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Recently I had the pleasure of driving my first Porsche, and what a thrill it was! Despite the fact that it was the Macan, the smaller of Porches SUV’s, it did not disappoint. Driving it, I had to keep reminding myself I was in an SUV because it felt like I was driving a sports car. I can see why Porsche owners are loyal to the brand. Porsche has said that in designing it’s cars and SUV’s, it always wanted to retain the sports car feel and response and boy did they ever hit the nail on the head with the Macan. They also did a terrific job of delivering a great dashboard, and Infotainment system.
Driver’s Information System
So the 2021 Porsche Macan still uses a more traditional dashboard whereas the 2022 goes to a more digital screen. There is an analog speedometer on the left, and an analog Tachometer with a digital Speedometer within it, and finally a multi-information display area that is housed in a traditional round gauge that makes it look symmetrical to the rest of the dash. What is surprising here is the amount of information available. The only two buttons that control it are a scrolling and pushable wheel and a back button on the right side of the steering wheel. Simplicity at it’s best and extremely intuitive. To access the main screens requires a simple roll of the scrolling button, and to delve deeper into any particular menu requires just a simple push on the same scrolling wheel, and to go backwards simply push the back button.
In the display itself you can access Tire Pressures, Engine temp, Oil pressure, Boost, phone, navigation, media, safety systems etc…. I was quite surprised at how in depth it got, and it got there using only two buttons! My favorite I think was the Navigation display, it looked original seeing a Navigation map fill the round gauge.
Below and to the right on the steering wheel there was a rotating knob that set your drive modes. It reminded me of the Mercedes Benz AMG GT’s that have a similar button although different in function and in looks. I just think it added a little pizzaz to the steering wheel.
Perhaps the weirdest thing for me was having the ignition key, yes a key-not a push start, on the right side of the steering wheel. I think it gives it a distinctive look. Also kind of different from the other vehicles I’ve driven, the Lane Assist on/off button was located on the drivers door. Never seen that before. In general though, it had a cockpit type of look and feel which was very appropriate for the way it drove and handled!
Infotainment Screen
The infotainment screen measures 10.9” and has Wireless Apple CarPlay, AM/FM/HD Radio, 4G LTE Wifi Hotspot, along with Sirius XM and bluetooth. Interesting that there was no Android Auto, but hopefully that will arrive in the refreshed 2022 model. This particular car had the midrange Bose audio system cranking out 665 watts and had 14 speakers including a subwoofer. The system itself was extremely packed with features and was probably one of the most customizable screens I’ve seen. I really liked the “Widgets” that you could have appear on the far right of the screen, and the fact that like the home screen, you could customize their content and the size of the Widget box.
Now I’m a huge fan of Mercedes MBUX system, and I happen to think that it is the best system out there, but this system was far better than most that I’ve seen. Its response time was quite fast, the voice command was intuitive. You could for example say, “Take me too McDonalds” and it worked. You did not have to look up (like you need to in some cars) to see which exact commands to say, to get a result you wanted.
As far as customization of the home screen goes, this is a pretty amazing system. Not only could you select from various preset screens, but you could not only customize your own, but you could select from three possible sizes to use. On top of that, you could use an item more than once. A good and perhaps useful example of this is, you could tell it to put two Media boxes in, and one box you would set to favorites and the other to the play screen, so no having to swipe through the “box” to get to what you needed, now you have two boxes, each with the exact information you want. So quite easy to customize the home screen to show exactly what you wanted, in the size you wanted.
I liked how the shortcuts for the main apps like Navigation, Phone, Media, and Settings stayed visible on the left at all times. The Navigation system was quite easy to use the basic features such as plotting a route, and ending a route, yet there was a bank load of other features through which you could finely tune how your Navigation works and displays things. The Media, Phone, Car and Settings apps were equally easy to navigation. Basically the way Porsche has designed it, if you clicked on an App, say Media, and list of Icons would appear on the left side of the screen as various menus for that app. Once you clicked on any of these icons, another shorter list (typically three additional icons) would then appear just to the right of the first row of icons, giving you quick easy shortcuts to things like looking at favorites, or adjusting your sound settings. In most infotainment systems, your looking for some button on the Media screen somewhere to access those things, but Porsche puts them all right on the right, and keeps it simple.
Over all it was one of the best systems (other than MBUX) that I’ve seen. Although a very different system, I would say it was equal to the new Sync 4 from Ford in terms of ease of use, and the natural way you could say things to the voice command system, and get the results you wanted.
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