendly" and documentation that BMW provides is all but useless.

There are some good features though. The routing seems to be much faster than my Garmin and better. And the interface between the data base and the telephone is great. Though I can do the same thing using the blue tooth in Garmin.
And having a built in system is kind of nice, though I have an idea for that... see below....

So after all that here's what I think I'd like to do. ( maybe this should be another thread).

I measured the the Garmin and it seems that it would fit into the place where the display is on the X3 with no problem, and I know how to "hardwire the Garmin to the car.

So what I'm considering is this. And maybe some of you can tell if I can do this...

Taking apart the display, removing the screen and whatever else in there.
But leaving in tact the ability of the display to open and close. Having the Garmin Nuvi custom mounted into the now empty shell of the display.

Then replacing the radio with one from a non-nav equipped X3 so that I have the radio display.

Then I'd have a functional GPS nav system that would look and feel like it came with the car.

Thoughts.....

I thought about the same thing. It is very difficult to get the same level of integration if you put an aftermarket Nav unit in place without replacing everything from the radio, to the display, CD player, etc. Big $. Seems like a car computer is the end solution, but there are no turn key setups so unless computers are your hobby this is a huge effort. Big $ there too.

So, if you value things like: working steering wheel controls, radio mute for nav directions, MPG calculations, factory appearance, etc. you're better off with the OEM solution. Especially since you already paid for it!

You may be right. I'm looking into it now.

But I now know for sure I'll never buy another BMW with BMW navigation.
At nearly 2K that was a huge waste of money. To be fair though the person who sold me the car is a good friend and he tried several times to talk me out buying the nav system. I just didn't think it could possibly be as bad as he made it sound... I was wrong!!!

Other than that though this is a great car...

The MKIV nav computer in your X3 is directly related to the MKI unit BMW introduced in 1994 (in the 1995 MY 7 Series). The MKI was one of the first, if not the first, widely available OE navigation system. The MKIV shares many of the menu and navigation behaviours of that original MKI computer. It was 10 years ahead of its time when it was new, but does not fare well against the current crop of Garmin machines. It still does relatively well against other OE systems by other makes. The X3 and the Z4 are the last cars to still carry this system.