Ted
MB Enthusiast
- Joined
- Feb 26, 2004
- Messages
- 7,066
- Location
- Bourton on Dunsmore
- Car
- Lexus RC300h F-Sport, Yamaha XVS 1100, Toyota C-HR GR sport
I was looking forward to using Carplay in my SLC so I hope this review helps anyone considering it.
It’s easy to activate and from there on it can be started as soon as you plug in the phone to the usb port - or you can set it to be manually started.
The screen then shows any carplay enabled icons, the three most recently used apps and a virtual home button.
Siri works as per normal - not forgetting that it woks in ‘eyes free’ mode without carplay.
The default nav is Apple maps. It is good, but not as good as the others and the colour scheme is far from inspiring.
Google maps is great. Visually stunning in satellite mode, but a little eager to show traffic delays. That being said it’s a great app and does a great job.
Waze has the typical Waze interface. It’s visually quite good and has great crowd sourced info so you are rarely surprised - even down to advanced warning of potholes. It gave me good advance warning on an accident yesterday in a place I wouldn’t wxpect one. For actual navigation it’s probably my favourite of the three.
But the clear winner has to be the inbuilt Mercedes nav. Clear, accurate, visually good and extra info including lane guidance to the small central screen between the clocks.
The phone app is good and visually very good, but to be honest, I’ve used eyes free for a while and never had a problem with it.
Messages looks works well but I can already get them read out with Siri.
The killer app for me is Tidal streaming - free for a year with Mercedes Me and works really well in Carplay. I guess Spotify is just as good.
I’ve not tried TuneIn yet but I expect it to work well.
One real disappointment is that when you press the mercedes icon, it only does a partial exit - you get radio (and settings) but selecting any of the functions brings carplay back in, when I would prefer a full exit or be able to reselect it from the phone menu.
So my verdict is that it is good, but really not THAT good - certainly in it’s current form, but if you prefer Google or Waze over the inbuilt nav - or don’t have inbuilt nav it could prove useful.
Would I spec it on a new car? Only if I had enough dosh to cover all the other options I wanted, otherwise it would be low on my list.
It’s easy to activate and from there on it can be started as soon as you plug in the phone to the usb port - or you can set it to be manually started.
The screen then shows any carplay enabled icons, the three most recently used apps and a virtual home button.
Siri works as per normal - not forgetting that it woks in ‘eyes free’ mode without carplay.
The default nav is Apple maps. It is good, but not as good as the others and the colour scheme is far from inspiring.
Google maps is great. Visually stunning in satellite mode, but a little eager to show traffic delays. That being said it’s a great app and does a great job.
Waze has the typical Waze interface. It’s visually quite good and has great crowd sourced info so you are rarely surprised - even down to advanced warning of potholes. It gave me good advance warning on an accident yesterday in a place I wouldn’t wxpect one. For actual navigation it’s probably my favourite of the three.
But the clear winner has to be the inbuilt Mercedes nav. Clear, accurate, visually good and extra info including lane guidance to the small central screen between the clocks.
The phone app is good and visually very good, but to be honest, I’ve used eyes free for a while and never had a problem with it.
Messages looks works well but I can already get them read out with Siri.
The killer app for me is Tidal streaming - free for a year with Mercedes Me and works really well in Carplay. I guess Spotify is just as good.
I’ve not tried TuneIn yet but I expect it to work well.
One real disappointment is that when you press the mercedes icon, it only does a partial exit - you get radio (and settings) but selecting any of the functions brings carplay back in, when I would prefer a full exit or be able to reselect it from the phone menu.
So my verdict is that it is good, but really not THAT good - certainly in it’s current form, but if you prefer Google or Waze over the inbuilt nav - or don’t have inbuilt nav it could prove useful.
Would I spec it on a new car? Only if I had enough dosh to cover all the other options I wanted, otherwise it would be low on my list.
