My 1,000 mile review -- VERY positive
03-05-08, 10:48 AM
#1
Lead Lap
Thread Starter
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: Dallas area, Texas
Posts: 564
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
My 1,000 mile review -- VERY positive
Ah, what a difference a day makes, or, in my case, a thousand miles, which is what the odometer on my car will pass shortly. I don't need to drive a lot, so it has taken me a while to get this many miles on my car.
As some of you might remember, I wrote in this forum of my initial impressions after my first week of driving that I was "VERY disappointed" by my new 2008 GS350. Coming from a 1998 GS300, I found that, in several aspects in the driver comfort area, the 2GS was a significant regression from the 3GS.
I also went on to say that, in the 95% of car, I found it to be an improvement over the 2GS. But, of course, it's hard to enjoy the neat new gadgets if you're spending all of your time thinking about how uncomfortable you are and wishing your journey was over so that you could get out of the car.
Now my opinion has changed dramatically. I adore my car now and can't wait to drive each day. While I still think the 2GS seats are better padded and designed, I love my 3GS. I am now comfortable. I'll now elaborate on why and what's changed. (And I'll go over my opinion of every single feature of the 3GS that I think of.)
So why did I change my opinion?
In some cases, the car itself changed, and in other cases, I found, sometimes via help from this forum, of ways to change the car's settings. And, in some cases, I just learned to live with the car as is.
Now, my remaining complaints are mainly about NITS -- such as frustratingly boneheaded decisions by the software designers who imposed several unnecessary restrictions on certain sizes in phone numbers and display of titles of songs. They are quite stupid, but they are nits nonetheless.
First let me go over my complaints from before, and then I'll give an overall review of the car, saying what I like best and least.
MY ORIGINAL COMPLAINTS
1. I found the seat quite uncomfortable.
If you look at the seats in the 3GS, you notice that rather than being smooth across, like the LS and most other Lexus cars, they stick up so that there is a big gap between the middle of the seat cushion and the outer 3 inch lip on each side. This design flaw plus the stiffness of the padding cut off the circulation to my calves. I was literally in pain at first.
The seat design is still, in my opinion, flawed and the padding is insufficient (much less than the 2GS), BUT -- and this is a big BUT -- once the padding softened up through use, it is now comfortable enough. Great, certainly not. But completely acceptable. This meant that I no longer needed to stop the car to stretch my legs.
2. The interior is too cramped.
It is (especially in the headroom area), but I finally got used to it.
3. The visibility isn't good.
I made 2 changes that increased the visibility. I lower my seat to its lowest setting possible and -- thanks to this forum -- I learned how to take control of the automatic headrest, lowering it to its lowest setting, which meant I could finally see people and cars in the blind spot behind me on the left-hand side.
4. The ride is too harsh.
After the tires were driven more, they got softer and the ride got much smoother. I still think it could and should be an even smoother ride, but it is perfectly acceptable now.
5. I missed my leather steering wheel.
In my biggest surprise of all, I learned to love the wood wheel. I think I'll change this opinion some whenever the weather gets too hot and my hands sweat, but in normal weather, I love the wood. I like its looks and its feel.
So let's look at some details about what I like best, least, and in-between about my 2008 GS350:
MY ABSOLUTE FAVORITE FEATURES (and IN order)
1. XM (love listening to a variety of classical music and all of my favorite news channels, especially in an election year)
2. Exterior color (best red I've ever seen on any car by any company ever)
3. Keyless locking and starting (so neat)
4. Parking radar (use it in my tight garage and everywhere)
5. Exterior looks
6. The wood steering wheel (can't believe I'm saying this)
7. Interior color (I've got the light color interior, but I do worry about the light color mat, since my 2GS with the light interior had a darker mat than the seats and hence didn't have problems with dirty shoes)
8. Interior looks
9. Interior lighting (like that of a great movie director)
10. The color of the wood (reddish)
GOOD FEATURES (NOT in any order)
- Bluetooth (my 2GS had a really easy to use phone -- non-Bluetooth -- interface on the side of the wheel, which meant I could speed-dial without ever taking my eyes off the road)
- Quickness (not much raw power like the 409 I drove in high school, but nice enough pickup -- actually I thought it would have power than it does)
- Voice input
- Handling
- Overall ride
- Rims (I like the wheels quite a bit but they didn't quite make my best list)
- Nav (very good and sharper than 2GS but still it does basically the same thing as the old nav; on the other hand, it is far better than on any non-Lexus car)
- "I agree" screen gone (hated it on my 2GS)
- Side mirror blinkers
- iPod input (good that isn't there, but I'll probably never use it)
- MPG (got 17.7 MPG over the entire 1,000 miles with tanks ranging from 16.6 to 18.8, which is better than the 16.5 MPG I got on my 98 GS300; 17.7 is okay but nothing to write home about)
- HID headlights (nice and bright and white, but not blinding to others like some HID headlights)
- Sunroof
- Illuminated door sills (well, it would be if I had this feature on my car, sorry it doesn't)
[A few things I missed when first posted and am adding now:]
- Backup camera (maybe not quite as useful as I thought it might be, but it does come in handy sometimes, HOWEVER, I find the parking assist MUCH more useful than the backup camera; having them both is great)
- 3 memory settings for passenger and driver's seats (this is better than the LS which does not have memory on the passenger side)
- New car interior smell (gosh I wish it could last forever)
BAD AND/OR USELESS FEATURES (NOT in any order)
- Lack of proper padding in the seats
- Arbitrarily short phone numbers (I have a 29 digit phone that I dial frequently, which fit fine in one memory location on my Lexus phone in my old 2GS but my 3GS has set arbitrary short limits on each phone number and each speed tone, forcing me to have to break my 29 digit number up into one main number and two speed dial auxiliary numbers, which means, rather than pushing one button on the steering wheel and keeping my eye on the road, as I did on my 2GS, I now have to push FIVE separate buttons on the screen on my 3GS to call this one number)
- The "pause" in a phone number is an option offered on the phone screen but does not work (design verified as not working by Lexus)
- Chopping of titles on XM to arbitrarily short lengths (titles are frequently things like "Presentation of" and nothing more, although there is plenty of room to display it all)
- Retractable side mirrors (since this is manual, it makes it useless, plus the control for it is inside the drop-down box you can't see or get at, making it doubly useless)
- The rear sunshade (I can't figure why anyone would ever use this)
- The drop down box (interesting idea, but doesn't work in practice since you can't see the box while driving and it's hard even when parked)
- Visibility (making windows shorter might be considered stylish but it cuts down on visibility)
- Interior room
- Dramatically uneven sound equalization between the XM and the other audio components (esp. the AM radio which can blow your brains out if you switch to it from the XM without lowering the volume first)
- DVD player (does anyone really watch a DVD in this crappy resolution?)
- DVD audio (I can't tell any difference in the 3GS of a DVD-audio disk over a normal CD)
- Headlight washer
- Cassette tape player
- Automatic windshield wipers (when they're good they're good and when they're bad they're horrid)
- Mark Levinson (only reason I got this was that I needed this option in order to get the parking radar which I love, the sound system itself is no better, in my opinion, that the regular Lexus sound system)
[A few things I missed when first posted and am adding now:]
- Heated seats (nothing at all wrong with them, it is just that are useless to me personally since I live in the Silicon Valley where winter lows are in the 40s and my garage is warmer than that; I have used them very briefly 2 times this past 3 months of the winter)
- Air-cooled seats (although I fully expected to love this option, it proved useless in practice since most of air is directed to the legs where I don't sweat rather than to the back where I do.)
As some of you might remember, I wrote in this forum of my initial impressions after my first week of driving that I was "VERY disappointed" by my new 2008 GS350. Coming from a 1998 GS300, I found that, in several aspects in the driver comfort area, the 2GS was a significant regression from the 3GS.
I also went on to say that, in the 95% of car, I found it to be an improvement over the 2GS. But, of course, it's hard to enjoy the neat new gadgets if you're spending all of your time thinking about how uncomfortable you are and wishing your journey was over so that you could get out of the car.
Now my opinion has changed dramatically. I adore my car now and can't wait to drive each day. While I still think the 2GS seats are better padded and designed, I love my 3GS. I am now comfortable. I'll now elaborate on why and what's changed. (And I'll go over my opinion of every single feature of the 3GS that I think of.)
So why did I change my opinion?
In some cases, the car itself changed, and in other cases, I found, sometimes via help from this forum, of ways to change the car's settings. And, in some cases, I just learned to live with the car as is.
Now, my remaining complaints are mainly about NITS -- such as frustratingly boneheaded decisions by the software designers who imposed several unnecessary restrictions on certain sizes in phone numbers and display of titles of songs. They are quite stupid, but they are nits nonetheless.
First let me go over my complaints from before, and then I'll give an overall review of the car, saying what I like best and least.
MY ORIGINAL COMPLAINTS
1. I found the seat quite uncomfortable.
If you look at the seats in the 3GS, you notice that rather than being smooth across, like the LS and most other Lexus cars, they stick up so that there is a big gap between the middle of the seat cushion and the outer 3 inch lip on each side. This design flaw plus the stiffness of the padding cut off the circulation to my calves. I was literally in pain at first.
The seat design is still, in my opinion, flawed and the padding is insufficient (much less than the 2GS), BUT -- and this is a big BUT -- once the padding softened up through use, it is now comfortable enough. Great, certainly not. But completely acceptable. This meant that I no longer needed to stop the car to stretch my legs.
2. The interior is too cramped.
It is (especially in the headroom area), but I finally got used to it.
3. The visibility isn't good.
I made 2 changes that increased the visibility. I lower my seat to its lowest setting possible and -- thanks to this forum -- I learned how to take control of the automatic headrest, lowering it to its lowest setting, which meant I could finally see people and cars in the blind spot behind me on the left-hand side.
4. The ride is too harsh.
After the tires were driven more, they got softer and the ride got much smoother. I still think it could and should be an even smoother ride, but it is perfectly acceptable now.
5. I missed my leather steering wheel.
In my biggest surprise of all, I learned to love the wood wheel. I think I'll change this opinion some whenever the weather gets too hot and my hands sweat, but in normal weather, I love the wood. I like its looks and its feel.
So let's look at some details about what I like best, least, and in-between about my 2008 GS350:
MY ABSOLUTE FAVORITE FEATURES (and IN order)
1. XM (love listening to a variety of classical music and all of my favorite news channels, especially in an election year)
2. Exterior color (best red I've ever seen on any car by any company ever)
3. Keyless locking and starting (so neat)
4. Parking radar (use it in my tight garage and everywhere)
5. Exterior looks
6. The wood steering wheel (can't believe I'm saying this)
7. Interior color (I've got the light color interior, but I do worry about the light color mat, since my 2GS with the light interior had a darker mat than the seats and hence didn't have problems with dirty shoes)
8. Interior looks
9. Interior lighting (like that of a great movie director)
10. The color of the wood (reddish)
GOOD FEATURES (NOT in any order)
- Bluetooth (my 2GS had a really easy to use phone -- non-Bluetooth -- interface on the side of the wheel, which meant I could speed-dial without ever taking my eyes off the road)
- Quickness (not much raw power like the 409 I drove in high school, but nice enough pickup -- actually I thought it would have power than it does)
- Voice input
- Handling
- Overall ride
- Rims (I like the wheels quite a bit but they didn't quite make my best list)
- Nav (very good and sharper than 2GS but still it does basically the same thing as the old nav; on the other hand, it is far better than on any non-Lexus car)
- "I agree" screen gone (hated it on my 2GS)
- Side mirror blinkers
- iPod input (good that isn't there, but I'll probably never use it)
- MPG (got 17.7 MPG over the entire 1,000 miles with tanks ranging from 16.6 to 18.8, which is better than the 16.5 MPG I got on my 98 GS300; 17.7 is okay but nothing to write home about)
- HID headlights (nice and bright and white, but not blinding to others like some HID headlights)
- Sunroof
- Illuminated door sills (well, it would be if I had this feature on my car, sorry it doesn't)
[A few things I missed when first posted and am adding now:]
- Backup camera (maybe not quite as useful as I thought it might be, but it does come in handy sometimes, HOWEVER, I find the parking assist MUCH more useful than the backup camera; having them both is great)
- 3 memory settings for passenger and driver's seats (this is better than the LS which does not have memory on the passenger side)
- New car interior smell (gosh I wish it could last forever)
BAD AND/OR USELESS FEATURES (NOT in any order)
- Lack of proper padding in the seats
- Arbitrarily short phone numbers (I have a 29 digit phone that I dial frequently, which fit fine in one memory location on my Lexus phone in my old 2GS but my 3GS has set arbitrary short limits on each phone number and each speed tone, forcing me to have to break my 29 digit number up into one main number and two speed dial auxiliary numbers, which means, rather than pushing one button on the steering wheel and keeping my eye on the road, as I did on my 2GS, I now have to push FIVE separate buttons on the screen on my 3GS to call this one number)
- The "pause" in a phone number is an option offered on the phone screen but does not work (design verified as not working by Lexus)
- Chopping of titles on XM to arbitrarily short lengths (titles are frequently things like "Presentation of" and nothing more, although there is plenty of room to display it all)
- Retractable side mirrors (since this is manual, it makes it useless, plus the control for it is inside the drop-down box you can't see or get at, making it doubly useless)
- The rear sunshade (I can't figure why anyone would ever use this)
- The drop down box (interesting idea, but doesn't work in practice since you can't see the box while driving and it's hard even when parked)
- Visibility (making windows shorter might be considered stylish but it cuts down on visibility)
- Interior room
- Dramatically uneven sound equalization between the XM and the other audio components (esp. the AM radio which can blow your brains out if you switch to it from the XM without lowering the volume first)
- DVD player (does anyone really watch a DVD in this crappy resolution?)
- DVD audio (I can't tell any difference in the 3GS of a DVD-audio disk over a normal CD)
- Headlight washer
- Cassette tape player
- Automatic windshield wipers (when they're good they're good and when they're bad they're horrid)
- Mark Levinson (only reason I got this was that I needed this option in order to get the parking radar which I love, the sound system itself is no better, in my opinion, that the regular Lexus sound system)
[A few things I missed when first posted and am adding now:]
- Heated seats (nothing at all wrong with them, it is just that are useless to me personally since I live in the Silicon Valley where winter lows are in the 40s and my garage is warmer than that; I have used them very briefly 2 times this past 3 months of the winter)
- Air-cooled seats (although I fully expected to love this option, it proved useless in practice since most of air is directed to the legs where I don't sweat rather than to the back where I do.)
Last edited by steverhode; 03-15-08 at 03:37 PM.
03-05-08, 11:44 AM
#3
Pole Position
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: NorCal
Posts: 309
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
My 1000 miles is almost coming up. Has anyone else noticed the harsh 2-1 downshift during hard braking? It doesn't seem good for the tranny. You can really feel those gears engage during the transition.
03-05-08, 11:49 AM
#6
The rear sunshade is kind of useless for people who have tinted windows but I think it's still a very nice feature for those with babies.
I hate the volume change between sources too...
Headlight washer may be useless to you but it certainly cleans up the headlights when there's a layer of ice/snow on it.
I hate the volume change between sources too...
Headlight washer may be useless to you but it certainly cleans up the headlights when there's a layer of ice/snow on it.
03-05-08, 11:59 AM
#7
Lexus Test Driver
Trending Topics
03-05-08, 01:44 PM
#10
Lexus Champion
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: So Cal
Posts: 1,810
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
I find the res of the gen 5 nav perfectly fine for watching dvd movies, gen 4 would be a whole nother story...
Rear sunscreen is great when parked outside in blazing sunlight
I like the drop down box, makes dash less cluttered, altho the trip button should be on the instrument panel.
Agree on the folding mirrors - shame it's not automated
Agree on the visibility, but it does add to the great exterior lines
Have not used the HL washers at all, in fact wasn't sure I had them since they're concealed so well (compared to 2IS or german cars)
Love, love, love ML - would be a deal breaker for me
cassette deck - no comment, maybe chief designer for 3GS has a huge library of 70/80s classic rock...
Steverhode, glad to see you have crossed over from the Dark Side
Rear sunscreen is great when parked outside in blazing sunlight
I like the drop down box, makes dash less cluttered, altho the trip button should be on the instrument panel.
Agree on the folding mirrors - shame it's not automated
Agree on the visibility, but it does add to the great exterior lines
Have not used the HL washers at all, in fact wasn't sure I had them since they're concealed so well (compared to 2IS or german cars)
Love, love, love ML - would be a deal breaker for me
cassette deck - no comment, maybe chief designer for 3GS has a huge library of 70/80s classic rock...
Steverhode, glad to see you have crossed over from the Dark Side
03-05-08, 04:00 PM
#11
Lexus Connoisseur
Amazing. Love the write up. Thanks!
BTW, you have 12,000 more miles to catch up to me.
BTW, you have 12,000 more miles to catch up to me.
03-05-08, 04:35 PM
#14
Lexus Connoisseur
03-05-08, 07:58 PM
#15
Lead Lap
Thread Starter
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: Dallas area, Texas
Posts: 564
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Tried hard to review EVERY single feature
You'll have to stop driving for quite a while for me to catch up with you since I have had my car for 3 months now and have a little over 900 miles on it.