We dive into BMW's iDrive 7.0 in the 2020 BMW X7 M50i.

Transcript

- What's up, guys. Here we are in the 2020 BMW X7 M50i. Going to take a short tour through BMW iDrive 7.0. So let's hop right into it.

This is your main screen. 12.3 inch touchscreen, controlled by the touchscreen or via this little dial here. You can see it's actually the glass controls, same with the gear shifter. Very nice looking, very luxurious. Nice looking trim.

But yeah, so here we are. We have wireless Apple CarPlay, of course. So you can tap your little option up there. And it rolls on into it. Nice widescreen format here. Tap back into BMW. There we go.

So this car has a couple of cool new features on it that I've not seen in previous iDrives. One of them is the Experience modes. So here you can select Executive. And the ambient lighting changes. Temperature control changes. And here goes the panoramic moon roof closing. And the rear sunshades also close back there as well. Apparently, the executives don't exactly want people to be able to see in. So at least that's what BMW thinks.

You have other modes. Expressive brings the sunlight back. Well-being. Let's go into the Caring car. Because this is also another new feature here. So you can select Vitalize. 3 minute Vitalize program activates the driver.

So this is something maybe you do if you're feeling tired. You can go through here. Go ahead and click the Vitalize. And--

[MUSIC PLAYING]

So here we are in the Vitalized program. It is increasing the fan speed and then quickly decreasing the fan speed, blowing in the face to try and maybe wake us up. It's also lowered the temperature. Playing this upbeat music. We have some greenery on the screen up above.

Yeah, I mean, I suppose I could feel a little more energized with this. Definitely the cold air helps. Let's end that.

Let's try out Relax next.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

All right, now we're giving Relax a go. So this closed the panoramic roof covering. It's lowered the seat ventilation down to just one and raised the temperature up to 74. Probably going to put me to sleep, especially with this music. Definitely relaxing, I think. This mood hits the nail on the head. It is working for me right now.

All right, let's drive back in here. What else have we got? Some settings. Let's look at some of the different light settings that we have here. Interior lighting.

So this has, like many electric cars these days, different colors you can set your ambient lighting to. You can't see it in the dark right now. It's definitely really difficult to see. But some of the different colors you can roll through in iDrive. I'm a personal fan of lilac in the dark, especially with this particular panoramic roof option. It has the little LED lights in the roof itself that light up at night. They look fantastic.

And this Bowers and Wilkins audio system also has light up speakers. So you can see the screen there, what they actually look like at night. There are little lights in the speakers. And they can either be set to default white light. Or they could light up the same exact color as the ambient lighting, which happens to be-- so blue, green, lilac.

So let's roll on through some other features here. How about the BMW Personal Assistant? You can ask it some questions. It'll tell you some things. We'll see how it responds to our requests. Activate it with a little push of a button here.

[BEEP]

What's up?

- Whatever you want.

- Whatever we want. The open road. The world is ours. Navigate to the closest Jet's Pizza.

- Which one of these destinations should I select?

- Yeah. That's not bad right there. I can choose a few Jet's Pizzas. How's the oil level?

- The engine oil level is OK.

- Good to hear. I don't have to go grab the dipstick. Good stuff. Let's ask it some more personal questions.

- How are you doing?

- Hello. What can I help you with?

- Ah. It doesn't want to make conversation, I guess. What do you think about Mercedes Benz?

- About the many good drives we have in the future.

- Oh, many good drives we have in the future with Mercedes Benz. That's interesting. I wonder if it heard me correctly, though. What do you think about BMW?

- About the many good drives we have in the future.

- Oh, OK. So same deal with BMW and Mercedes Benz. Lots of good drives to have in the future, apparently. I am tired.

- I have activated the Vitality program.

- There we go. Now we get the Vitality program again.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Here's the music. There we go. Let's drop the temperature. And the fan's going crazy again.

So all right. That is a good primer for iDrive 7.0. Some of my favorite things about it is just the speed at which it moves through settings. And I also love the fact that you can control it via a dial. It's not a touchpad. Some touchpads are OK. The one with Mercedes MBUX Infotainment System is pretty good.

It's actually where some of these features probably originated from-- Experience modes and Caring car with the energizing comfort within the Mercedes Infotainment System. These ones-- they're close, you know. They're a little lighter on features. Without massaging seats, this one-- it's not quite the full effect. But you can get massaging seats. And then maybe you'll be just a little bit closer.

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