CD based Sat nav-whats the difference?

[Philip1972]

Buying a car with Audio 50 APS, CD based nav. Car is a 2011 E class cab.

Is that type of sat nav any good?

Whats the difference between that and the DVD based nav?

 

[markjay]

It means that the SatNav unit does not have an internal hard disk drive where the maps are stored, instead is has an external optical drive where the maps reside on a CD or DVD media inserted in the drive. The external optical drive is usually in the boot.

Also, any SatNav system in a 2011 car will feel outdated compared to modern SatNav software available on mobile phones (Waze, TomTom, Go Pilot, Garmin, etc etc). So while the original SatNav option is always nice to have on any car, the reality is that if you rely heavily on SatNav for your daily driving then you will probably not use the car's original SatNav much.

 

[markjay]

Also - the E-Class Cabrio (A207) is based on the C-Class (W204), and the 2011 model should therefore have COMAND NTG4.5, same as the facelift C-Class 2011-2015. COMAND NTG4.5 has a built-in 100gb HDD.

Seems like your car has COMAND APS 50 with extetnal optical drive though, I am not familiar with this particular variant of COMAND, but other may be able to advise.

 

[markjay]

This is what the Audio 50 APS looks like:

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[Philip1972]

Thanks gents.

I dont think its the COMAND system though, as the data card just says "Radio Audio 50 APS".

A colleague has the same car and his data card says "Comand APS with DVD changer"

 

[markjay]

The unit in the YouTube video clip above is not COMAND. It is Audio 50 APS.

COMAND units typically have larger hi-res colour screens.

So most probably the car has Audio 50 APS, with some sort of SatNav software bolt-on.

But as said I don't know much about the Audio 50 unit so can't say what SatNav options were available for it in 2011.

(Later cars had the optional Becker Map Pilot SatNav, but the maps where stored in internal Flash memory, i.e. not on CD/DVD, so again not sure what SatNav hardware/software your car will have).