I was driving along today and figured I'd try out the spoken word Navigation interface to see if it can find the local FedEx depot I'm driving to....

I select the state using idrive - New York
I spin idrive to Select City, hit the mic button and say 'Irvington'...and the state changes to Oregon.
I back out and reenter Nav so that the state is blank. I hit the mic button and say, 'Irvington'. And I see 'Anahiem...California'.

So I try a different tack.

I Say Destination - it asks for a house number. Back out we go.
I say 'Point of Interest'. And then I Say 'FedEx' - and it switches to 'Settings'. And...out we go again.
I say 'Point of Interest' then Say 'Keyword Search' - which I have to confirm WITH THE iDrive button and not by saying 'Yes'!!!!!!!
I then Say 'FedEx' - and it switches to 'Connections.'

It's a good thing I already knew where I was going.

 

Maybe you should have said post office alternative. Perhaps Fedex didn't pay to be included.

 

ljmii. I agree the nav simply does not work. Telephone works ok though. Nav does not even come close. We should ask them to fix it. We paid for this feature after all!

 

Road noise is tough for voice recognition.

 

On my 2010 R56 it was terrible but in 2011 they improved the system. I have never had a problem with road noise in the F56. It recognises numbers perfectly.
Mini/BMW however adds features that simply do not work on any level. In my R56 the phone voice recognition never actually worked properly. The dealership replaced every component.
That's why I'm so hard on Mini when things they advertise don't work. Especially when they charge a premium for these "extra features".
When these things don't work we should all call mini or send emails. It is unacceptable on any level.

 

I haven't yet actually 'tested' the Nav in the sense of asking it to pick a sensible route or finding (say) a convenient gas station along my route. But as you can see I've found that the voice interface is a complete failure. And that even with the larger XL the onscreen navigation is close to useless because for some reason it shows incorporated towns in grey (as opposed to white) and then uses an ever so slightly different shade of grey for local roads making them more or less invisible.

That said...I got the HUD because it was cheap given my getting everything else in the package and I thought 'Why not?'. And it has turned out to be the best piece of tech I have ever had in a car - seeing my speed without taking my eyes off the road is very, very nice. But with the NAV it's like I have X-ray vision - I get to see through traffic, parked cars, trees, and everything else to see all the roads entering and exiting each intersection. Truly brilliant. Over the next week or two I'll test most/all of my options/features and give a full review of my new MINI. But at the moment the HUD raises the NAV from a 2 to a 9.

 

Have you ever seen Jeremy Clarkson on Top Gear demonstrate voice command on the Mercedes Benz nav system? It is hilarious how bad these systems are. Anyone have an echo? Are they that bad too?