Are you happy/satisfied with iDrive? Is it worth it?

 

In my opinion, iDrive is great and it's clearly the future of how people will interface with cars as they become more advanced.

Sure, sometimes the response time can be sluggish and once in a while it locks up but it's way, way, way, better than any car magazine would have you believe...

(BTW, I've spent a bunch of "stick time" with a new M-B S550 and their copy/clone of iDrive is much more responsive but has similar quirks, etc. I suppose you just get used to whatever you have and just move on...)

 

v.1.0 is great. v.2.0 will be even better

 

what is v.1.0 or v.2.o what does that mean?

 

Sorry... translation...

It's great but it can use some improvement. It's a great interface that unlike touch screens it offers tactile feedback.

 

I like it, I love gadgets, fiddling around with stuff and techy stuff so naturally the iDrive is good for me.

 

I like the I-Drive much more than the Lexus LS touchscreen that I had. It can and should be improved (more buttons, faster response, etc.) but it is not the terrible system that the auto magazines would have you believe it is. The current version is an improvement over the originally introduced one in the 7-series and it will continue to get better.

 

Is it perfect? No, but for the life of me, I cannot understand why it seems that EVERY review of a BMW completely pans the Idrive.....I echo Rudy's comments.....I think it's a bit sluggish/slow sometimes, but works great, and takes all of an hour to get to know in the beginning.....I also think it gives you great flexiblity with respect to input. You have voice command options, steering wheel buttons, and the Idrive controller.....Now if they could just get the sofware to work without turning off the eyebrow lights!!

 

I tend to agree with the magazines. It is slow, cumbersome and unintuitive. It has been done for cost and aesthetics and not ergonomics. It needs simpler menus, more buttons and faster reaction times to be considered an adequate replacement to a button based system. I prefer the equivalent system in the Audi A6 because it gets you where you want to be with fewer inputs. It does, however, leave you with some redundant buttons, which is always annoying.

 

I have to disagree on the ergonomics. Have you calculated how many buttons, knobs etc. does it replace? Whether all the settings are really necessary is debatable, but it's nice to have them.

As far as I understand the Audi system, there's 4 extra buttons that are unnecessary, as they give you access to the top level menus. In iDrive you just hold the controller. In fact, the Audi system requires more, not less, attention, as you need to move your hand from the knob to the buttons.

The speed, now, that is an issue. How many times have I input the command twice just because... or had to check to find whether the buffer did hold the input...