Car Tech - Ford's Sync 3 shows lightning-quick layout
Car Tech - Ford's Sync 3 shows lightning-quick layout
2015-10-27
I'm here in the 2016 Ford Escape taking
an in-depth look at the new sync 3
infotainment system this system replaces
the old MyFord Touch system it was
pretty sluggish the system is a lot
better first let's look at the layout on
this home screen here I'm looking at
navigation on the Left
audio on the upper right and the phone
system on the lower right I also have a
persistent menu bar across the bottom
this shows me audio climate the phone
system navigation the apps link menu and
a settings venue one complaint I have
here has to do with this Hardware right
here which kind of gets in the way of
reaching this menu I which four would
lower this down a bit make that menu a
little more accessible now let me show
you one of the really cool things about
this system here I'll go to navigation
and this is incredibly responsive I can
show this on the map I just like
dragging it around it just drags around
so quickly I mean this is faster than
you see on most tablets as fast as any
smartphone and that responsiveness
relays it to the entire system here
everything just works really quickly and
that's fantastic here now for the
navigation system here I'm looking at 3d
rendered maps these maps look really
good in this navigation system they're
really light and clean and we're looking
at 3d rendered buildings in downtown San
Francisco I can zoom out of course I can
also pinch and zoom too which is nice
and I can look at different types of
maps I can look at plan view maps if I
prefer a top-down let's go to
destination here is pushing this button
and I get a previous destinations some
categories for POS places of interests I
also have a save location for home and
work and favorites but when I want to
enter an address manually I just push
the search button here I've got what
Ford calls its one box search idea so I
can start entering any letters in here
and this will search against not only
street names but also places of interest
so I put in CBS do you search not only
find CBS interactive where we are right
now it also finds a place called CBS
Lane which is far far away and I can
enter in full addresses here if I know
my specific street address
2:35 second Street comes up right away
and that gives us our location right
here so it's really fast entering
addresses here I should point out
there's no online destination search in
this menu that's because there's no
dedicated data connection in this car
but Ford makes up for that with their
appling system right now there are no
online search apps yet but there could
be in the future right now I'm looking
at serious travel link and that gives me
traffic information fuel prices movie
times a lot of the stuff you get through
satellite radio in a lot of current
cards today also perhaps I've got some
apps that are running on my phone right
now I've got glimpse which lets me share
my current location and where I'm going
and Spotify all these are running on my
iPhone here which is cabled to the car
there are other apps available and more
gonna be added pretty much every month
when I go in as Spotify I get this
really clean looking screen and this is
a fairly common screen amongst the audio
apps that are available here so you
don't have to change what you're looking
at every time you bring up a different
audio app or audio source so I get my
skip play pause buttons those are great
that's not this menu button up here so I
can choose a lot of different options
that Spotify gives me I can browse
different artists I can choose my
favorite artists I can look at some of
the local radio stations I have saved
here and it's really easy to go through
them and choose which ones I want now
let's go into the audio menu because
there's a lot of other options here so
if I hit my change source I can see I've
got am/fm fhd FM as well Sirius
satellite radio CD Bluetooth audio and
plus since I have my iPhone connected
system I can also view music that's
stored on my phone so I hit the Browse
button here and I get this menu of
playlists artists albums genres songs
all the usual things you find in a music
library interface if I switch to
bluetooth streaming one thing you don't
get here is the ability to browse your
music library on your phone some more
advanced systems do that today but this
one doesn't now let's go to the phone
menu and here I get my recent call list
contacts dialer and I also get access to
Siri too so I can request stuff from my
iPhone obviously that's not gonna work
with an Android
and of course I've got voice command
here so a lot of the things I can do on
the screen I can do just by seeing this
voice command but this new sync free
system is really good and it's actually
a lot better than a lot of the systems
you see in cars today because it is so
responsive and it does have that app
link connectivity that's going to allow
a lot of expansion in the future
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