Aftermarket Nav Opinions

[Morty]

I'm thinking of buying an aftermarket nav system for my '98. For those of you who added nav, I have a couple of questions:
(1) I want a unit with hard drive. Anybody have any reason to prefer the Eclipse AVN5495 or the Pioneer AVIC-ZI?
(2) Are any of these aftermarket nav units useful for off road navigation, or will I have to buy a separate Garmin unit for that?

Thanks.

 

[kingomar007]

i have the avn and i gotta say i love it. it works exactly like the oem lexus ones. in fact, i think all of lexus' nav's are made my eclipse or else the similarity is just uncanny. it's touch screen adn easy to operate and has tons of points of intrest. also, you can store music on the hard drive and record from the radio. i just put the avn5495 in a couple of months ago and its great. it fits perfectly and i definitely recommend it.

 

[NMuzj100]

Lots of good threads on this in Outfitting ....

 

[Brentbba]

I was considering the Pioneer for my '94. Liked the hard drive for storing cd's, beautiful 7" screen, wonderful graphics, features, etc. Did lots of research and finally called Pioneer tech support about whether offroad stuff from Mapsource etc. could be loaded to the hard drive. Quick answer NO. You get what TeleAtlas gives you with the unit. Garmin uses NavTech. Those are the two biggies in the road mapping routing industry. If you want offroad stuff for national parks etc. that Mapsource offers, you need to stick with a Garmin unit.