The navigation square shows a preview of a map, for example, and the media / radio square shows the album you’re streaming. Most of the menus were dedicated to settings, like where the HUD is displayed on the windshield, or car logistics, like how the engine is doing, but they’re easy to differentiate with visual cues. These are each arranged as squares on a main menu page that you toggle through. On the main screen, you can access six different submenus, including navigation, media / radio, and iDrive settings. It showed up clearly at night, too, but I sometimes found myself trained on it because the projection stood out against dark roads. The HUD worked best during the day, as it wasn’t distracting, yet was still bright enough to see. You can adjust both where it is on the windshield and what information it displays. It displays directions, caller ID, your speed, and the area’s speed limits. The 10.2-inch, 1440 x 540 display sits in the middle of the center console while the heads-up color 800 x 480 display projects onto the windshield for only the driver to see.
The model I drove costs $72,135, and for that price, I tested what should be considered standard luxury fare - a heated steering wheel, built-in massage chairs, and a gorgeous leather interior - as well as all that tech, including the gesture controls, four cameras for an assistive parking feature, a 10.2-inch display, a smaller heads-up display, an electronic instrument display, ultrasonic sensors that worked in tandem with the cameras to create what BMW calls its “driving assistant,” and the company’s iDrive software that powers everything. After four days of driving, it seems that BMW has misplaced its focus on design rather than functionality. It’s a car that’s supposed to represent the future of “state-of-the-art” car technology, but instead of feeling indispensable, most of its tech proved to be confusing, hidden in menus, or dysfunctional. For a car that’s pushing gesture controls as an irreplaceable innovation, I reverted back to knobs pretty quickly. I reflexively flinched and turned down the volume knob. The volume jumped from being slightly difficult to hear to blaring. The music stayed low, so I tried my finger twirl again, but this time, I made the circle bigger.
I stuck my index finger out, drew dramatic circles in the air beneath my rearview mirror, and waited for the volume on my BMW 530i to turn up. Cars have become expensive, rolling gadget s that are full of screens, speakers, and sensors - but are they actually good gadgets? In our new series, ScreenDrive, we'll review cars just like any other device, starting with the basics of what they’re like to use.
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