I just returned from another cross-country (and then some) trip in the 14 MDX. This is the second one I've done in this vehicle. Some observations -
- There were no problems encountered with the vehicle. i.e. nothing broke. I have a very early MDX - June, 2013. It's a Tech SHAWD.
- The vehicle is very comfortable for long days on the road. I did some pretty long days of driving (4 days coast to coast).
- The handling and ride remain excellent. This is a 'fun' vehicle to drive.
- The power and tranny combo work great. I can set the cruise control on and it smoothly and effortlessly maintains a constant speed up long uphill mountain stretches and even downhill.
- The climate control system performed perfectly. It was set on 'auto' at 70 degrees and it kept the cabin a perfect constant temperature while the outside temps ranged from 33 degrees to over 100 degrees.
- I let the XM subscription lapse because I noticed on the last trip that I'd tire of it - not enough choices in music. This time I used Pandora and Aha through the whole trip (I have an unlimited data plan on AT&T). These worked well and provided music everywhere (mostly freeways) except for a few dropout areas that I expected in the mountains, etc. The streaming works very well from tower to tower with no issues.
-- Pandora - This works better than Aha - it's less quirky on connecting although it's still a hassle to randomly need to 'Allow' it to connect to the vehicle and other times not. Once connected it stayed synced with the touchscreen. There are few commercials and they're short but the ones they have are repeated endlessly - think all day of only 3 variations in the commercials. Pandora allows changing both the genre and song through the touchscreen.
-- Aha - this had more quirky connection 'Allow' messages than Pandora and would sometimes lose sync with the touchscreen - i.e. music would still be playing but the touchscreen would no longer show the song or be able to control it until Aha was selected again. I fault Aha for this - not the MDX. Aha only allows changing the song through the touchscreen, not the genre, a far as I could tell which necessitated using the iPhone itself to do that which defeats the hands-free aspect of this. Aha needs some improvements. It also ended up locking out the 'Slacker' stations since it said my trial period was over and I didn't sign up with Slacker. This issue doesn't exist on Pandora.
-- Conclusion - Streaming the music through these apps is a much better option than XM for trips where cell connectivity is good. It provides much more music choice and variability and has no added cost (assuming an unlimited data plan).
- The Nav system still has issues. I had mine updated from the original 1.0 to the current 2.0 ...2304) version before the trip (via the software update by the dealer - not the swap-out). I really see 'no difference' between the 1.0 and the 2.0 with the exception that the seat heater voice command now works although it's something I don't really use. I don't see any changes in the responsiveness of the touchscreen, it still confused some of the voice commands and would pop up the dialing screen rather than do some routing, and 'blue screened' (actually a black screen with white 'stars' on it) a couple of times while in the middle of of selecting a route to a motel through the voice commands. Hitting the Nav button again brought it back to life and running through the same sequence of commands would eventually get it to route.
-- Some of the routes the Nav selected weren't the best in my opinion and in the opinion of Google maps on the iPhone but since there are usually multiple routes to anyplace I can see that this is a challenge to Nav systems (including Garmin).
-- Acura needs to continue to fix the issues in the Nav, at least the bugs if not the usability, and provide free software updates until there are no more bugs. There's no excuse for the system to freeze and require a restart (by hitting the Nav button) and starting over through the sequence.
- Mileage - continues to be great for a vehicle like this. I didn't keep tight track of it this time versus the last time but from the display I could see I typically got between 25 and over 28mpg depending on the average speed (some areas were around 80mph all day which costs a couple of mpg). From my last analysis the display reads 1 or 2 mpg better than my hand calcs. Regardless, it's excellent and I always had a comfortable range of over 400 miles on a tank.
- Conclusion - I'm still happy I bought the MDX. It's a fun vehicle to drive thanks to its excellent handling, power, shift points (I keep it in Sport mode), is comfortable for long drives, has useful features in the infotainment with the streaming apps and the Nav (which despite some bugs/annoyances mostly does the job), and gets great mileage for a vehicle its size and utility.
- There were no problems encountered with the vehicle. i.e. nothing broke. I have a very early MDX - June, 2013. It's a Tech SHAWD.
- The vehicle is very comfortable for long days on the road. I did some pretty long days of driving (4 days coast to coast).
- The handling and ride remain excellent. This is a 'fun' vehicle to drive.
- The power and tranny combo work great. I can set the cruise control on and it smoothly and effortlessly maintains a constant speed up long uphill mountain stretches and even downhill.
- The climate control system performed perfectly. It was set on 'auto' at 70 degrees and it kept the cabin a perfect constant temperature while the outside temps ranged from 33 degrees to over 100 degrees.
- I let the XM subscription lapse because I noticed on the last trip that I'd tire of it - not enough choices in music. This time I used Pandora and Aha through the whole trip (I have an unlimited data plan on AT&T). These worked well and provided music everywhere (mostly freeways) except for a few dropout areas that I expected in the mountains, etc. The streaming works very well from tower to tower with no issues.
-- Pandora - This works better than Aha - it's less quirky on connecting although it's still a hassle to randomly need to 'Allow' it to connect to the vehicle and other times not. Once connected it stayed synced with the touchscreen. There are few commercials and they're short but the ones they have are repeated endlessly - think all day of only 3 variations in the commercials. Pandora allows changing both the genre and song through the touchscreen.
-- Aha - this had more quirky connection 'Allow' messages than Pandora and would sometimes lose sync with the touchscreen - i.e. music would still be playing but the touchscreen would no longer show the song or be able to control it until Aha was selected again. I fault Aha for this - not the MDX. Aha only allows changing the song through the touchscreen, not the genre, a far as I could tell which necessitated using the iPhone itself to do that which defeats the hands-free aspect of this. Aha needs some improvements. It also ended up locking out the 'Slacker' stations since it said my trial period was over and I didn't sign up with Slacker. This issue doesn't exist on Pandora.
-- Conclusion - Streaming the music through these apps is a much better option than XM for trips where cell connectivity is good. It provides much more music choice and variability and has no added cost (assuming an unlimited data plan).
- The Nav system still has issues. I had mine updated from the original 1.0 to the current 2.0 ...2304) version before the trip (via the software update by the dealer - not the swap-out). I really see 'no difference' between the 1.0 and the 2.0 with the exception that the seat heater voice command now works although it's something I don't really use. I don't see any changes in the responsiveness of the touchscreen, it still confused some of the voice commands and would pop up the dialing screen rather than do some routing, and 'blue screened' (actually a black screen with white 'stars' on it) a couple of times while in the middle of of selecting a route to a motel through the voice commands. Hitting the Nav button again brought it back to life and running through the same sequence of commands would eventually get it to route.
-- Some of the routes the Nav selected weren't the best in my opinion and in the opinion of Google maps on the iPhone but since there are usually multiple routes to anyplace I can see that this is a challenge to Nav systems (including Garmin).
-- Acura needs to continue to fix the issues in the Nav, at least the bugs if not the usability, and provide free software updates until there are no more bugs. There's no excuse for the system to freeze and require a restart (by hitting the Nav button) and starting over through the sequence.
- Mileage - continues to be great for a vehicle like this. I didn't keep tight track of it this time versus the last time but from the display I could see I typically got between 25 and over 28mpg depending on the average speed (some areas were around 80mph all day which costs a couple of mpg). From my last analysis the display reads 1 or 2 mpg better than my hand calcs. Regardless, it's excellent and I always had a comfortable range of over 400 miles on a tank.
- Conclusion - I'm still happy I bought the MDX. It's a fun vehicle to drive thanks to its excellent handling, power, shift points (I keep it in Sport mode), is comfortable for long drives, has useful features in the infotainment with the streaming apps and the Nav (which despite some bugs/annoyances mostly does the job), and gets great mileage for a vehicle its size and utility.
