Best car infotainment systems: head-to-head test for features, user experience and driver distraction

There’s no argument that using a mobile phone is dangerously distracting while driving, and rightly there are hefty penalties for anyone caught breaking the law.

Yet our lawmakers seem oblivious to the fact that cars are being crammed with increasingly complicated touchscreen systems that mirror many of your smartphone’s most distracting functions, then layer a whole range of the car’s own control systems on top. It’s why many drivers are asking the same question: if your smartphone is a dangerous distraction, isn’t a touchscreen the same, with bells on?

Tesla was in the vanguard when it came to ditching traditional switchgear, launching the Model S more than a decade ago with a large central control screen and not a button or knob in sight. Rival manufacturers have eagerly embraced similar tech, but that’s not because touchscreens are meaningfully easier to use than traditional controls. Nor is it because touchscreens look cool, although that’s often a big part of the showroom appeal.

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The lure of the touchscreen to car makers is much simpler – and stronger – because it all boils down to cost. By combining myriad manual controls into a single digital system perched on your dashboard, they reduce time and money spent on design, development, manufacture and assembly, which means significant savings across the board.

While there’s evidence of a degree of effort to put controls for commonly used features front and centre, the march of touchscreen technology continues, and as screens become more and more complex in terms of their functionality, the risk is that they become ever more distracting.

Complexity aside, we’ve noticed a worrying tendency for glitches in a variety of different manufacturer systems, too, as processors seemingly struggle to cope with control inputs. 

A screen that ‘hangs’ before loading, or one that won’t respond to the first jab of your finger, means that even a relatively simple control function may take eyes off the road for longer than it should. Such system flaws can also cause frustration, which may be dangerously distracting of itself.

UK drivers – and those in other right-hand-drive markets – are at a big disadvantage too, because 85-90 per cent of us are right-handed. It is much more difficult to operate a central touchscreen accurately using a non-dominant hand, especially for older drivers, who we think could land fingers on a physical switch or dial much more easily than finding just the right spot on a touchscreen.

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Then, of course, you have a plethora of operating systems to choose from, each with their own menus, page structures and routes to find the function you’re looking for.

With so many different touchscreen systems available, and so many possible points of distraction, we’ve decided to tackle the problem head on by comparing 10 set-ups from some of the industry’s leading car makers in our exclusive test.

How we tested them

Our test was conducted at the British Motor Museum at Gaydon in Warwickshire and we’re grateful for the loan  of its Drivezone facility. It’s a short course that effectively mimics a 20mph-limited urban road environment with plenty of junctions and even a mini roundabout.

For enthusiasts who are not turned on by touchscreens, the museum is also awash with beautiful classic cars featuring dashboards laden with varnished timber, painted metal, leather, chrome and Bakelite.

For our test, we chose a trio of drivers with varying degrees of experience of touchscreen systems, and instructed them to complete an identical route around the Drivezone in each of our 10 test cars, while performing five commonly used touchscreen tasks. An Auto Express judge sat beside each driver to record the times taken for each task, which we then averaged out to give us a single task time.

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Drivers were encouraged to drive in as repetitive a fashion as possible. Overall lap times while the five tasks were being carried out were compared with an averaged-out ‘undistracted’ lap time – set in advance at two minutes, 22 seconds – to give us an additional indication of the effect on concentration.

Finally, we also tried out the manufacturers’ apps to see how well they complemented the on-screen tech and how they performed.

The five touchscreen tasks

1. Turning off Lane-Keep Assist (LKA)

Euro NCAP safety rules mean this is switched on at the start of every journey, but many drivers hate the LKA interventions and switch it off while driving. It would be less distracting to switch LKA off at the beginning of any journey, of course.

2. Turn on nav and select ‘home’

While it’s safer and advisable to select sat-nav destinations before actually setting off, in the real world many drivers find themselves tapping in destinations when they’re already under way.

3. Raise cabin temperature by 2˚C

It used to be easy to twist a rotary knob or push a slider to adjust the temperature to a comfortable level. How easy would the touchscreens in our test make it, though?

4. Turn on the heated seats

How difficult should it be to enjoy that warming feeling? Not very, we’d argue, but some of the touchscreens tested make the process much more complicated and distracting than others.

5. Turn on the radio and tune to BBC Radio 4

You may not approve of our choice of station, but whether you’re into music or the news, it should be straightforward to find your favourites.

Our testers

Dean Gibson - senior test editor

Dean assesses multiple vehicles for Auto Express each week and has used almost every touchscreen system out there.

Shane Wilkinson - senior content editor

Shane’s a self-confessed car nut and regularly drives new models, but isn’t as au fait with the latest systems as Dean.

Victoria Coquet - UX web developer

Victoria has limited experience with touchscreens because she only comes into contact with them when she hires a car for leisure.

Calculations

In order to rank the distraction factor of each of the touchscreens on test, we took an average of our three drivers’ times for each of the tasks to produce a single representative ‘task time’ for that car.

We then averaged out all five task times per car, to produce a single representative ‘distraction time’ for each of the 10 models, which we ranked in order.  Read on to see how each car scored…

The results

We have ten cars but only one can be the best, so click the links below to see how each car performed in our exclusive test.

Best car infotainment systems: head-to-head test

• Best car infotainment systems test intro
• Ford SYNC 4 review
• Genesis ccIC review
• Mercedes MBUX review
• MG iSmart review
• MINI Operating System 9 review
• Peugeot i-Cockpit review
• Renault OpenR Link review
• Skoda Navigation review
• Tesla UI review
• Volvo Android Automotive review
• Best car infotainment systems test results

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