Gadgetory

Acura MDX very important to the company it's almost a third of their sales add it to the little brother RDX and you're basically talking about the company right there so when they did this revision for 2014 they had to get it right it's still highly recognizable but there's been a lot of things change on the tech and underneath let's drive this 2014 all-wheel drive with the advanced and entertainment packages and check the temp now you'll notice the MDX is still very much the same kind of look a little softer and thicker to my eyes a little more how do you be honest it's two inches longer but it didn't go to legroom for the front row passengers more to the rear cargo space now to my mind it is like so many vehicles in its class a two and a half row vehicle there is a so-called third row of seating but it's actually seating luckily if you do need to use it for like groceries it's easier to get to now they have an easier sliding second row technology now if you haven't been an acura lately this is pretty cool stacked large LCDs and they've revised the interface rather substantially this down here on the bottom is a really good-looking and major improvement over what Honda Acura used to do for presenting media and such here your sources will take a look at these AM and FM with HD radio satellite radio optical disc that's CD and DVD on this rig 15 gigabyte hard drive USB that can also handle iPod bluetooth streaming Pandora and aha support are built into the car and of course aux Jack's front and rear as you can see touchscreen here not up here the one above is driven by either menu buttons down here or this kick turning click controller whatever you're listening to to audio systems base or Els audio which is a big deal with Acura and of course you've got a lot of settings for that including different types of surround subwoofer there are speakers in the ceiling for the rear entertainment system they've really jack this one up and you can't see this but there's haptic feedback on the screen puny little buzz or a bump when you touch something but I haven't found that it makes a big difference in the vehicle it can all get to be a bit complicated though there are two or three ways to do almost everything in this car here's the one that infuriates me the most it's an example of over interface this is where you go to set the seat heater in some cars you got a little plastic switch on this one you've got the most amazing multi-level there's one ribbon for heat a ribbon below that for cooling and then you've got it off in an automatic mode that I guess follows the cabin temp too much now the navigation interface has not been dramatically revised but I still struggle with it for a couple of reasons they've got this thing called Acura link now under local search was a little pokey but in this case I was trying to get to the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco I know how to get there I wanted the best route under traffic conditions so I searched for Fairmont first of all you can't do any of this while you're moving so neither myself or anyone else in the car can enter using the keyboard so then I was stuck with voice command after the be spell the place for category name one letter at a time FAI r mo NT Belle the place for category me one letter at a time H o te L press the talk button to select the command later seriously fa ir m ont pardon no command was heard press the top button and say a command it didn't ask for a command it asked for a place name and then when I gave it a place name it wanted a command yeah this was the most infuriating system ever for entering a destination while driving voice simply does not work and it's fully locked out when you're rolling and even when I pulled over used a knob entered Fairmont and specified hotels it didn't find the one in San Francisco it found a bunch all over the country the one in San Francisco is world-famous how can it not find that especially when it knows where I am big fail bottom line it's gonna be a big draw so that we can you drive this car are you gonna use that map or this nap this works better and that one is supposedly less distracting I don't think so cuz I was really infuriated while I was driving now back here is one of the new breed of more innovative larger entertainment system first of all look at the screen this is optional on the full trim MDX but look at that thing it's 16 inches super wide you say well why how much can you stretch a DVD you see doesn't fill up both the screen however what I can do I can turn this into a dual screen watching to things on there at once so I hit this dual guy right here that moves my DVD to the right I now choose my left source I'm gonna go HDMI which is also very cool and what I've got hooked up there is my Android phone which has an HDMI output port so there it is I'm using mirroring mode on my Android OS and there's the desktop of my phone that's kind of interesting so this can become kind of the ultimate remote desktop as you're working in the back or just go to YouTube and your phone becomes your all-in-one entertainment system right here on a nice big screen first of all Acura gets some kind of an award for the lowest opening hood that I've ever shot under so pardon me three and a half liter v6 down to the three point seven in the last mdx 290 horse out of this guy 267 foot-pounds of torque pretty good numbers direct injection technology of course zero to sixty for this roughly forty three hundred pound crossover SUV is six and a half seconds or so in the all-wheel drive trim a six-speed automatic is your only choice that's a relatively small number of gears by today's standards and the top two are overdrive part of that mpg thing but I'm gonna want to see if it hunts out the top gears too much because I always hate that it kills responsiveness okay so about that MTG 18 city 27 highway 21 combined quite a bit better than the outgoing model look at the old car 3.7 v6 had 300 horsepower it was 10 more 270 foot-pounds three more but much worse mpg 1621 okay on the road the MDX has a nice smooth power it doesn't come on with a sporty urgency no matter what I do unless I get on the gears drop it down a couple get in the sport mode and really get some revs work you got to really push it to get this thing to have any urgency now let's get on the freeway to have a little bit of fun with our self-driving MDX which it just about is so I've hit the main button here I've got adaptive cruise on lane keep assist on you can see right there I've got my lane keeping divider lines and I'm also going to switch on my adaptive cruise control here and see if I get into that motor it's really nice but you gotta really prompt it to wake up okay so now I'm going to drive along here in these lane lines and I'm gonna let the car steer its way between the lanes okay now let's see if it'll take over there we go now my hands are right by the wheel for safety in case this thing doesn't get it right I'm drifting a little bit in the lane here and if you look in that overhead camera I think you're gonna see it start to steer to that little nibble right there it's not dramatic see that right there now it just beats to me you must get your hands on the wheel and it seems to defeat the self steering when it does that so it doesn't let you drive along for more than about ten seconds like this coming into a left turn there there you go that's a pretty good turn it's making by itself that's crazy now combine this with the adaptive cruise where the car is working the accelerator working the brakes quite pronouncedly and you get a real taste of what at least semi autonomous cars are gonna be like now the other thing I'm done in this car it's hard to demonstrate but take my word for it if you get too close to a vehicle in front of you it's gonna flash a big light on the dash that says break and it blinks an orange light in the windshield like a head-up display but it's just an orange light it also has collision mitigating braking so it's also going to help you or bring the car to largely tough stop when it sees you closing on something too hard not gonna demonstrate that I guess in sum I came away from this car expecting it would house a little more driving spirit and also all this self-driving tech and ends up having more self-driving tech than Jawad a V as a driver's car our MDX is loaded as I mention all-wheel drive with advanced and entertainment packages that's top of the stack so 57 for with destination about the only option I would add to go seen that style would be LED fog lamps for a five and a half here in just a tick under fifty eight grand now if you want a lot of tech in the cabin as well as helping to keep you in good shape on the road this is one of the class leaders