BRZ complaint

[meeskee2]

I could have sworn that the twins were ment to be a "drivers" car, radio design was not on the list. If the radio bothers the guy that much, get an aftermarket headunit.

[a2cpc]

Originally Posted by meeskee2

I could have sworn that the twins were ment to be a "drivers" car, radio design was not on the list. If the radio bothers the guy that much, get an aftermarket headunit.

It is a "drivers" car, but one seldom has the time or place to be a "driver" so why not have the wheel controls? In reality, this car will be a commuter car far more than a "drivers" car.

[thill]

Originally Posted by a2cpc

It is a "drivers" car, but one seldom has the time or place to be a "driver" so why not have the wheel controls? In reality, this car will be a commuter car far more than a "drivers" car.

Yes, I prefer to have the steering wheel controls. That said, I also would want just a few simple buttons at most and not a massively cluttered steering wheel full of buttons like so many cars have. That, to me, is a bigger turnoff than no buttons at all. Minimalist.

[shirker]

Originally Posted by antlers

The people complaining about this type of shit need to pay attention to the road not the radio. If you're that concerned about the song that's on the radio you certainly aren't paying as much attention to the road as you should be. Let alone drinking coffee and talking on the damn telephone. DRIVE THE FUCKING CAR.

I get your point is, but I challenge you to even try to argue that an incredibly poorly designed interface is NOT a safety hazard.

Just imagine, you're rolling along, plenty of space between you and the car in front, and guess who comes up on the radio? Motherfucking Justin Bieber. Which of course calls for an emergency radio station change. You hit the next preset button and, oh wait, you missed. You glance back at the radio, determined to save your ears, and BAM -- you just hit a deer.

[gily25]

Originally Posted by a2cpc

It is a "drivers" car, but one seldom has the time or place to be a "driver" so why not have the wheel controls? In reality, this car will be a commuter car far more than a "drivers" car.

To each their own I guess...I'm not interested in mashing my buttons or having the radio turn on during aggressive driving. If memory serves me correctly there are certain sport modes that you put a high-end car into (say the new 911) where the steering controls are deactivated to prevent accidental activation during competitive driving. Since that kind of feature would wreck the price point of the BRZ/FR-S/86 I'm not surprised to just see them missing.

Regardless, I'd expect to see future models offer it as an option and one I would go without. *2 cents*

[Marcoscrdo]

Perfect example of a stupid person.

[Timmy_Jones]

If his argument is that this car was marketed towards young people (who he says will always break the law by talking/texting) then we could extrapolate that argument to many other issues.

I believe Bud Light is marketed to the younger crowd, and younger people drive, so who isn't to say this car should be safer while drivers are drunk or drinking?? Maybe instead of a seat, a bouncy house so it hurts less to crash?

[kuhlka]

Originally Posted by Dave-ROR

Plus it's not like you can't replace the head unit if you want. Makes a lot more sense than trying to get a recall because someone is too stupid to figure out how to deal with the shitty UI.

That kind of defeats the purpose of including it then. How much did Subaru bump up their MSRP simply because they gave no standard radio option? They could have made the shitty nav unit an option and saved themselves a growing PR nightmare. Most manufacturers charge over $1,500 for an optional nav setup... The person in the OP's link is being a bit moronic, though. Maybe they should teach their kid some common sense, rather than flipping out over a crappy head unit. They're probably some wealthy yuppie who bought this for their 16-year-old.

Here's what I hate about the nav unit.

-Ridiculously slow iPod startup. It takes nearly a full minute for the head unit to recognize my iPod is plugged in and starts to play music. The AVIC-Z3 in my 05 STI (aftermarket, duh) almost immediately starts playing music from my iPod after I start the car. Why the massive delay? Does the HU have a 486 DX processor or some crap?

-Hands-free navigation searches do not allow me to change city so I am frequently limited to addresses in 'greater baltimore' rather than the actual city I want to go to. NO, stopping the car is not a valid solution for garbage hands-free commands which SHOULD allow me to quickly enter an address via voice and find what I want. Also, no POI search for places like Best Buy, Radio Shack, car wash, etc?! Who designed this GPS software? Why can't we customize which kinds of searches we want to do via hands-free?

-Touchscreen response is bullshit. I think this is another slow processor issue rather than the actual touchscreen being junk. Even after you successfully press the 'next' button to change tracks for iPod, bluetooth, or radio, it can take up to several seconds to change... That 8-year-old AVIC-Z3 in my STI does everything much faster than this new 'unknown brand' head unit.

-UI layout is awkward and not intuitive when operating. Buttons are in strange locations, often don't recognize my touch, and it just looks kind of cheap. The few physical buttons and volume dial work well, though.

-Sound quality is mediocre at best. I have to assume they went with cheap lightweight speakers to cut down on weight.

-When I'm listening to bluetooth audio from my phone and a text message pops through, the stupid text message window just stays up, covering up my GPS image. It should go away after 5-10 seconds, not linger and distract me until I press a button to clear it. This is REALLY annoying when I've got a bunch of texts popping through from my wife while driving on the freeway using the navi to guide me somewhere.

-The microSD card for the navi is cheap and slow. I have to think it only further exacerbates the lag of the head unit. I was going to clone it over to one of my Class 10 cards, but whatever format the data is in isn't recognized by windows. Awesome. I also don't like that you can't use the card slot for music or videos while navigating, but that's not a huge issue. I use my phone or iPod 100% of the time already.

What I like?

-Hands-free bluetooth calls are pretty clear and my family has been impressed with the call quality.
-Hands-free calling is easy and my iPhone 4S phonebook downloads to the head unit for easy searches.
-We have hands-free navigation. What we have is better than nothing, I guess.
-The bluetooth audio works with my phone and picks up from the last song.
-Entering addresses manually works great (when parked) and I have yet to not find an address.
-Volume button and other physical buttons work well.
-Customizing the startup screen is nice.
-Map data is on a card rather than disc(s).
-A few months of satellite radio for free is nice to have. Not sure I'll subscribe, though.
-AM/FM radio works well enough, but I'd like more presets.

Overall, the navi unit gets the job done, but for people like me who've done UI art, designed websites, and work in the software industry, it's a bit disappointing. I really have to wonder what the people who built this head unit were thinking.

[thill]

^^^ Totally agree that this POS unit should have been optional. I would have happily have taken a more traditional head unit with no nav built-in and then gone aftermarket. I suspect it would have shaved about $800-1000 off the price of the car.

Also isn't this unit the same one Subaru is using in their other vehicles?

[meeskee2]

Originally Posted by kuhlka

-AM/FM radio works well enough, but I'd like more presets.

Overall, the navi unit gets the job done, but for people like me who've done UI art, designed websites, and work in the software industry, it's a bit disappointing. I really have to wonder what the people who built this head unit were thinking.

Totally agree, it gets the job done, just not in the best way.

More presets? 18 isn't enough?

[nalc]

Originally Posted by gily25

If memory serves me correctly there are certain sport modes that you put a high-end car into (say the new 911) where the steering controls are deactivated to prevent accidental activation during competitive driving. Since that kind of feature would wreck the price point of the BRZ/FR-S/86 I'm not surprised to just see them missing.

Heh, I got a kick out of this. There's like one or two wires you need to disconnect to prevent SWC from going on. If the BRZ had them, you could wire it up with a $2 relay to disable SWC in Sport mode. Adding that feature would be a practically negligible cost.

I've been doing a lot of research into SWC, and they could have given them to us for like a hundred bucks. Our fancy head units support it, and if you look at adding it to cars that have it as an option, the steering wheel insert, switches, and wire harness assembly can be purchased for under a hundred dollars.

Maybe they didn't feel it was necessary, maybe they didn't want to compromise the design of the steering wheel, maybe some macho stuff about ruining the driving experience and/or appealing to enthusiasts, whatever, but I really don't think cost was a major point. The parts are cheap, the parts were already developed for the Impreza, and the HU already supports it.

Frankly, I would have much preferred a more ordinary head unit standard, with the nav as an option. Maybe the price decrease would have been enough for them to make SWC and a center armrest standard.

[Wilsonk227]

Originally Posted by thill

^^^ Totally agree that this POS unit should have been optional. I would have happily have taken a more traditional head unit with no nav built-in and then gone aftermarket. I suspect it would have shaved about $800-1000 off the price of the car.

Also isn't this unit the same one Subaru is using in their other vehicles?

highly doubt they would make it less by taking it out. Think about it, the FRS is about $25,500 give or take a few hundred and the BRZ is $28,500 at the limited model. If you ever think about it, the BRZ is the bang for your buck, whether or not you don't have it. HID, BI xenon, push button, dual climate, leather/alcantara seats, led drls, fog lights, oem spoiler and yes that nav all for 3k more when most manufacturer will have navi available for 3k itself. If there was no navi and it was an option, they wouldn't make the car any cheaper.

[BryanGT]

Originally Posted by Dave-ROR

Agreed that it's a shit UI and the touchscreen is inaccurate and slow.

However, I don't stare at it while driving and I have never felt it was unsafe to operate. I just use the next/previous for presets instead of the preset screen, put your finger over the button (takes what, .2 seconds to glance?) and leave it there until you find a channel with something good. :shrug:

Plus it's not like you can't replace the head unit if you want. Makes a lot more sense than trying to get a recall because someone is too stupid to figure out how to deal with the shitty UI.

I'd rather have a shitty UI and no steering wheel controls than a shitty UI and steering wheel controls I hate steering wheel controls. If it annoyed me that much I would simply replace the HU.

I've basically developed the same technique. My dad, on the other hand, would have to flip up his glasses and stare at the screen for minutes to figure it out.

I guess you have to look at it compared to their competition. Almost every car made in over the last 40 years have had hardware preset and tuning buttons; even most aftermarket double-din touchscreens have some affordance (hard buttons, or they locate the touch presets along the screen edge). The original iDrive ("I Drive While You Figure Out How to Tune the Radio") had hard buttons for the radio (on both the dash and wheel).

So what it boils down to is this: can it be operated safely if you're willing to train yourself? Yes. But if it requires more attention to operate than 99.9% of radios in the past 4 decades, then it is less safe to operate than all of those millions of cars. And it's just so cheap and easy to fix with a UI redesign or a some hard buttons that I really don't understand how they let it go out the door this way.

Oh well, I can make due, but it could be a legitimate concern in the hands of distractible drivers.

[Wilsonk227]

Originally Posted by nalc

Heh, I got a kick out of this. There's like one or two wires you need to disconnect to prevent SWC from going on. If the BRZ had them, you could wire it up with a $2 relay to disable SWC in Sport mode. Adding that feature would be a practically negligible cost.

I've been doing a lot of research into SWC, and they could have given them to us for like a hundred bucks. Our fancy head units support it, and if you look at adding it to cars that have it as an option, the steering wheel insert, switches, and wire harness assembly can be purchased for under a hundred dollars.

Maybe they didn't feel it was necessary, maybe they didn't want to compromise the design of the steering wheel, maybe some macho stuff about ruining the driving experience and/or appealing to enthusiasts, whatever, but I really don't think cost was a major point. The parts are cheap, the parts were already developed for the Impreza, and the HU already supports it.

Frankly, I would have much preferred a more ordinary head unit standard, with the nav as an option. Maybe the price decrease would have been enough for them to make SWC and a center armrest standard.

pretty sure it's coming up though, this was discussed in another thread before. It will have SWC in the future, no doubt about it