00:00 G'day, I'm Paul. Volvo is known for its safe cars and cool styling, but what are their
00:05 infotainment systems like? Well, today I'm going to take you through a detailed review
00:08 of the 9-inch portrait screen infotainment system used throughout the Volvo range.
00:13 So, let's get stuck into it.
00:14 Volvo has gone down the path of the portrait screen to afford them a little bit more space
00:19 when it comes to stacking applications, and then you can control it just as a touchscreen,
00:24 or beneath it you have the ability to go up and down with volume and then play and pause,
00:28 and then you also have a shortcut button at the bottom that takes you back to this home screen.
00:31 The home screen's stacked in a way where you have navigation at the top,
00:35 radio and then your phone pairing. You can then maximise each of these,
00:39 so if I click on the maximise button for navigation, it makes that take up most of
00:43 the screen. It's a fairly quick system, moves around easily. You can switch between 2D and
00:48 3D modes. There's a compass at the top there as well. Then you have additional functions,
00:52 such as the ability to set destinations using a number of different fields.
00:56 You can select points of interest, or what you can do is search for them by name using
01:02 the keyboard. Alternatively, you can write things in, like that, or you can go down the path of
01:09 putting a full address in in the traditional way. On the home screen, you also have the ability to
01:14 swipe down from the top to get access to the car's settings, the navigation settings or the
01:18 radio settings, depending on which context menu you're in, plus the owner's manual. I'll show
01:22 you what that looks like quickly. So it's an interactive manual. Once it loads, you're able to
01:26 jump through to different sections. So for example, if we want to have a look at the exterior,
01:32 we want to have a look at the headlights, this will tell you how to replace the bulbs.
01:36 So it's a good way to remove the need for a physical manual. Everything is built into the
01:41 screen. We'll jump over to radio. The car comes standard with AM/FM/DAB+ digital radio,
01:47 plus the ability to store data and then stream from your phone as well. In terms of phone
01:52 connectivity, you have Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are both
01:57 paired using a cable. There's no wireless linking system. I'll show you what that looks like.
02:02 The integration isn't that special. So the downside to the portrait screen means that
02:06 Apple CarPlay, which is natively a widescreen function, looks a little bit compact and
02:12 squeezed in there. And you can see it kind of looks a little bit awkward. There's no real easy
02:16 way around that while you do have a portrait screen. You can swipe to the left. This brings
02:20 up the rest of your settings for the radio and then allows you to go to the apps that are built
02:25 into the car. You can then add apps as well. These all need data functionality, so you need
02:29 to pair the car to a data device such as your phone for them to work. But it is handy having
02:34 stuff like Spotify if you don't have a phone capable of smartphone mirroring. Inside here,
02:38 you will find the ability to look at the car's status. So these are any error messages the car's
02:43 producing, whether the car's oil levels and things are right. They all appear when the car is on.
02:47 Same with tyre pressure monitoring. And then there's another feature here, which is your
02:51 driver performance. What kind of fuel economy you've been achieving. And then you can customise
02:57 what that graph looks like as well. There's another section here if you swipe all the way
03:00 across to the right. This is where you can set all your safety aids. So switching stability control
03:04 on and off and then features like your lane keeping assistant, how far the distance alert
03:09 will come on the stop start system. And then you're able to activate the camera. Drop the
03:13 headrests from here, which is pretty cool. There's also a reduced guard here. So if you are parking
03:18 the car somewhere with the windows down, the alarm will go off if it detects movement inside the car.
03:23 By hitting that button, the alarm won't do anything. So it means you can leave your pet
03:26 in the car if you have to, although I think you're meant to leave your pet in the car. But
03:30 whatever scenario it is where stuff's going to be moving inside the car when it's locked. And
03:34 then you can also change the cornering lights and a couple of other sort of bits and pieces
03:38 there as well. So it is a really good infotainment system. The only thing I don't like, and I've had
03:42 to start the car here to show you this, is that adjusting temperatures while you're driving is a
03:46 little tricky. So pretend you're driving here, you've got to move that up and down. And if you
03:50 want to try and sort of nail your temperature, you're taking your eyes off the road, there isn't
03:53 just a swivel, which I'm not really a big fan of because it means that you do need to get your
03:58 attention away from the task of driving to do something as simple as changing the temperature.
04:02 While the car's still on, I'll show you here the settings menu that allows us to adjust what's
04:06 displayed ahead of the driver. So if we jump into the My Car menu, you can change the themes on the
04:12 display ahead of the driver. So you can go Minimalistic, Performance, Chrome Rings. You can
04:17 also change the display theme over here. That automatically switches between day and night as
04:21 required. And then you can also change the contents of the display. So if we go into here,
04:26 you can change it to show the map in the centre, which is what we have now. You can change it to
04:30 show the current media or to show nothing at all, just so you get the speedometer there.
04:34 And then finally here in the settings menu, you can adjust the rest of the car's features. One
04:39 that I like though is if you come down to Communication, the ability to set the car up
04:43 as a Wi-Fi hotspot so your other passengers in the car can connect to the car's Wi-Fi system and
04:48 share one connection instead of all having to have data. Pretty useful if you've got kids that have
04:52 iPads and other connected devices. If you found this video useful, I'd love it if you could hit
04:55 the Like button and follow it up with the Subscribe and also press the bell icon so you can get
05:00 notified every single time we publish a new review. Also check out some of the other videos
05:04 that we've published. We have a stack of really cool content there and let us know in the comments
05:08 below whether you're driving a Volvo and whether you like this infotainment system.
05:11 But until next time, take it easy.
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