7 ms·

Yeah, it's pretty sad. I was ready to buy a brand-new Subaru a couple years ago, but they mandated the shitty touch screen in the dash on all new models. Ended

by coldpie 10y ago

Yeah, it's pretty sad. I was ready to buy a brand-new Subaru a couple years ago, but they mandated the shitty touch screen in the dash on all new models. Ended up with a used Mazda3. I was very interested in the new ND Miata, but they mandate the dumb LCD screen in the middle of the dash. Nope, not doing that. Seems early 2010s are the last of the good, pre-technology cars. Hopefully the self driving ones come soon before those models are worn out.

joezydeco 10y ago
The GPS navigation feature on the new Mazda Connect systems is a $400 SD card that plugs into the dash. That's it. For $400 I'll stick with my phone. If only Mazda got CarPlay working on their dashboards as they've been promising for two years now.
- coldpie 10y ago
  Or you know, just use the physical HVAC and radio controls that have worked just fine for forty years.
  - joezydeco 10y ago
    In its defense, the Mazda Connect system is pretty nice. It's solely focused on entertainment, navigation, and some secondary car management functions (maintenance intervals, explanation of trouble lights, long-term MPG charts). Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but the touchscreen/command knob is the way things are now. You can't do terrestrial radio, satellite radio, bluetooth, USB music playback, etc with a single knob and 20-character display. All of these features have worked their way into being standard now. Nobody ships an AM/FM radio. And now that backup cameras are mandatory in the USA as of the 2018 model year, you're going to need that LCD display anyway. So it's easier to throw all the HMI/IVI on that board and be done with it. The Mazda Connect is run off an NXP iMX6 SoC, which is very powerful yet affordable enough to put in Mazda's base models for no upgrade charge. It's also highly hackable. =) Oh, and HVAC is still done with physical knobs in a convenient location.
    - aeharding 10y ago
      Mazda Connect has worked very well for me. So weird that it came with a CD player, though. I thought those would have been gone by 2016...
      - zeveb 10y ago
        A CD player's still convenient on a long road trip when one wants to listen to one's own music, not the radio or the satellite. A phone can only hold so much!
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
        sliken 10y ago
        With 64GB MicroSD cards running for $20 or so are you really phone limited? How many CDs do you have? My note4 has 32GB (internal) and a 64GB microsd.
        joezydeco 10y ago
        The Mazda Connect has two USB ports in the dashboard. You can charge a phone with one and plug a multi-terabyte portable drive full of MP3s into the other.
        zeveb 10y ago
        > You can charge a phone with one and plug a multi-terabyte portable drive full of MP3s into the other. Will it recognise an ext4-formatted drive, or does it require FAT, NTFS or something else? Perhaps there are two people in the car charging their phones? I really, really don't understand the hatred for CDs. Why, someone downvoted my original comment because I noted that they can be useful for a long road trip! Honestly, I'd expect that to be non-controversial: CDs require no data connexion; they are a physical audio format, which means that they can be converted to MP3, FLAC or whatever else one likes; they are owned by you, unlike a streaming music service's tracks. I think that they still have their use cases.
- izacus 10y ago
  As an owner of the new Mazda3, I actually use the builtin nav more than I do the phone one. It's always there, it's always loaded, always initialized, has better organized UI (canceling routes, adding waypoints, etc. needs way less taps than Sygic/Apple Maps/GMaps do) and shows the upcoming navigation events on the projected HUD. Unfortunately it also runs less smoothly and it's uglier and RDS traffic info is less reliable than phone one. At least for me the simpler UI and phone battery saving rally outweigh the downsides though. (I got my nav included with the car, but compared to VAG group which charges 1000EUR+ for nav unit, 400EUR didn't seem to be all that much IMO.)

by coldpie 10y ago

joezydeco 10y ago

The GPS navigation feature on the new Mazda Connect systems is a $400 SD card that plugs into the dash. That's it. For $400 I'll stick with my phone. If only Mazda got CarPlay working on their dashboards as they've been promising for two years now.

coldpie 10y ago
Or you know, just use the physical HVAC and radio controls that have worked just fine for forty years.
- joezydeco 10y ago
  In its defense, the Mazda Connect system is pretty nice. It's solely focused on entertainment, navigation, and some secondary car management functions (maintenance intervals, explanation of trouble lights, long-term MPG charts). Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but the touchscreen/command knob is the way things are now. You can't do terrestrial radio, satellite radio, bluetooth, USB music playback, etc with a single knob and 20-character display. All of these features have worked their way into being standard now. Nobody ships an AM/FM radio. And now that backup cameras are mandatory in the USA as of the 2018 model year, you're going to need that LCD display anyway. So it's easier to throw all the HMI/IVI on that board and be done with it. The Mazda Connect is run off an NXP iMX6 SoC, which is very powerful yet affordable enough to put in Mazda's base models for no upgrade charge. It's also highly hackable. =) Oh, and HVAC is still done with physical knobs in a convenient location.
  - aeharding 10y ago
    Mazda Connect has worked very well for me. So weird that it came with a CD player, though. I thought those would have been gone by 2016...
    - zeveb 10y ago
      A CD player's still convenient on a long road trip when one wants to listen to one's own music, not the radio or the satellite. A phone can only hold so much!
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - sliken 10y ago
        With 64GB MicroSD cards running for $20 or so are you really phone limited? How many CDs do you have? My note4 has 32GB (internal) and a 64GB microsd.
        joezydeco 10y ago
        The Mazda Connect has two USB ports in the dashboard. You can charge a phone with one and plug a multi-terabyte portable drive full of MP3s into the other.
        zeveb 10y ago
        > You can charge a phone with one and plug a multi-terabyte portable drive full of MP3s into the other. Will it recognise an ext4-formatted drive, or does it require FAT, NTFS or something else? Perhaps there are two people in the car charging their phones? I really, really don't understand the hatred for CDs. Why, someone downvoted my original comment because I noted that they can be useful for a long road trip! Honestly, I'd expect that to be non-controversial: CDs require no data connexion; they are a physical audio format, which means that they can be converted to MP3, FLAC or whatever else one likes; they are owned by you, unlike a streaming music service's tracks. I think that they still have their use cases.
izacus 10y ago
As an owner of the new Mazda3, I actually use the builtin nav more than I do the phone one. It's always there, it's always loaded, always initialized, has better organized UI (canceling routes, adding waypoints, etc. needs way less taps than Sygic/Apple Maps/GMaps do) and shows the upcoming navigation events on the projected HUD. Unfortunately it also runs less smoothly and it's uglier and RDS traffic info is less reliable than phone one. At least for me the simpler UI and phone battery saving rally outweigh the downsides though. (I got my nav included with the car, but compared to VAG group which charges 1000EUR+ for nav unit, 400EUR didn't seem to be all that much IMO.)