HUDWAY HUD

This is a review of the HUD by HUDWAY for the Tacoma 2023 TRD OR SBDC.

The major reason why I wanted the HUD was that Toyota prioritizes status messages over operational messages and keeps them too long on the MFD. I drive in Europe and need km/h. When in daylight, the km/h on the right display is hard to read and distracts for too long from observing the road. As the digital speed display is overlayed by the status message (e.g. Radar Ready) for 10sec, I am at risk of losing track of the speed, especially when driving into a speed reduced work zone, where speed traps are at work.

I looked around for HUDs and the Hudway seemed to be the preferred one.

Thoughts:

1) The time from order to delivery took way to long (6 months plus 3 months delay). I had to move from a USPS address and the US store to the European one with a German address. No drama, but one never knows if these things go smooth. In my case they luckily did.

2) The HUD just barely fits on the dash. I have to let it hang over to the driver side, as else the display shield would touch the windshield. This is a function of size and seat position of the driver, so it may vary from individual to another. In my case it was so tight, that I have to fold the display screen down when putting the sunshades up. Later I need to readjust the display to the correct position, that often being a chore to adjust just a fraction of an angle degree to get the exact position that works.

3) Installing the HUD is tricky, as you have to sit in the seat as you would drive normally. I typically lean a bit to the door side. If you take that into account, you will have to have difficulties seeing the display when sitting centered or leaning to the middle console. I calibrated it to sitting centered and now sit centered while driving. Was a getting used to but works.

4) I mounted the OBDII dongle on a OBDII splitter to keep the OBDII splitter at the original position free for MX and be able to hide the HUD OBDII dongle, as it has a nasty blue blinking light. The OBDII is on continuous power which means it will drain the battery. I cut the power lead of the splitter (not the one to the original OBDII) and connected it to the IG2.

5) The HUD runs up, but sometimes requires the app to be opened in addition to the phone being opened. The app crashes, sometimes several times in short sequence. Most was 17 times in an 8h drive. Sometimes crashed so bad that the HUD shut down. I had to restart the vehicle that it runs up again. Meanwhile, with updates installed, it runs a bit smoother.

6) The values on the display are off, depending on what the source is. The speed taken from the OBDII was off initially by 3-4km/h. With adjustment through the app it is pretty much spot on in unaccelerated drive. During acceleration or deceleration it does lag 1-2km/h per second. It catches up inside 1-2seconds when one cruises unaccelerated. The weather is taken from phone. Which app exactly I have not figured out yet. But it is off, sometimes by 7-9C. No drama in summer, but when 3C can make a difference between frozen roads or not it can be interesting. I got used to take the temp from the vehicle display, not the HUD. The selection of the displayed values is limited. As I would like to see the tranny temp or the oil temp, these values are not available. Just the water temp is available. That may be a OBDII thing, but I am not sure. The batt voltage seldom exceeds 13.9V and varies a lot between 13.6 and 13.9. Not sure if that is a true value, but it dies give me a tendency.

7) The routing portion of the app is poor. The audio directions are cut off and too late. I meanwhile rather work with a map app on the vehicle display and take the HUD for speed only.

8) The app itself is intuitive and ok to work with. What I do not like is that it has to work always in the background, else you get a message to change settings. Enough that I give my driving patterns up, but I disagree that I allow my entire locations patterns to be transmitted to unknown recipients. No chance to change that.

9) It seems not possible to have another map app displayed on the HUD display.

10) The speed limits are off and logically do not incorporate temporary ones from e.g. work zones. As the speed limits of my other apps are off also, I have to actively look out of the window myself.

11) Customer service is ok, but it seems they withhold a lot of info and release only upon request. A good manual to better understand the system would be nice. The correspondence was somewhat timely and issues, except for the crashing of the app and HUD, resolved to an acceptable level.

Overall satisfaction is ok, the real bothering thing is the crashing, as it distracts me from driving and I have to work on my phone-which I do not do while driving. That makes me pull aside of leave the road to get things started again. Else, I got used to using the HUD and drive with heads up. It is a great safety enhancement and when I drive other vehicles, the difference gets really obvious.

Would I purchase it again? Well, it took a while of frustration due to the long delivery wait time and the prolonged initial setup phase, but now I would purchase it again and also recommend.

Improvements would be:

a) Shorter wait time for delivery

b) Shorter mounting unit to give more space between display and windshield

c) Better handbook with more system information

d) Dongle that operates only when ignition is on

e) Faster updates of speed

f) Wider view angle to allow different driver positions

g) Availability of more vehicle data (tranny temp, oil temp, …)

h) More stable app and HUD software

i) Possibility to run without having to open phone or app

j) Possibility to run the HUD with location setting only when in use