Gadgetory

Subarus been on a tear lately not just selling a ton of cars but also enjoying the second highest customer loyalty after Ford let's find out what's making folks come and making them stay as we drive the new six generation outback this one a 3.6 limited and check the tech now this new outback for 2015 as you can see has been very unmistakeably revised it's a little more Manhattan if you will a little less at or on deck just finessed all around the edges that does not take it away it's chunky presentation or its high ground clearance 8.7 inch just like the last model and now the grille has automatic arrow shutters that will close at highway speeds to smooth the airflow and improve its mpg we'll talk about that a little bit later inside you'll find a cabin that is also more urban more urbane to be honest although sube just can't shake their penchant for bright garish colors in the instrument panel and the nighttime lighting and Outback 3.6 is gonna cost you about 34 grand delivered we're gonna add a $3,000 option package for navigation driver assist moonroof and keyless we're at about 37 let's see what you get and the biggest change in the cabin you see right away is Subaru finally has a more modern sophisticated interface on their head unit here's the home screen you can see your basic functions are all there before we even get to those though notice it's kind of like this sort of this one single sheet of glass type design very very sophisticated and the touch response is really outstanding it moves quickly and I almost never have to touch anything twice to get it to understand what I wanted under the navigation you find the map that now has much nicer rendering look how smooth and nicely done that is and I find that Road labels are always very readable very usable system now in addition to that very snappy easy to use touch command you've also got the voice button here on the wheel voice in this system they've tried to make very natural how many my help you play satellite radio which satellite station would you like to listen to chill tuning to chill that's how you actually want to talk to a radio right it hiccups a little where if you notice the master choices you have are all based around audio climate control maybe some settings to get to navigation commands you've got to tell it to shift to that mode and frankly using voice command to control things like the temperature or the radio station is way less important to me than using it for a complex task like finding or entering an address so it should be easier to voice command nav than everything else not harder now going into your media things get a little bit chaotic you've got your traditional media if you will will you find things like broadcast but also aha Pandora and blue to streaming but under apps you're going to find another set of layers there's aha and Pandora again here is star link which is Subarus own sort of a master menu system that goes through your phone in general I find star link is painfully slow and frequently tends to bonk and say you need to reconnect then you've got mirror link which is the phone screen projection technology that is sort of trying to emerge it would take much of us on your phone and put it on the screen like Google navigation for example except mirror link technology requires a Maryland compatible phone which mostly means either an HTC or Sony Foam a galaxy s3 would work but no iPhones no other galaxies and these guys are signed on to do apple carplay and android auto this year so imagine a future out back with mirrorlink StarLink carplay Android and the home audio menu here that would be a mess of unprecedented proportions if I got to be harsh dump Starling because it sucks and dump Maryland cause it might be DOA now under the hood we of course have the 3.6 out back that means the 3.6 liter flat 6 boxer engine not the flat 4 we're doing 256 horsepower out of this unit now 247 pound-feet of pork 0 to 16 about seven point three seconds it's not super snappy but I don't think these buyers care weighs about 3,800 pounds gets you mpg of 20 city twenty-seven highway as our director Kelly said no I'm done with the 20s that's a little low thirst of course these vehicles are all symmetrical all-wheel drive that Subaru stock-in-trade first thing I noticed getting in this outback is responsiveness is quite good that doesn't mean it's overwhelmingly powerful I'm going up a grade here right now it's got enough power but not too much but when you ask it for power you get it in a linear fashion when you lift off the pedal you get deceleration that's satisfying that isn't found that often in a lot of cars I Drive it's also very nice and quiet in this car they've used some new fluid engine mounts and they've also done some stuff with laminating the windshield glass CVT only in this guy if I put it the manual gate and grab some shifts and not bad it kind of simulates a true automatic pretty well this is pretty good CVT I've never found it rubbery or slippery at any point that I can recall ride quality is great I've never found a point where it felt wallowy in the extreme nor too harsh now there is a technology called the iSight camera that lets them handle things like forward collision warning helps with adaptive cruise control lane departure warning they've improved it recently it's a stereo camera now I understand they've added more of a color imaging technology our car though unfortunately is not equipped with that assist in some happy friendly little approachable car to drive now that's a little after all spacious and comfortable inside a look that's more urban and modern they're not gonna have any problem continuing their rather torrid sales pace these days you