idrive is far from perfect. Depending on which version you have, it can be slow to load music and phonebooks and take a while to boot up, but on the whole its an incredibly modern, elegant and thoroughly efficient means of interacting with your car's non-driving functions.

My lease is up in a month, and the new 5 is a year+ away and I now have the flexibility (got the wife a 4.8 X5) to go with a sports car. The Z4 and M3, IMHO, are the only sports cars BMW makes. Z4 is a no go for various reasons. I like the M3 particularly the convertible DSG, but the lease rates are not very attractive, at all. So I really am strongly considering a non-BMW for the 1st time in 8 years!

As I made a mental list of things I love about my car, idrive was on the very top. I love modern cars with a million features, but not a million buttons to go along with them (look no further than the Panamera interior). Also, the screen presents a graphic/visual link to your car that creates a certain dimension that doesn't exist with non-media screen cars.

So, I just thought it worth noting that the bane of all BMW reviews and test drives for the last 7 years in reality is the glue that binds this BMW lover to his beloved machine and I suspect that is true for a great number of people who have actually lived with idrive on a daily basis and not evaluated it on a sliver of time during a magazine test drive.

Long live idrive........
DRP

+1 Agreed, I love the iDrive. It is the best system out there for customizing many of the non-driving features. I am an IT professional so it took me all of maybe 30 mins to get used to it and customize everything I wanted. Great system and I hear the newer ones are much better. Stick to BMW.

Yea man stick to BMW why take a chance and regret it when you know a BMW will satisfy you in the end

Most people who DON'T have an IDrive, claim it is useless or unwieldy! :geek: For those of us who use them daily, it is hard to live without! :cool:

+1 i agree. i wish the screen was a little more "feature-y" then the bare bones MS DOS looking crap. my car is a MY08, and the screen is far behind the times. i suspect the new MY10 idrives are much nicer

I love idrive, however, I shudder at the thought of $2k for replacement.