Comment by coleca | Hacker News Reader

Comment by coleca | Hacker News Reader

Not ready to give Mazda any praise for their infotainment systems. I leased a 2019 CX-5 Grand Touring Reserve a couple months ago. Had I known how bad Mazda’s UX was I would have leased something else.

First off their system takes an eternity to cold boot. If I’m making a quick run to the store or dropping the kids off at a friends house the system isn’t available for most of the ride. While it’s booting, the radio remembers what it last did but all the controls including volume are locked. So if I was listening to one of the comedy channels on Sirius I have no way to mute it or turn down the volume of the often inappropriate content for a few minutes if my kids get in the car.

Second the system remembers very little of the settings between drives. For example the heated/ vented seats or the auto-hold braking feature have to be set every drive.

I just drove a brand new Ford Fusion rental this week and their system while much clunkier did boot up almost immediately upon starting the car. Of course nothings perfect and while Ford did include hard buttons for most of the HVAC controls you still had to go though the touchscreen menus to find the setting to change the vent control to head and feet.

I would suggest taking it to the dealer, what you're describing sounds abnormal. Mine boots in about 10 seconds.

I do definitely find it annoying that it defaults to playing whatever audio source you last used when you start up your car. Whenever I have a passenger, I have a slight moment of panic as I try to remember what's about to play through the speakers, and whether it's appropriate for them to hear.

The infotainment system in my 2017 CX-5 often freezes on cold startup. There is no way to dismiss the "Warning" screen (which takes up the whole screen), even by pressing the "Dismiss" button. Just have to wait for it to go away on its own. I've had the backup camera freeze fully, which seems like a safety hazard. A few times, the whole system failed to initialize too, which forced me to pull over at the next gas station, and "power cycle" it by fully turning my car off and starting it back up again.

Mazda punches far above its price in terms of driving dynamics and interior quality, but I think their infotainment system is plain garbage and they should be absolutely ashamed of such poor quality.

>I do definitely find it annoying that it defaults to playing whatever audio source you last used when you start up your car.

As opposed to what? Hasn't that been the default behavior since cars have had radios in them?

I agree with a lot of your points, especially the one where the system picks up playing from where it left off and there is little you can do to stop it aside from mashing the volume or quickly choosing your audio source. However, sounds like you have a problem specific to your vehicle's computer, mine boots before I even leave the driveway.

I'm car shopping. I like most things about the CX-5 except the terrible infotainment system. Slow to boot up, the camera quality is just rage inducing. They went so far with soft touch materials inside but skimped on a better camera.

I'm probably going to buy a santa fe because hyundai did a great job with infotainment and there is physical buttons everywhere. Plus, the ergonomics are great.

Nothing competes with the gas efficiency of Skyactiv tho.

Agreed with your points but if your boot takes longer than fifteen seconds, take the car into your dealer.

My Vizio "smart" TV does this... turn it on during the day and mildly inappropriate content is still playing, volume locked for up to a minute.

It sounds like something is funky with your infotainment system. I have the same year, the trim below but with CarPlay support. It boots within 15 seconds generally, but volume is available instantly. I test drove a car without CarPlay and the boot time was comparable.

Yeah I bought a CX-5 recently and could write a case study on how to infuriate your users in every way possible. I like the car in general, but their infotainment would have been a dealbreaker if they didn't have Android Auto support. Even then it's pretty bad. Can't even get to your phone's voice assistant via their system, even though my $18 bluetooth handsfree in my old car could.

Turn off contacts syncing and it boots up much faster.

> auto-hold braking feature have to be set every drive

Every car I drove with auto-hold requires you to enable it after each startup of the car. Pretty sure it's a safety thing, as this makes most basic thing (depressing break) behave differently than it did for all automatic cars for the last 50 years.

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