Gadgetory

the Toyota Camry it just gets no respect scene is even the more suburban eyes colleague of the Honda Accord but that was yesterday let's drive the formerly bland and appliance like Toyota Camry this one a 15 XLE v6 and check the tech and new reality now if you buy one of these 15 Camrys I can tell you you're not going to be going to the junkyard to get replacement body panels off of 14 every piece of sheet metal's curves and bent a little different than the last year car except for the roof and if you look carefully they've given it kind of an adaptation of a Lexus spindle grille but with a Toyota grille kind of graphed it on top of it now inside the Camry is not quite as new you'll notice that they've done a much nicer centre LCD helper screen by the way it's Lexus quality now here on the main screen this carry is over largely from past Camry is a 7 inch touch LCD with voice as well but there's no other controller no big wheel to turn click and kick but it's very reachable the buttons are large what's interesting out below here is something new that's a button I've not seen the car before that is a Qi wireless charging button and this to the right is a wireless charging mat if you've got a phone it's either compatible like a galaxy s6 or if you add one of these little Qi wireless adapters it just hugs the back of the phone in fact a few months ago they even announced the Mobile World Congress that IKEA is going to build this technology into their furniture so it seems as though a lot of industries are aggregating around this one now under the apps buttons where most of the magic of this system happens notice they consider navigation to be an app though it's not the kind of app you have on your phone so a little interesting language there the Camrys navigation is fine but it's dated at this point it's about the oldest thing in this - it doesn't do online search itself you have to bounce out to Bing or Yelp or something else to do that and it's voice command is serviceable but slow and in Toyota fashion it locks out just about everything while you're moving and stabbing around its point of interest databases to find relevant things along your route none of its satisfying traffic is provided in that nav system by the HD radio rig so you're not having to have satellite radio activated even those car comes with its standard over here on the right you get the more interesting apps you've got Bing you've got Yelp you've got open table and you've got voice command on the nav system for pio is four different ways to in many cases get to the same result by then all of use google voice command on my phone as for meaning you're not lacking any sources am/fm HD radio satellite USB there's no hard drive to rip to totally fine by me interesting trick here if I'm listening to the radio and I hit the voice command button to do something else for a moment look what happened here it automatically paused and cashed my radio broadcast so I can pick it up where I left off or if I want hit this button and immediately go back to where it is live click being a camry it's a simple car to drive no paddles no fussy drive mode buttons PRN D shifter kick it left for sport mode and there you can also shift manually if you want now onto the hood of a Camry we've got the bigger of the two engines this is the three and a half liter v6 you can also get a 2.5 liter i-4 that's also a hybrid I'll talk about those some other time by the way these guys are all taildraggers there's no all-wheel drive on the Camry that's current generation as you probably know 268 horsepower come out of this guy 248 pounds beat of torque now the weight is actually relatively felt by modern standards under 3500 pounds for this v6 based car 0-60 happens in like 5.7 5.8 that's actually pretty good especially for a car that doesn't have performance as the lead attributed its brain MPG 2131 I was getting in the high 20s and extended mixed driving so everything seems to check out and almost surprisingly well now I'm in sport mode and I'm getting on it right now and this is a nicely programmed transmission that is taking the engines power putting it to good use and making nice smooth shifts that aren't doughy we've got some very nice ride quality here without being wallowing here no on this car is really good it's well done I mean everything is easy to see there's almost no button or display that is obscured by the wheel or anything which we surprised too many cars do that for what I want to convey to you is the fact that this is not a numb dough ball like perhaps a previous Camry you've driven many years ago as for the driver assist they all seem pretty well calibrated to me blind spot tech is about right it doesn't early or late warn me about cars what they've done they've basically gotten to work okay let's price our Camry it's basically top of the stack it's a v6 and it's xle which is the top luxury package still we're in at just over 32 delivered and there's not a whole lot to add to go seen that style fine spot is 500 bucks telematics they call safety Connect is 515 the tech package is 750 for cross traffic alert that pre collision sensing adaptive cruise and lane departure warning and the Entune app suite with JBL upgraded audios an almost paltry 800 bucks all in I can't even hit 35,000 on this car top of the line load it up seen that style now a Camry with this v6 is not a sporting drivers delight but it's also not a sporting drivers red anymore I clean up that head you didn't give it a whole new look and then I would take one of these all day long