Gadgetory

well-well-well the once homely Nissan Sentra seems to have picked up some lines it also lost a lot of weight shed a little power and picked up some Google tech that's a pretty good set of headlines for 2013 let's drive this 13 Sentra SL and check the tech now if you're wondering why the central looks more upscale but can't put your finger on it it's basically one word Infiniti DNA Nissan's been bringing a lot of these styling cues it's a basic look of infinities inside a mount down into the Nissan line from the Infiniti brand and this car has shown a dramatic change because of that now inside the Infiniti touches continued not a ton of them in this price class but the gauges are more infinity like everything's much more grown-up in here than you typically saw in a Nissan and check this out they must be watching my videos they finally did something to improve the maps by the way the navigation rig as you can see is SD card based lots of car makers are doing that now I think Ford was the first but now everyone's getting on board now to have navigation that means we have this six inch nissanconnect head unit this is optional you won't have this for sure you'll have a 4.3 smaller LCD if you really go bass on one of these cars this is let's start off with that navigation system and one of the things I like about the way this thing operates is it's very quick partly because that SD card partly because they've obviously got enough processing power behind it now where this units really cool and really dopey is here when you go to these Google functions we have Google send to car and more interestingly Google POS points of interest let's do a search let's just say I'm gonna go something generic like a pizza joint and I start my search what's gonna happen is a phone call is gonna initiate on my connected paired device this thing does not use the data connection per se as much as it does what's basically a modem connection over the voice network as a result it's slower than hell I've sat here and watch this thing take literally minutes to go out do the search pull some results and then ask the rest of them and worse than that once you get to a result you're interested in it doesn't have that nice rich contextual stuff that Google's known for where are the ratings where's street view I can see a map but where's all that stuff a couple of their gripes on this you cannot enter anything in that Pio I google window while the car is moving that means the passenger can't either that's a fail and voice command does not tie into the Google services everything else but not that so it's basically a pull over and use it experience for results that I find not worth it now on to our media sources all the big boys are here with the exception of HD radio we've got satellite radio AM and FM single slot CD above it right there and under aux you rotate through several modern sources including your iPod or USB device I've got an iPod in now tagging looks fine you've also got Pandora support though it will not work on my Android phone for whatever reason and you have bluetooth streaming as well and the meta tag support on that is also quite good oh by the way the Bluetooth support on this guy also includes text message handling and you can type in a handful of custom text message replies so you can actually send something back that makes sense in your words a lot of cars give you can replies that are so generic you'd never actually send one now one choice on the gearbox this controller right here is for your CVT gearbox which is the only way to go in this vehicle no gate notice that no shifter paddles but you do have a sport mode button over here which is going to change some powertrain performance and shift points and throttle response we'll check that on a road in a minute back up camera is part of a package that we'll talk about momentarily and it's pretty straightforward you've got the ability to turn on and off some guidelines there's no multi-view there's no trajectory it's basically distance on or distance off but at least it's in there that mentions the top the Sentra's actually lost a few horsepower since last model we had a pretty petite motor here a 1.8 litre inline-four with nothing real tricky about it no turbo charging no direct injection just a good old modern inline 4 but at 130 horse and 128 foot-pounds of torque those numbers are pretty modest which yields great mpg 30 39 while getting this twenty eight hundred and fifty pound car it's about a hundred and fifty less than the outgoing model up to 60 in little under 10 seconds not sprightly but not a slug either we'll see how it actually drives on the road and as you can imagine it's front-wheel drive only no all-wheel drive option or anything like that let's go see how that transmission that sport mode in that eco mode all work on the road now on the road and right off the bat you're clearly aware this car is tuned for economy and not any kind of performance even though it's got a sport mode and we'll try that out in a moment a Nissan generally does CVT as well this one does well although CVTs sometimes can get caught on their own flat-footed nests that doesn't happen often with this it's still about as good as they get in the industry so Eco mode you hit that and you feel a noticeable deadening of the powertrain response it's as if the pedal wants to think for a minute and let you think for a minute do you really want to use that gasoline to accelerate right now well you stay on it and eventually will deliver same thing goes for deceleration it starts to really kind of become a non decelerating engine very little compression braking switch over to sports and use have a real difference in the throttle responsiveness how it holds higher rpms there aren't really shifts on a CVT the way there are in a geared gearbox but it's still the same engine there's not a lot of SAP in there so that's kind of a silly mode to me what you should appreciate about this car that's understated interior good sight lines better than most all the way around nice hyeri greenhouse a very well balanced ride it's not a sloppy ride at all even though it's not a sporting undercarriage and it's built real solidly at least off the factory line like this look this entrance it's a nice place to sit while you're doing your commute and that's 80% of what 80% of cars have to do okay let's place this 13 central we have an S sale here the top trim to start with 20,000 for delivered two packages to go see net style first add in premium 1200 bucks that get you a glass moonroof and the upgraded Bose audio I would do that's a fair price here is the one you have to get the navigation package it gets you navigation obviously a six inch that touch LCD that we saw they had such great response the Google services for better or for worse bluetooth streaming text message support Pandora support backup camera for 650 bucks what I thought it was a typo put me left off a one or even a two and it wouldn't be a bad value but it's 650 bucks this Sentra is a nice car all-around nothing about it stands out in particular but it's a very little everyday car it's a tremendous refresh and when you get it with that navigation package you feel like you stole some tech legally