00:00 G'day, I'm Paul. So, are you in the market for a medium-sized SUV?
00:04 And do you like your technology? Well, if you've answered yes to both of those,
00:07 I have assembled the best-selling medium SUVs in Australia,
00:11 and I've put them through the technology ringer.
00:13 The tests that I've assembled are a startup test to see how quick they are,
00:17 a smartphone integration test, a test to see how good the reverse view cameras are on these cars,
00:22 and also a test to see how well Bluetooth audio quality is for phone calls.
00:26 Now, if you haven't done so already, subscribe to our channel and press the bell icon.
00:30 That'll tell you every single time we do one of these big old mega tests.
00:33 Let's kick off with the infotainment test. I'll run you through the methodology first.
00:43 What we did was locked all the cars and let them go into a sleep mode,
00:47 then unlocked them, hopped in, and we had to enter the navigation destination being
00:52 Melbourne Airport, and then as soon as it was ready to navigate, that is when the timer stopped.
00:57 You may have noticed that the Haval is missing from this group. That's because it doesn't have
01:02 in-built satellite navigation. It relies on smartphone mirroring to do all of its navigating,
01:06 so we didn't include it as part of this test. So the Tucson was the first cab off the rank,
01:10 which is a little bit surprising given it shares hardware with the Sportage,
01:14 which then came in a few seconds later. So we thought they'd be a whole lot more
01:18 similar than they actually were. Then it was the Jeep Compass. So the Jeep Compass uses a system
01:23 called Uconnect. It's actually not a bad infotainment system and pretty easy to use as
01:27 well and quite fast too, which is pretty good to see. Then it was the CR-V, also surprising given
01:33 how limited that infotainment system is in terms of what it does. I would have thought it'd be a
01:37 little quicker. Then X-Trail and CX-5. The X-Trail uses one of the oldest infotainment systems in
01:42 this batch, whereas the CX-5 leans on a newer widescreen display. Then it was almost a dead
01:47 heap between Outlander and Forester. Again, surprising given Outlander is pretty new to
01:52 this segment. I would have thought that would be a little quicker. Same story with Forester as well.
01:56 It would have been nice to see that have a bit more pace to it. Then RAV4. It is a dated
02:01 infotainment system and you can see here it's not all that fast. Things were then rounded out with
02:06 Tiguan and Escape being the slowest. I was pretty surprised by Tiguan actually, given it is such a
02:12 fresh infotainment system and packs so many features. I would have thought that would be
02:16 a little bit quicker. Escape, look, it does use an older version of the Sync infotainment system and
02:21 it really shows here because it takes a while to start up. Then putting a navigation destination in
02:26 on cold start is painfully slow as well. You could see the Koreans are the winners here in terms of
02:32 the speed of the infotainment systems. The rest of them were kind of about the same. I really wasn't
02:38 all that surprised to see RAV4 right down the bottom, given how dated that system is compared
02:42 to their newer infotainment system. It's interesting to note as well that everything aside from the
02:47 Escape took under a minute to be ready. This test is logical when you think about it because when
02:51 you hop into the car, you need to get going. You don't want to sit around waiting for it to start
02:56 up. You don't really go to the car, unlock it, let it do its thing, go back inside, pack your things,
03:00 and come back to the car. You really just want to get up and go. Most of them were under a minute
03:04 with Escaping, the only one that took longer than a minute to be ready to go. Now it's on to our
03:08 Bluetooth audio quality test. What we did here was we wanted to find out which car had the best
03:14 Bluetooth audio quality because it's an important thing, especially if you're using this car for
03:18 work. If you're traveling and a lot of people will make phone calls on the way home from work or
03:23 while they're traveling to another destination, so you do want to have decent Bluetooth audio
03:27 quality. And the way we did this test was I called cameraman Eagle's phone and left him a voicemail,
03:32 and then we downloaded those voicemails later on to then assess the audio quality. I've also had
03:37 the chance here to test my language skills. So I've used a variety of different languages there,
03:42 so I hope you enjoy that as well. So let's give this a shot.
03:45 [Video]
04:14 So as you can tell there, most of them actually sounded not too bad with variations of quality.
04:19 Probably Forester and Outlander were at the bottom of the pile there in terms of audio quality.
04:23 And while the Havel actually sounded okay, we did notice once the car was driving that the audio
04:28 quality became much worse. And maybe that's due to tire noise or just other noises within the car
04:33 interfering with that Bluetooth quality. So a little bit disappointing to see that working
04:37 well when the car was stationary, but not really working all that well when the car was moving.
04:41 Finally, in our SUV tech comparison, we really wanted to get down to the infotainment systems,
04:47 how good they were to use when they were just operating, how good they were to use on smartphone
04:52 mirroring, and to me, most importantly, how good the reverse view camera quality was. And we used
04:58 our suitcase with some text on there to give you a better idea of exactly how good each of these
05:03 cameras were and whether you should be buying this SUV if you do value this technology and
05:08 reverse view camera stuff. So this is how the test went down. So both the Tucson and the Sportage
05:14 demonstrated excellent smartphone mirroring tech and high quality 360 degree reverse view cameras,
05:19 but it was a little bit disappointing that both required a cable for smartphone mirroring.
05:24 They're not like some of the systems here that are wireless, and I think they really need to get
05:27 with the times to make this stuff wireless because the rest of the infotainment system
05:31 is actually pretty good. The CX-5 also required a cable for smartphone mirroring, but it was the
05:36 most frustrating to use because the infotainment controller wouldn't let you easily switch between
05:41 the side menu and the rest of the on-screen controls, so it did make it a little bit
05:45 fiddly to use on the move. On the upside though, the quality of the 360 degree camera was actually
05:50 pretty good. The CR-V's infotainment screen is tiny, and that meant that the smartphone mirroring
05:56 display was also small. Both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto were both wired, and the reverse
06:02 view camera quality was pretty poor as well, making the CR-V probably the worst one out of
06:07 this bunch unfortunately. Toyota smartphone mirroring integration for Apple CarPlay and
06:11 Android Auto is wired, but it was smooth when it was operating. The reverse view camera quality was
06:17 almost as bad as the CR-V, so even though it did offer a 360 degree camera functionality,
06:22 it was surprising how bad it was when you compared it to the rest of the vehicles in this segment,
06:28 especially given how popular the RAV4 is in and amongst consumers. It really should have a much
06:34 better infotainment system in terms of speed and also quality. So while the Outlander was a little
06:38 slow in our last test, it actually redeemed itself with wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.
06:44 Both of those worked really well. The 360 degree camera was also good from a reverse view angle,
06:50 but not so great from a top-down view. It kind of had distorted angles on the side there,
06:54 making it a little bit pointless, but the key point there was that the reverse view camera
06:58 was actually quite high quality. The Forester features Apple CarPlay and Android Auto as well,
07:03 both wired, but the big screen makes it easy to use. It's quite quick as well when it's moving
07:07 through those menus, and while it doesn't have a traditional 360 degree camera setup,
07:13 the reverse view camera was actually quite good, and then you get additional views above the
07:17 infotainment cluster as well. So it really does kind of cover all bases and presents information
07:22 differently to the rest of the cars in this segment. Now the Havel H6, this really surprised
07:27 us with excellent wired Apple CarPlay and Android Auto functionality. The screen is huge, so when
07:33 you flick through everything, it's nice and fast and sharp and very crisp. And then what surprised
07:38 us even further was the camera quality. The 360 camera was extremely high quality, and the camera
07:44 itself and the reversing system had a number of cool features, including a reverse assistant that
07:49 is similar to what we've seen previously on BMW products. It's able to map out your reverse path,
07:54 and then all you do is just let go of the brakes. So pretty impressive setup there from Havel.
07:58 Now while the Jeep Compass didn't do great in our off-road test, it blew us away with the excellent
08:02 360 degree camera quality, wireless Apple CarPlay, wireless Android Auto, and just its functionality
08:08 in general. That Uconnect system is great to use, and I love that they are very tech forward
08:13 in their way of thinking and the way that they've presented that infotainment system.
08:17 The Nissan X-Trail. Look, it is one of the oldest cars in the segment here. It did keep things
08:20 pretty simple with a wired Apple CarPlay and Android Auto setup, and it was right up there
08:25 with the CR-V and RAV4 in terms of the poor reverse camera quality. It was really not very
08:30 great at all, and the next generation of X-Trail will hopefully be significantly better when it
08:35 comes to reverse camera quality. Volkswagen impressed with wireless Apple CarPlay and
08:39 Android Auto and a fantastic 360 degree camera. This infotainment system is good to use, but I
08:44 wish it did have some knobs for some of the more critical controls, just making life much easier
08:49 when it comes to things like volume and also adjusting things on the fly. Now, despite being
08:54 dead last in our infotainment speed test, the Ford Escape did offer a quick and easy to use wired
08:59 Apple CarPlay and Android Auto system and a reverse camera with reasonable quality. So,
09:05 you can see here from all of these cars that they really do vary in terms of the quality of that
09:09 reverse view camera and how good the integration is with smartphone mirroring. So, I think it really
09:14 is worth considering this stuff before you buy any car in the medium SUV segment, especially if
09:19 you do value technology, things like making phone calls and getting the most use that you can out of
09:24 your smartphone as well. And to me, reverse view camera quality is just so important. So, it is
09:30 worth making sure that the next car that you pick in this segment has a really good quality reverse
09:34 view camera. So, are you surprised by those results? I wasn't expecting to see such a big
09:44 variance between the reverse cameras and even things like smartphone integration. Some do it
09:48 really well and some do it really poorly. So, yeah, interesting results. Now, let me know what
09:53 you thought about this test. We're keen to build more of these tests and explore more of this type
09:57 of mega testing type setup, but I will be driven by your feedback. So, let me know in the comments
10:02 section which other cars and which other features you want us to test and I'll see what I can do
10:06 about putting it all together. If you did enjoy this video, please make sure you share it with
10:09 your mates. And if you haven't done so already, subscribe to our channel and press the bell icon.
10:14 But until next time, take it easy.
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