The benefit of the link app is its on your mobile. For me i like the find my car section its like having a tracker fitted, hopefully in the event should the car be stolen it should be easily located. It also has other things like hybrid coaching and informs you how your drive was, showing braking points acceleration points apparently im heavy footed i can assure you i aint. There are other things you can do. The portal from the lexus website allows you to send journeys you want to do to the head unit so when you get in the car go on maps and its there. I would think the download latest maps will be useful if one wants to give you opportunity to send it to a usb stick then plug into car and install. You can of course do this straight to the car but takes a while around an hour or thereabouts. The economy so other posts show is better in summer. Yes i too use Android Auto and it works very well to be honest this is why i aint bothered about the map updates. I also play some music via it as well. Its all controlled by the touchpad it is not a problem Barry and you can set the touchpad to how you want it to respond. A final word about the youtube posts i mentioned the Northfield Texas they do Tech tip Tuesdays but a good one to find is their full tutorial of the UX its about an hour long but worth the watching.
Brent.