OK gang, let’s talk infotainment screens. What do you think is the ideal size? How big is too big? How small is too small? Should screens be horizontal (landscape) or vertical (portrait) orientation? Or square? Or round?
Should the infotainment screen be integrated into the dash, or just hung onto that center stack like a picture on a wall–or stood on edge atop the dash? Which brands do the best job of incorporating infotainment screens into the interior design?
You’re welcome to discuss features and functions that belong on the screen versus physical controls, though let’s focus on screen size/integration. To the comments!
Here’s Ford’s 15-inch vertical display, as included with the F-150 Lightning in Lariat and Platinum trim levels (notice the volume scroll knob, which I think is just fastened to that screen, with the knob actually actuating the screen to change the volume).
This is the 2023 BMW 3-series interior. A single, unhooded, curved panoramic screen incorporates all the gauges and infotainment functions.
Tesla’s Model S debuted with a vertical screen (top) before going horizontal in later iterations (a Plaid is pictured here). The 17″ screen has left-right power-tilt functionality so you can adjust the viewing angle.
How about a rotating screen? That’s the BYD Han executing the maneuver, as captured by Doug DeMuro. Go ahead, we know you want to. “Thisssss …”
OK, real talk: do you really need any more than what the Buick Reatta had for us in 1985?
No screen. 2 of our cars have screens and I avoid using them as much as possible. Thankfully there are knobs and buttons as well for climate stuff so my wife and I can fight over temperature. I generally avoid using the screens since I don’t bother the laggy and outdated mapping, and for music my phone will link up and suffice. I want to velcro a cloth cover to stop the useless glare. You have to press 3 screen buttons to get to the screen off setting and it resets after ANY adjustment to anything.
All the infotainment I have ever needed was included in the matchbox sized monochrome screen on my Twingo mk1. There was time and speed and distance and how many blocks of range you had left.
https://twingo.guide/assets/images/image32.jpg
I also kind of liked the big widescreen one above the small one, with real time 3D rendering in millions of colours of what was going on outside the car. Especially the representation of where the other cars on the road were and the signage and traffic lights were very good. Sometimes it showed really interesting and beautiful scenery too. Great infotainment! It even had a built in lens cleaning device you could activate without taking your hands off the steering wheel.
I just didn’t understand the naming of that screen, “windscreen”, as the wind seemed to come from some plastic vents under it.
No screen is best.
Anything I have to look at inside the car while driving is a bad idea. I want a heads up display of speed, warning lamps and navigation.
I want to be able to use and adjust everything without taking my eyes off the road.
I’ve got a screen in my GT86 that I have turned off. Sometimes I stick my phone to it for navigation.
The minimum size legally required for the legally required backup camera.
My smartphone is a better infotainment system than any in car infotainment system, all I need is a quality smart phone mount with wireless charging that fits said smartphone.
I’ve seen “legally required backup camera” written many times now but am confused about whether this is actually true for all cars, or just cars with poor rear visibility.
There was an article recently about the Polestar without the back window had links to regulations. I think it said that you need to be able to see targets in certain positions behind the car, and it didn’t matter how that was achieved. So that suggests that backup cameras are not required for all cars, just those that follow recent design trends with large D-pillars, mail-slot rear windows, etc. If cars were designed like my old Subaru wagons with great rear visibility, backup cameras could still be left off (?). Would like clarification from Autopian staff.
I’m for no dedicated infotainment screen, like the Gordon Murry Automotive T.33. I can add a phone mount.
Back up cameras are not legally required for all cars, just all American cars. So it’s one of those rest-of-the-world-doesn’t-get-it problems like needing cup holders, automated seatbelts and special lights on the side of cars because you can’t tell what a car-shaped silhouette with headlights and tail lights is without some orange dots. And red indicators.
The point in that Polestar article was that you must have an interior view of things behind the car, but that doesn’t have to be a mirror, it can be a screen and a camera if you really hate everyone who needs reading glasses.
OK, I looked it up, and you are right – it has been a requirement since 2018. It’s too late to change, but I think it should have been performance related, like if you can see a cone x feet behind without a camera (say you are driving a small or microcar with large rear windows), it should be legal to go without. I’ve only had one car with a built-in rear camera, and it was better to just turn around and look back through the rear windows.
How is it the previous story that has a comment about dick measuring?
“What do you think is the ideal size? How big is too big? How small is too small?”
This HAS TO be intentional.
Only got 8″ myself, but it seems to get the job done.
Must be a metric ruler.
and this is why we can’t post pictures, isn’t it
Video killed the radio star
Video killed the radio star
In my mind
And in my car
We can’t rewind
We’ve gone too far
A woman invents a mug.
It’s a smashing success.
A man invents a lid for that mug.
It’s a hit.
A few people team up and come up with the straw.
Some people like it. It’s hard to clean though.
Some person invents a straw cleaner.
It’s OK. People use them.
A corporation invents something that cleans the straw cleaner.
So it goes..
Sometimes I like to sip.
Sometimes I like to gulp.
It all depends on the drink.
8-10″, but make it close enough so I don’t need to lean forward to use it!
I want it to lean towards me.
When I forget my glasses.
Double DIN, and preferably built in or looks like it’s actually part of the car and supposed to be there and not some stupid pop-up shit that looks like an afterthought
Big enough to effectively display Google Maps, with as few vehicle functions integrated into it as possible and no touchscreen. Ideally I’d like to see “look what we can do!” quickly give way to standardization and easy parts replaceability, something like what we had with DIN and double-DIN head units.
Integrated and not that big, I think 6-8″ is good. I’ve driven my dad’s Mach E a few times and it has that huge screen like the F150 above. It’s a nice screen but I feel like I’m right on top of it when I’m driving. It’s distracting.
No screen at all for me. If there must be a screen, make it as small as possible and not a touch screen.
If I’m gonna pay north of $30,000 for something, it had damn well better come with no frustrations. And I have yet to see a screen that I didn’t want to yell at.
Speaking of display screens, can somebody please mail some polarized sunglasses to all of the auto makers? For some reason the angle of the liquid crystal display in many cars is exactly the angle that makes it unviewable with polarized glasses, which is a drag if you happen to wear prescription polarized glasses.
Ugh. I am a Luddite when it comes to in car technology, our newest vehicle being a 2008 model, but I know this feeling. If I have my sunglasses on, I can’t use Google Maps in landscape on my phone, because the screen simply disappears from my view. For some reason, it works in portrait orientation, but my polarized lenses black out the screen if I turn it 90°.
About 8 mm² that is either on or off depending on whether you have the radio turned on or not. Anything else is superfluous.
It’s less about size but rather not having that “we forgot about infotainment so we haphazardly tacked it on” look popularized by the Germans.
That aside, a fallback so that you can operate it without having to use a touch screen (let’s be honest, touch screens are just terrible from a UX perspective) also is ideal.
First, get rid of the stupid infotainment screens, they are all mostly horrible. Replace all windows with tv screens powered by cameras that have a 1/2 second delay, and give me the same 1/2 second delay with the throttle response I get from my BMW, and I’d be the happiest human temporarily alive.
About three inches by six inches. Detachable and usable away from the car on a reliable preexisting worldwide network.
Oh, hey, look at that, I’ve already got it in my back pocket.
Thanks.
Now I’ve got a stupid King Missile song stuck in my head and I haven’t even finished reading your comment.
Oh.. nevermind.
Detachable 9341$! Da da da da DA da da da
Did you see your infotainment screen lying on a blanket at a flea market?
I have an 8.4 inch screen that has more functions than I need. It’s silly that I have to use a screen to use heated/cooled seats. At least it’s integrated into the dash and not hanging off of it like a picture frame. Giant screens are the chrome spinners of the 21’st century.
It is silly for any function that can be controlled by a mechanical switch to be shoved onto a touch screen. That’s why I say that so much car technology these days amounts to solutions in search of a problem.
My only real experience with infotainment is a Lincoln Corsair. And the thing that pisses me off the most is the software. If it were smaller, no care; larger, no care. The fact that the software is horrid and I HAVE to use it for certain functions I used to have physical, logical buttons for? Effing unforgiveable.
There is a lot of sense in this. The end-user should be king, but software engineers are myopic trolls who inhabit shitty apartments and cubicles and don’t have a clue what people actually DO with their code. Very rarely is any tech-related problem the hardware’s fault.
I’m good with LEDs. And completely ditch anything “touch screen”
They should be 55 inch. They should be mounted on an entertainment table in your living room and/or bedroom. As for your car nothing but a google map screen.
The optimal size? About 2”x2”, and it displays the time.
Sure, that’s good enough for info, but how will the tainment fit in there?
I care much more about physical buttons than screen size, but when I have a screen, I prefer some design integration to it, rather than just slapping it on the dash like it’s an afterthought.
The one in my 2021 3-series is about perfect for me at 8.8″ in a widescreen format. Then they changed to the one that you pictured in the examples above. The bigger issue is that they got rid of all the physical buttons for radio presets, hvac, and heated seats and put it all in the touchscreen. I prefer the design of the 2021 dash to the 2022-23. I will say that the voice assistant is very good and I can just tell the car to turn on the heated seats or that I’m cold, so I probably could get by without the buttons in this car. https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/bmw/3-series/2021/photos-interior
I did get the 12.1″ screen in my RAM, but it’s nicely integrated in the dash and it’s very tall, but not very wide. The dash space is also much larger in a truck, so there’s room for a larger screen. The function is nice because it stacks the Android Auto or Carplay at the top, and the bottom half can display music or other functions. There’s physical buttons for almost everything I want, except the heated seat controls.
I do think an 8-9″ screen is where I currently like them to be, but I want those physical buttons so I’m not hunting and pecking through menus to change the temperature in the car.
My Kenwood double din has a 6.75 in display. I use it for nav, audio and bluetooth. It is the perfect screen size. Also, all the other functions in the vehicle are real knobs and switches. My friend has a 21 Prius and that damn screen is huge and distracting. He is continually getting honked at red lights while screwing around with the settings and it’s too bright.