Looking for feedback on the Mini Connected With Nav. Have on order a Countryman All4 - Crystal Silver, black roof with black leather interior - not too late to change order.
I ordered the Mini Connect without Nav. I love my Garmin GPS - so much easier to use than any of the factory GPS I have used. Plus I travel a lot so I keep my 200 contacts in my portable GPS.
I read here on the boards (I will check with my dealer this week) that Mini Connect alone is not available due to parts shortages. So I am thinking about adding Nav - at this point what is another $750.00.
Can anyone comment that has Miniconnect or Miniconnect with Nav. Do you like and why? Easy to use? Not a lot of great info out there and the dealer did not have one to play with.
Also I currently have an Android phone - so I am kind of betting that they will have an App to connect in the future. I will use the bluetooth with my smart phone to begin. Thanks in advance!

 

I just saw the nav today at the dealer. I thought it was pretty neat. I supports voice commands like "map" to launch map, and to enter city/street/etc to find places, and has free traffic updates, and alternate routing. The guy did say it only says turn left or right, and doesn't say street names but I didn't try that in use so I took his word for it. To input data by hand there is a spin **** down by the ebreak, that seemed easy to use, not sure if its better or not then a touchscreen.

The other connect apps seem neat and worth it but I am kind of a tech person and have an iphone.

 

I have the Connected with Nnav and while my stand-alone Garmin is very fast, nothing can compare to the convenience of a built-in OEM unit. Some may complain about its ease of use, I think it works great and responds quickly. You won't be disappointed.

 

I have nav and Connected nav is very good i love the persective view and night mode it stays like that in my car.
connected is good minimalizer is good and helps you drive conservatively,
and the new mission control puts a smile on my face.

 

I agree.

 

I appreciate the feedback!

Can anyone comment on how easy it is to use the bluetooth that comes with the Nav.
Thank you.

 

What sort of specifics are you looking for? Ease of pairing? Contact management? Call quality? Ease of making calls? All are pretty good. If you have an iPhone, it gives you complete access to the phone's address book & recent calls list.

 

I have the NAV w/ Mini connect. Had the car since early Jan. I like the NAV easy to use, and accurate and I thought fairly intutive as well.

Mini Connected seems ok. I have it connected to my I touch and I do not have an I phone, so many of the features don't work becasue my I touch doesn't have wifi all the time. On thing I did learn by accident is when the plug in screen is up there is no clock. However the I touch works if you run it in CD mode it diplays just like the plug in except the time is displayed in CD mode on the top of the screen.

The bluetooth sucks. I had it before and I only got it this time because it came with the car(I did not get to order my car).

I can hear perfectly, but whome ever I talk to can't hear me clearly I am told. And I did move the speaker over to the drivers side w/o improvement to clarity.

 

Sorry to say but my Nav /connect sucks. Lots of steps to do one thing. Cant hear nav if sunroof and windows are open. "make left 800'" ? my $250 nuvi tells me make left on smith st etc. No need to keep watching the nav screen. My itouch keeps disconnecting, ( I tried 3 different gen also, same issue). Real time traffic is even worst. Most of time its wrong. If it takes you around traffic its takes longer because the side streets dont show traffic alerts so it cant compare it to them.

 

Blutooth option is the way to go, especially bluetooth audio, loved it !! Nav works pretty good too, pretty nice interface, easy to use and you can send destination from google map to your car through mini connected !! haven't try it yet, but it sounds cool

 

I have been very pleased with my Nav, especially now that I have been using Google send to MINI through the connected software... it's marvelous!!!!!

 

I have the connected with nav. I just got my cm this week so jury is still out for me. The nav. screen is nice, as someone else said the voice directions are not super specific, "prepare to make left turn" ...no street name or anything unless you look at screen. Voice entry works well for nav except if you are entering a point of interest and then you have to use joystick. I don't have an iphone so I haven't really used connected, but bluetooth works great with my palm pre and all my contacts are on screen. I am a little concerned about directions from nav, it took me miles out of my way leaving the airport the other day, I hope it had to do with settings...fastest/shortest etc. To me $750 dollars is nothing compared to paying for your anthacite headliner that lets face it is ludicrous (I do have one)! Also I just couldn't fathom having that giant circle in the middle of my car doing nothing but telling me speed!

 

The first time my daughter was in the CM she started touching the screen and said " what not a touch screen, this sucks". lol

 

Thanks to all for the comments. I am going to order the Nav..at this point what is another $750.00. I am betting that some day they will have an android app so I may take full use of miniconnect. I am sure there will be times I use my Garmin, but I know the factory installed GPS will be convenient too.

 

if you haven't ordered it yet, you'll be waiting, probably for the 2012 models. Both connected and connected w/nav are temporally unavailable for order

 

i haven't managed to get this to work yet,
what do you click on on ggole maps? 'send' or 'link'
the send only has email or phone options i thought the blurb said that there should be an optoin to send to car?
can you help?

 

Try turning up the volume when instructions are being said this adjusts the sat nav volume indipendantly of the stereo.

 

As with navs in other cars.
It would behoove one to read the manual before stating something sucks.

 

Send to car is done via the "Send". On any non-mobile device browser the Send to Car option is normally available. You choose MINI and use your MINI Connected login name. I think it really just sends it to your registered iPhone, since you then have to hook the iPhone to your car and from the MINI Apps menu click the "Send to Car" which will send any buffered incoming Google Maps sent addresses over to the Mini for you to choose from and make the next Nav destination. It works. One kind of strange thing is that the maps.google.com from Safari or the Maps or Latitude applications on the iPhone don't include the "Send to Car" option. So if you want to browse to a location with just the iPhone (some place away from your car presumeably), you'll have to use Safari and force the classic view by going to: "http://maps.google.com/maps?ui=maps". The classic view is a little hard to work with on an iPhone, but you can search or pick spots and then Send to Car works.

 

 

So glad I found a MINI thread discussing Head Unit features like NAV & MINIConnect. I LOVE my MINI; HATE the head unit. With all the talk last week about the new Distracted Driving study, I decided to take a good look at how distracting this user-unfriendly system really is.

On Friday, I posted my first review of some of the features on my Blog - Driving My Mini. I'll be posting more all week. The goal here is not to be a hater (I love my MINI), it's too encourage MINI to fix this poor interface. http://goo.gl/HiOBx

 

I did read the manual, The volume is set to the highest point, still cant hear it with window and sunroof open. And is still SUCKS.

 

not to mention that the navigation and such is always upgradable and is made to grow with the car, sofware updates will make it better add content and upgrade the system. best part is its live trafic updates nd here in chicago has saved me countless hours in traffic.

best 700 ive spent on the car lol.....

 

It should cost $50: https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...should-do.html

 

That sounds cool.