Gadgetory

in this economy when I suggest a high-tech car you probably Blanche at the thought of buying something which cost as much as a foreclosed house but you can actually roll seen that style for a monthly nut low enough to swing even after you're laid off I'm Brian Cooley with the top five high tech cars that cost under 20 grand reviewed and ranked by CNET so far in 2011 let's hit the road number five is the Hyundai Accent S II now we love us some Hyundai and Kia these days so why the bottom of the list well because you can't even option a navigation head unit on any accent at any price and it doesn't have a very elaborate voice command system like a Ford SYNC so this is all kind of a throwback to a few years ago when car companies positioned their small cars as utilitarian transport that offered less now the accents a nice car but they kind of missed the boat on this idea of really loading it up closer to the mid-range cars at least optionally number four is the loveable Fiat 500c the most stylish car on our list though unnerving ly close to Fred Flintstone's car in some aspects navigation consists of a clip-on TomTom unit and the cars powertrain is shall we say modest but it does offer a cousin of Ford SYNC called blue and me and a very cool power rag top that opens up to la dolce vita all for under 20 grand number three is the chevy cruze eco it scored high in CNET's review because of its wonder of an engine a 1.4 liter turbo four-cylinder that cranks out 28 42 mpg while being sufficiently powerful and refined on the road as is the whole car you can't get factory nav on a cruise either but it does have OnStar which can bring in a form of nav and it also supports the new OnStar mobile app which lets you control various aspects of the car remotely from your smartphone while it's sitting still of course number two is the newcomer in the bunch the little Scion iQ very small but not stupidly small like a smart car instead Scion has a smart strategy of offering an array of high-tech head units at good prices and the IQ has Pandora integrated right out of the box it's little motors a 1.3 liter engine it's best in cities confidence killing on the highway and sounds like it's grinding coffee in both situations but overall it's an affordable car with interesting tech options and a style that stands out just don't trip on it before I take you to our number one cheap tech car check out this survey according to Arbitron and Edison research the tech that we use most in our cars is still am/fm radio CD player and cell phone but when you ask folks what they love to use in their car it's satellite radio iPod and GPS and the mainstreaming of all those technologies and more into inexpensive cars like I'm talking about today is a very happy trend okay the number one tech car to look at when you're on a budget is pretty easy it's the Ford Fiesta two things stand out for us first for its excellent sink system which I almost think is better on a simple display like in this car then on the elaborate LCD it does a great job of recognizing contact names and music titles when you bark them out by voice and Fiesta offers a dual clutch manual gearbox nobody else does that at this price not even close on the other hand the navigation is kind of an OnStar like system which we found was sort of hit and miss and even then it only works when you have a cell connection but still if it's our 20 grand we're probably gonna buy a Fiesta by the way everyone always asks implements like this what do I Drive sorry to disappoint you but my 88 country squire doesn't even have airbags and I want you to be safe for more top fives like this go to top-5 cnet.com i'm brian coulis thanks for watching you