Gadgetory

when infinity goes after the big status crossovers from Germany this is what they bring the qx70 in v6 and v8 variants let's drive one and check the tech now it used to be named @fx either an fx37 or an fx50 based on engine size is now all called a qx70 and then you get a look at the fender to see if it's a 3.7 v6 or a 5 liter v8 it's an odd mumbo-jumbo of naming but so be it these are two row cars in an era when they seem to RAM a third row into everything they do not on this one partly because you see that rounded pitched button the rear it doesn't lend itself well to having much space back there driver people or cargo beyond that it's unchanged outside since the 2013 FX era except for a little change to the face it's the infinity crossover that most looks like a Porsche Cayenne and it's also the only one that has a very smooth kink at the back window corner you can spot it that way from a mile away the rest I'll have something more squared off now inside our qx70 is a whole bunch of really cool technology if the year was 2008 its 2013 and I'm not giving these guys a pass anymore let's start with the navigation system which by the way is optional and childish I've been looking at this fisher-price level of animation for too many years they got to step it up on a car that's about to price out at 60 grand as you're gonna see at the end of our video it is hard drive based and moves along pretty quickly you've got separate buttons for destination route and map which is kind of a kind of a clear way to break it out but I've got all kinds of interface issues why is the biggest button on the destination menu change region how often do I Drive to a different time zone versus how often do I enter a street address so why are your buttons apportioned that way when I go to entering addresses or finding places there's no connectivity here I can't search to find like I can in BMWs and Audi's but they instead saddle you with this stupid looking 3d bird's eye flyover mode where some buildings are there and some buildings aren't this is apparently as the post-nuclear version of San Francisco and it does absolutely nothing for me I'd trade that for Google search every day you can enter your destinations via voice command as well navigation navigation please address voice command is incredibly quick at this point does great job of understanding but it parses everything even the number and the street have to be said in separate commands that's dated everything happens here on the color LCD which you would think is good but actually in today's design ethic it's not I've got an LCD here between the gauges but it's a crunchy old monochrome as a result the car does not handoff let's say directions to this one while we're keeping media on this one or whatever other combination I'd like to do the Germans do that nicely these guys haven't caught up oh here's my favorite if you want to go from AM radio to satellite radio there are no direct shortcuts you got to do this you have to hit am/fm 1 FM 2 X m1 maybe you're on XM 3 you've got to go through this rotator every time they must hate their customers and once you do settle on the radio band you want the RDS information is handled horribly no matter what station I go do I get this weird mix of the full RDS information at the bottom and then a truncated version that does nothing but waste real estate up here and worst of all the largest thing on the whole screen is a graphic of a portable shortwave radio couldn't you have used that for information and not something that doesn't make sense in the car then there are the cameras worst resolution you'll ever see in a car just soft and mushy which is even worse since there divvying up the screen into tiny regions for the around view camera in the evening or if it's raining this is actually useless I had to get out of the car a couple times to park the other night I couldn't do it by this the rear camera by the way is standard the around view stuff is optional I just wish they had some Reds to back it up infuriatingly the base configuration of the qx70 does not include bluetooth streaming that's part of an option package luckily they were less forgetful about things like a power glass moonroof and power liftgate those are both their standard ok under the hood because it says 3.7 on the fender it says v6 under the hood 3.7 liter v6 doing 325 horsepower 267 foot-pounds of torque gets this 4,300 pound beast up to 16 about 6.3 seconds while delivering 1724 MPG rear wheel drive or 1622 all-wheel drive a decent noticeable haircut there if you get all four wheels Klein's beyond that every one of these guys has a 7-speed automatic transmission no other choice is there and if you want paddles on that tranny you got to get a v8 oddly not available on the v6 let's go for a ride the key to words about the qx70 our car like that's kind of the main goal what they accomplished here they do it pretty well engine responsiveness is good this is a great v6 arguably the best in the biz on the other hand it sounds like a coffee grinder compared to an Audi v6 in a competing q5 nothing wrong with the engine but the level of isolation and smoothness is like on a different planet this one's course by comparison I really miss having paddles which I often don't think are essential but on this car I don't like reaching down to the shifter all the time and grabbing a gear I want to keep my hands on the wheel and I think the car was sporting crossover pretensions like this should have paddles bass you can get them on the v8 not on the v6 for some reason where's this car really stands out certainly not the cabin tech but in its self-driving technology we have a lane departure prevention tech on this vehicle and we have a distance control technology as well as the relatively common adaptive cruise control so here in traffic I push this button on the wheel and I've enabled DCA distance control Assist and it is just really good at reading that traffic in front of me I do not need to go on the brake pedal and it very intelligently hits the brakes it doesn't like I would do it not too late not too soon not too hard not too little it's a really well finessed system a little less so is the lane departure technology which because this car does not have a pure electric steering mechanism it has to use your braking to bring you a back in from the lane drift so the brakes on the opposite side of the drift are engaged by the cars computer to just yo you back in the line I say that that's less satisfying because that's kind of a clunky way to move a car it's better and more elegant to use the steering rack when you yah brake a car you're obviously putting drag on the vehicle which is not good for its momentum let alone its efficiency finally the ride quality is quite good on this guy I don't ever feel like it's too mushy to Tippie nor is it to sporting that it doesn't feel like luxury they've nailed it pretty well right down the middle all right as price our qx70 this 2014 starts at pretty close to 47 thousand dollars with destination 1450 more if you wanted an all-wheel drive and rember you're gonna take a haircut on the mpg premium package gets you nav around view cameras bluetooth streaming chin silly enough that's a steep forty three hundred bucks the technology package brings you almost all the self-driving technology 2950 and if you want that you have to take something called deluxe touring which is a bunch of mostly seat upgrades for another 3300 all in seen that style you're pushing fifty nine thousand dollars okay when you drive one here's how you should check the tech notice the great car like handling and wonderful Nissan Infiniti v6 and overall the interior quality is really quite nice on the negatives though look at that technology interface it's really dated lack of paddle shifters on the v6 I have no idea why notice those cameras they're basically video mush and a qx70 has limited cargo room and of course not available even a dinky third row so you buy one of these because you like a car but you just barely need an SUV