Here
are some pictures of XM background which I found cool (maybe the '12
Intellilink had this, but I don't know). As well as the wireless
bluetooth pulling album art and the new separately-colored ignition
button.
Some other things I've noticed both good/neutral/bad:
- Tone
is no longer a dash button, but is a shortcut on the Home panel. At
first I thought, "Oh, nice, they finally centralized it". But no,
Bluetooth/FM/XM all still have separate Tone profiles, so placing that
shortcut on Home is actually kind of unintuitive.
- My bluetooth
driver must suck on my rooted/customized Android phone, because
sometimes it either 1) stops playing, 2) disconnects, 3) gets my phone
stuck in a state where the screen won't go off, or 4) forgets it's
playing music and doesn't power the subs for bass.
- I am
going to transfer my music over to my Lumia 920 Windows phone and try
again tomorrow (I may also try the USB approach, I noticed when I plug
my phone in by USB it tries to scan for music under the guise of
"Windows Vista" capable phone, so maybe this would work too).
- Worst
case scenario, I go back to AUX, no big deal, except I liked the album
art and being able to seek tracks with the steering wheel.
- The navigation is superb, maybe it is just updated for my area, but for
most of where I went today it not only showed me arrows, but showed me
actual lane depictions when approaching intersections (like highway exit
depictions, only more detailed). I would love to get a picture of this
for you, but kind of dangerous to do while driving so this will have to
wait until I have a passenger. A lot of this helped me prepare better
for turns because I could better anticipate where to be lane-wise.
Don't kill me, but I never used the nav voice on my '12, in fact, it was
the first thing I turned off. I used it today on the '13 and I was
surprised that it told me what lane to "bear" in to in preparation for
the next turn, super handy (can't comment on whether the '12 did that or
not, of course).
- One downside to the nav I noticed...in the '12
I could turn off the Voice Prompts in Config and with nav running my
music would play just fine. In the '13, with Voice Prompts off, it
still quiets the music/makes it click when a voice prompt would have
occurred. This isn't a *huge* deal because my Infiniti's both did this
as well, but I was really excited when my '12 *didn't* and was sad to
see this disappear. OTOH, this could be another oddity with my
bluetooth issues, so I will report back after trying AUX, USB, and/or
bluetooth with my other phone in the next day or two.
- I was
expecting a significant drop in MPG's with this Turbo model. My '12
averaged 24-26. I drove a bit over 80 city/highway miles today
(sometimes a little more aggressively because I was enjoying the turbo),
and I am seeing an average of 25.2mpg right now. This makes me pretty
happy (if you'll remember, I was getting 18.7 - 19.2 on my Infiniti, so I
see 25.2 as a welcome improvement).
- I think the engine is
quieter when sitting idle. It could be because it is the 2.0L turbo,
though, and this isn't really a big deal because inside the car you
don't hear it. I only ever noticed when remote starting.
- Blind
spot monitor actually saved me during a lane change today, I just did
not see a motorcyclist, even after checking my blind-spot manually. But
the light was on, and even though my instinct was to trust my own eyes
versus technology, I said screw it and stayed in my lane. 1-2 seconds
later, the motorcycle zoomed into view. That could have been bad. If I
never use the blind spot monitor ever again, ever, that one incident
still made it totally worth it.
- There were a couple of
complaints about the bass being too high in the '12, even when turned
down, and even with the volume down. I'd say it is much more even in
the '13, and listening to the same songs as before I actually felt like
something was missing. In turn, I cranked up the bass under Tone, to
each their own, but I thought some would be happy to know that has been
smoothed out. Now let's hope that rear speaker cover doesn't come lose
and vibrate on this model too :P
I need to remember to check if that "running over an aluminum can" sound still happens at ~13mph. *mental note*
No comments:
Post a Comment