Gadgetory

it's the biggest thing Acura makes with a big dose of buttons a big chin and big sales let's drive the 2011 Acura MDX and check the tech this 2nd generation of MDX has been around now since 2007 but one of the latest tweaks is Acuras so-called power plenum face people either love it or hate it this is also Acuras largest product and it out sells there are two other light trucks the RDX and the ZDX combined by almost 3x let's find out why one thing out of hand acura they're stubborn as hell about keeping the buttons in the dash they've been getting a bloody nose about this for years and they're still doing it this is the most button crazy center stack in auto de mad that to the wheel and a few other various and sundry buttons here and here and here and this is your favorite if ya like to drive a busy box here's where it gets a little nutty you got this forest of controls around two optical drives this one here apparently is your audio only six slot CD changer this one down here is my DVD place for DVD audio or video can't put every disc in every slot though you see we have the Els surround system that's the high end sound on this guy we'll get to that in a minute you got another band of buttons here that are the unfortunate result of having rear seat entertainment which I don't like in this car or most cars these days complicated thing of whether it's on or not whether it has control back there or not what the source is yikes in here oh yeah there it is I've got a little pigtail for a USB dealy that'll hook up to either a thumb drive or to a ipod you can use that either way the firmware is there now whenever you do fit into these slots win and if you figure out what goes where should sound really good this Els audio is very nice it's a 410 Watts something like 15 speakers around the cabin of them of course a nice hearty sub and you've got lots of decoders and synthetics around you've got Dolby PL - you've got DTS digital surround decoders and you have the grace note database that pulls up information about most discs you stick in here now the reason I don't like the back seat entertainment is because it's antiquated so I turn that guy on right here it's going to come down and I'm going to end up with that thing pretty much cutting off part of my rear view mirror plus people in the back seat have to share a single display and even when they do that they got to kind of can't their head to the middle of a car which isn't the most comfortable thing in the world so I'm not a fan of these in any way shape or form Oh interesting feature on the XM satellite radio which this vehicle comes with you've got a pause and store function it'll freeze and do a snapshot of the metadata of what you're listening to on XM at that moment and also store a ten-second snapshot it's like a little audio notebook of a piece of music you want to go back to and buy or download or something now some of your controls up here are not P electronics but are electromechanical the drive controls your shifter goes to a one choice only six-speed Automatic sport mode all the way back no slapstick there drive dead forward paddles are engaged up here downshift left up shift right and of course we've got a backup camera and a vehicle in this class and as you can see I've got my distance markers yellow lines there I've also got my curb feeler lines and if I push the center button here I get a top-down view if I want or the standard back view or a wide view alright mbx one engine on this guy 3.7 liter v6 it's the biggest of the v6 family for these guys 300 horsepower 270 foot-pounds of torque zero to 60 s reported around 7.1 seconds not bad for a vehicle that weighs 4550 but the mpg is kind of a hoggish 1621 that means you'll never see 20 expect like 18 day in and day out little dicey at 450 a gallon and the emissions are nothing to write home about either you will not drive this to your Sierra Club meaning it gets a five and a three on co2 in greenhouse with the advance package we have adaptive cruise control set the speed and the follow distance and the car takes over you also get the collision mitigating braking system which is designed to cramp on the binders and save you from rear-ending someone if you're not paying attention it does seem to work well though it's calibrated to jump in really at the absolute last minute unlike say a Volvo with similar technology the blind spot detectors are calibrated just about right I think neither / nor under warning of someone back there but the car leaves it to you not to veer in their path there is no Lane steering technology okay what's this guy like on the road well here's the key - I think the MDX is got some enduring popularity it doesn't feel as big as it is that's the number one impression you get from driving this guy the engine never feels like it's laboring to move this forty five hundred and fifty pound beast I mean there are plenty of large vehicles and SUVs out there that move well but you can tell the engine has to be really impressive to do that that's different than a vehicle that doesn't feel bloated and heavy to begin with even when it is this again 4,600 pounds is no slouch now super handling all-wheel drive is a little controversy on this vehicle among car buffs who think it's a little bit like pearls before swine because something this big with three rows and all this weight and height does it really need a performance-oriented all-wheel drive system like sh-awd is probably not is that great sales and marketing and moving folks vertically through the Acura product portfolio probably so but if you're out sport driving with 3 rows full of spouse and kids you need a second car not super handling all-wheel drive in your SUV while I was underwhelmed by the prospect of the MDX as a sports car I should point out that my colleagues thought the combination of super handling all-wheel drive and adaptive suspension made it a great one in its class to each his own ok let's press our MDX not a cheap ride 43 for base that includes a little bit of tech but not much it'll have the super handling all-wheel drive the Bluetooth hands-free power liftgate in the rear obviously the one choice 6-speed auto but to get all the tech I showed you there's really one simple way to go get the advanced package and swallow hard it's ninety six hundred and twenty-five bucks but it rolls in a ton of tech all the toys that we talked about and got excited about the thing I would not do is get the rear seat entertainment system that'll save you nineteen hundred more and all you get up is that kind of stale drop-down DVD system the one fifteen outlet in the console and heated second row seats so that's my formula to take this guy CNET style you