Frustration with Comand in W203

[donr]

Living in France, I need a SatNav to get around to places that I am not familiar with.
Yesterday I trusted the Comand in my W203 to get me to a village, (not too far from where I live) and find an actual street. Before too long I was tearing my hair out in frustration. I was directed to turn right, then right again, then right again, which brought me back (via an uninteresting detour) to where I was originally. In my opinion, the Comand does not even begin to compare to a TomTom, even though many times more expensive. The features that I think do not compare are: the Comand has to be told which country you are in. The TomTom know this automatically The Comand has predictive text, which I find a very limiting feature, and if you use the post code, it only takes you to the street, whereas the TomTom takes you to a specified house number. I was in Glasgow some time ago, and wanted to get to a particular address in a very long street.
The Comand took me to the wrong end of this long street, and because of the many one-way streets, it was difficult to get to the number I wanted. The Comand loses the route guidance if I switch off the engine for just a few minutes. The TomTom does not do this, and in addition it has a list of recent destinations, which I find a very useful feature.
I have another problem which may not be down to the Comand, but when I set the clock to the correct time, it stays at the correct time for a very short period of time, and then sets itself 2 hours slow. I have tried numerous times to get it to hold the setting, without success.
The Comand is very late with verbal instructions, sometimes so late that it is not possible to make the maneuvre, and the driver cannot be staring at the SatNav screen continually. I do not have this problem with the TomTom. I recently bought (second-hand) a Viano, (W639) 3 litre V6, and the vendor used, as a selling point, the fact that it does not have a Mercedes SatNav, because he said they are useless !
I would be interested in other members opinions,

 

[c63chris]

Pretty good on mine. Not perfect but if you treat it as an intelligent map it is ok. Mine doesnt do 7 digit postcodes which I would prefer. Route guidance is pretty accurate on destination times and it picks up congestion and road closures well.

 

[whitenemesis]

Not sure of the year of your car/COMAND but I have the COMAND-APS version (uses a DVD) and must say it's pretty good.
It recognises the country it's in and sets the correct time.
I can enter a house number, or range of numbers.
One can set how far ahead the instructions are given.
COMAND will remember the route for up to 2hrs after IGN off and restarts automatically at IGN on.
TMS system is great, with route type set to dynamic COMAND will display congestion and will recalculate the route (if there is an alternative). I have ignored this re-routing only a couple of times, to my cost!!

OK, no 7 digit postcode input but that's really not such a handicap. Unless one doesn't have the full address!

All in all I'm very happy with it. Perfectly integrated with the car, great audio to, including iPod

 

[GP801]

The CLK has the old CD based comand and the SLK the DVD version. Both are very accurate. If anything the old CD one is more precise.

 

[richard]

If you have the CD version, it was designed in 1999 (or perhaps a bit before) ..

Richard

 

[markjay]

The navigation on my TomTom is superior to my COMAND NTG2.5.

But... COMAND provides music, radio, and video, and it integrates with the steering wheel buttons and with the instrument cluster display. It also has Bluetooth which integrates with the radio.

And all this without any dangling wires...

So I prefer my COMAND as an all-round better solution.