The Touch 2 & Go head units fitted to new Toyota Vehicles promises a great deal "The TOYOTA TOUCH® 2 multimedia system gives you a world of information and entertainment every time you get behind the wheel. And it’s all displayed in high-resolution colour-rich graphics on a simple touch screen." from the Toyota Website, and yet when you actually use it for a week or so you start to feel a little let down. Again from the Toyota Website "All smart. All simple. All for you." seems like a good place to start and for completeness we'll break this down into the main features.
Multimedia
Toyota claims "To enjoy the journey even more, you can connect your iPod or MP3 remotely to the Toyota Touch® 2 multimedia system via Bluetooth® or USB and enjoy your favourite playlist in high quality audio with album, artist and track information displayed" but in reality that's not going to happen. Connecting via Bluetooth provides audio, but intermittent album, artist and track information, no ability to select or browse tracks. Connecting via USB does provide this but then you've got to leave the USB connected to your phone which you rightly want to reside in the Qi charger instead. The other significant issue with USB is that you cannot browse folders on the device but instead all the media regardless of folder is shown. This means you can't, like me, order your music into folders on your USB stick and play media from a folder. DAB is ok but with only 6 presets its kinda awkward to operate if you have more than 6 favourite stations. It has a CD player but as I've not owned a CD for the last decade I can't test that. There's no sign of Apple CarPlay or Android Auto, and 'Mirrorlink' is only compatible with phones from the last decade so practically useless today. There is no support for any form of video to be played from USB storage so don't waste time trying.
The audio quality is very subjective. With its 6 speakers, all mid range and no subwoofer it does a reasonable job at low to moderate volume levels with even sound coverage. Turn it up too far and you start to loose what clarity it had but for the price point and in the lower end of the market it's not bad at all.
Phone
The phone integration is ok and the hands free is very workable but there are a few obvious issues when using this. It's not clear or intuitive how to get from the "last called" list to the phone book or back again, its do-able but needs touch work that shouldn't be required whilst driving.
When looking at the last called, dialled and missed lists there is no way to navigate without using the touchscreen (unlike every other vehicle where you can do it from the controls on the steering wheel) this means that again your distracted whilst trying to hit the right number which is actually quite hard to do whilst driving.
Whilst you've got the "last called" list up, you can no longer see the signal strength which to my mind seems ridiculous when the main use of the 'last called' screen is to recall after getting cut off due to the miserable cell coverage in this county. To add insult to injury, once your call has been cut off and you reach to press the screen to redial, a pop up rolls down from the top of the screen, obscuring the last called number to tell you want media you're listening too just in case you had forgotten! What possible use is that and how did that ever get past QA?
There is also a significant delay between getting into the car, starting it and driving and the phone becoming available. Its as if the unit has to sync the entire phonebook from scratch on every start up, which for me with a sizeable phonebook seems to take forever. There is no search facility so you have to use the A-C, D-F and so on which is a nightmare when you've got a lot of contacts. The handling of contacts (from an iPhone) is also unusable where your contacts are for companies. An example would be for company Fred Bloggs Inc, having two contacts, in this case you can find Fred Bloggs Inc but you have no idea which contact its going to call meaning you need to pick up your phone, use its contacts to make the call which defeats the whole purpose really. Since the majority of my contacts are businesses and I'm forced to dial from my phone then I looked for a way to stop it syncing but found none.
Navigation
Toyota claims "Toyota Touch® 2 with Go features enhanced satellite navigation with clear visuals showing signposts, junctions and lanes with real-time traffic updates alerting you to congestion on your route and suggesting detours" and it does do some of that but for the first 2000 miles I've yet to see anything 'enhanced' about it. It does seem to detect traffic alerts but it simply tells you "Traffic Jam Ahead" and then directs you into the back of it without suggesting any detours. Maybe it will in the future, but so far that's a zero.
The voice navigation also leaves a lot to be desired with 'Turn Half Right' being its favourite phrase of the moment. What exactly is a half right? I have no idea and I'm sure you don't either so looking at the Navigation screen, which is only on the centre console touchscreen and not replicated to either the dash (except for an arrow) or the heads-up display is a prerequisite of using this system. It does sometimes show junctions and lanes, but don't rely on it as it gets this wrong from time to time and your back to looking at the map to figure it out for yourself.
The navigation data is significantly out of date, even when updated to the 'spring 2017' data, there are still roads just in my locality that are incorrect and that's unfortunate. Whilst sitting in traffic on a road that doesn't exist in Toyota land, I loaded TomTom GO on my phone and of course the road was found. I wonder why TomTom can get their maps up to date, but Toyota can't?
There is a definite delay in processing current vehicle position especially noticeable on roundabouts where the 'screen' and your actual position can be a junction or two out meaning you're going to come off at the wrong junction. This is annoying especially when it gets the exit number wrong, which it does periodically. Most modern Navigation systems use GPS and Wheel turns to calculate position but the laggy behaviour of this system would suggest its only using GPS.
The route planning is fairly poor with only major roads factored into any route. We planned a series of routes and whilst it gives you the Fast, Short and Ecological routes they are invariably all the same. If you take a route which you drive regularly and get it to plan it, then it will only use main roads. If you plan a route between two villages then it will plan the route ok but if you plan a route city to city then you only get main roads and the short route simply doesn't work.
A most notable absence from the Navigation system in our EV is any way to navigate to your nearest charging point, something that I believe every other EV we've tested has as standard.
Another 'feature' that I was eager to test was the Speed Camera Alerts which are built into the system. The Toyota Website Claims
"Cyclops is a driver safety app that gives you professionally-verified fixed speed camera alerts combined with real-time updates for mobile cameras from the Cyclops community. Cyclops delivers the most accurate and reliable safety camera databases and smart software - you can enjoy these benefits by using our Cyclops App – specially designed to alert you to currently active mobile camera sites. And all other fixed camera types are automatically updated too! Cyclopse has comprehensive coverage of over 90,000 sites across 48 countries and automatic updates ensure that you always have the most accurate information possible."
Which sounds great, but actually finding any information is like pulling teeth out of a Donkey. There's nothing on the Toyota website and a web search eventually renders this Wikipedia link and possibly this company website which might be the company in question. Regardless in my daily drive the data seems to be outdated & inaccurate and whilst it gets the majority of long term fixed camera's its notably silent as I passed two mobile vans. There's an inference that its updated somehow online but there's certainly no feedback on the screen to show that. I'm not sure quite how much of my £199 goes to cyclops because the Toyota website doesn't say but as GARMIN seems to include it for free I suspect it's not a lot.
Coyote on the other hand is an App that you have to pay £87 a year for, and promises "With Coyote, always be warned safely directly on your embedded screen. You will receive the relevant alert at the relevant moment, to adapt your driving style to road hazards reported by the Coyote community, in real-time." and this does indeed pop-up for the majority of fixed speed camera's, but so far not a single mobile one. There is no further information on the Toyota website (any of them) so your back to searching the web. A best guess would be this company which seems to have versions in every language except English. The Coyote app is also infuriatiating because it pops up OVER the navigation screen meaning that you can no longer see the map and in city's these days with speed camera's every 5 meters this means the navigation is impossible to use and your left with yet another distraction that you have to deal with instead of watching the road.
One point to note is that if you have the coyote app loaded it seems to kill off the cyclops camera warnings which would indicate that Toyota believe Coyote is 'better' but again there's nothing on the website to explain the benefits/drawbacks of these two systems so once again its left to the end user to guess.
"To keep you connected and in control wherever you are, you can send your chosen route to your mobile or device." is a claim on their website, and indeed you can send a route to the car from their website. What they don't tell you is that their website is poor and allows just simple from and to input without any navigation functionality. The best way forward I've found here is to go to maps.google.com, plan the route then copy/paste the destination into their website in order to send to the car. It doesn't recognise things like HOME or any of your other favourites so you have to enter the full address in to both and it's not country aware so always specify the country along with the address.
Apps
Now for the section that I'm sure everyone has been waiting for.. The Toyota Website (as of today) says
"In today’s world of connectivity Toyota Touch® 2 (Go and Go Plus navigation systems) won’t disappoint. With our Toyota online services and applications your car can be a hub like your computer. With the ability to download great apps such as AUPEO! which gives you the chance to personalise your in-car music experience, it learns your music taste and suggests tracks by theme, genre, artist or even mood. And Coyote, the community-based speed camera awareness app, with 3 million drivers already helping one another against every road hazard. The integration of Google Street View™ and Panoramio™ provide imagery of your current location, or a location of your choice, allowing you to start navigating directly from the image, so you’ll never be lost."
So let's break this down. Firstly Google Street view is there, and it sort of works although you can't move around it like you can on google maps, but at least its there. There is no sign of "Panoramio" and AUPEO went out of business at the end of 2016, but who cares, "With our Toyota online services and applications your car can be a hub like your computer" so let's get on line and start downloading those apps!
Arriving at the toyota.co.uk website, registering, adding your vehicle and steaming over to the e-store, your invited to "Discover exciting new apps, update your navigation apps, and download the latest software for your Toyota's multimedia system" and its at this point that your expectations are quite literally crushed into dust.
There are no apps, well no useful apps anyway. If you take away Coyote which we've already talked about above, and eStore isn't an app anyway, then your left with 'Glass of water' which to my mind does absolutely nothing useful, and Park&Go which likewise has no real world use. This is what Toyota believes to constitute their "great range of apps". There is a 'weather' app that's pre-installed but seriously, a weather app? just look out of the WINDOW!
There were also some other pre-installed apps which are not on the 'e-store' such as Twitter that simply doesn't work and says "Unable to connect to the server" immediately no matter what you put into it , AUPEO that went out of business last year, A-ha that sometimes works, a parking app that only works with some car parks, and a fuel prices app which shows pricing from some fuel stations, the distance to, but fails to do the obvious mpg -> distance calculation.
If your dealer has told you that there are 'more exciting apps coming' then you may want to ask them why there have been no new apps since the system was released, and that's now almost two years ago? Its because there are no new apps coming, and no one is developing them. We collectively spent an entire day on the phone trying to find someone in Toyota who knew anything about apps and got nowhere. We tried contacting Harman who make the unit and again got absolutely nowhere. We sent numerous email's, left voicemails and even sacrificed a Toyota pen to the great car manufacturing eternal but so far not even the courtesy of a reply and this was weeks ago now.
Just take a moment to consider the list of actually useful apps that Toyota could have developed - EV Charging Point Map, AllStar fuel locator, CRM integration (be able to pull salesforce, vtiger, sugar contacts into navigation/phone), Guages (show data from the CAN bus such as charge, engine, power, RPM, etc), Facebook, Youtube, Vimeo and the list goes on and on.
If you expected to get 3 years of 'connected' services and map updates for FREE, then you don't and it'll cost you another £199 for that privilege although the only thing of use here is the map update.
Annoyances
Every system has a few annoyances but Touch 2 & Go seems to have more than most and some, maybe most of these should never have made it past Quality Assurance.
The screen is high gloss and when the sun is shining on it especially mid morning/afternoon its impossible to read it and you end up trying to shade it with your hand, which is probably the reason that other manufacturers have their screens recessed and heavily polarised. 
When you get into the car and start it, if you had the music playing loudly when you shut it off then it will start playing again at the same volume but you have to wait for the touchscreen to boot before you can shut it off again which can be annoying or embarrassing depending on who your with.
Coyote - As we've discussed above, this app takes over the entire screen blocking your view of the navigation map which is really annoying and as a bonus it doesn't do anything when passing mobile speed camera's. Coyote rarely seems to work out of the box and you wind up having to end it, then restart it to eventually get it to work. This isn't how it should be.
Internet Connectivity for "Connected Services" comes and goes but there's no indication on the screen at all. When your in an area with intermittent data then things just stop updating without any indication of such. You would expect an icon to be shown or something to show that connectivity has been lost but no. The only way I've found so far to verify if 'connected' means connected is by going to the Apps and selecting Weather to see if it can get any data.
The Toyota.co.uk Website
This is by far the worst website I've had the misfortune of using in recent times. The site is slow and its use of Ajax is embarrassingly poor. Even the details like the spinning icon whilst it's downloading content isn't clipped properly and in vehicle details if you want to see "Audio Information" then you have to select something else and then back to Audio Information to get it to update. Pretty much every option you select presents you with a full width picture and the content you're looking for is only visible once you scroll down, and don't even start me on mobile friendliness as the site navigation doesn't even work properly on an iPad. Something simple like the owners manual even after you've logged in still needs the VIN which of course everyone can remember. You can get to the owners manual from the my vehicle, then somewhere towards the bottom of the page but its hard to find, in fact everything is hard to find and unintuitive.
If you're looking for detailed or technical information then expect to find it spread piecemeal over several websites sites, one often contradicting the other and all woefully out of date. If you were impressed with their new "gas-injection heat pump powers the air conditioning" and wanted more information then your out of luck because there isn't any. Toyota.co.uk often links to other websites with vastly different formats and the whole approach seems disparate and messy. Whilst we all understand that Toyota isn't a Premium brand as such, there really isn't any excuse for this and I'm sure it must have an adverse effect on potential and current customers alike. If Toyota would like us to fix this then we'd probably do it for free in exchange for the source code to their head unit so we could fix that too.
You'll also be greeted with the following or similar regularly for unknown reasons, just try again.
iPhone/Android Apps
Unlike the earlier versions of the system there's no longer any App's available except the 'MyToyota' app that has no impact on the audio system and requires you to re-enter your password on every use which just makes you not want to use it.
PHEV Specific complaints
The new Prius PHEV is a fantastic vehicle and fun to drive but there is a complete lack of EV information on the touchscreen. You can see the 'power' flow even though its slow to update, but with things that you'd consider essential for an EV such as KWh charged, KWh used, KWh regenerated, KWh/Mile and so on are completely missing which is a real disappointment especially as everyone else manages to provide this (even if it's not accurate). Maybe this will come with later software but I doubt it, essentials like this come with the launch or don't come at all generally.
Overall
Its far from the best system we've used, but its not the worst. If you were wowed by the dealers promise of over the air apps in an vibrant app ecosystem, fantastic navigation, realtime mobile speed camera alerts and 'Premium Audio' then you're going to be hugely disappointed for sure, but if you were spared all that and just expected a vehicle with navigation and the ability to play music then you're going to be in luck.
This entire article is based solely on our opinion after using the Toyota Touch 2 & Go for a few months in real world situations and its not meant to be an exhaustive analysis of the system or its features. We may well do a technically biased article in the future. If you have a specific question then please feel free to post it in the comments, or pop in to your local Toyota dealer and ask them. I'd recommend staying away from blog.toyota.co.uk because the comments are heavily moderated and a 'difficult' question is unlikely to even make it to the site let alone be answered. We've posted a few questions and they were all just ignored. There is the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. email address but likewise in our experience awkward questions are ignored and simple ones just get passed on to a dealer so your email can be added to their spam lists.
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