ut2sua

Nicely stated. Some reviewers on some sites (Car and Driver? I could be wrong) just hated the handling of Lexus' cars. All this "not fun to drive, wish I am in an xxx right now...", and ended up giving the ES 2 out of 5 stars after admitting all the Lexus typical: comfort, high quality, quietness, good power etc (???) I respect their opinion, but working as reviewers, these folks should take into account the million of folks who enjoy driving Lexus. My fun-to-drive definition is just different than theirs. I don't enjoy driving a car without much suspension, and lots of road noise is not "performance" to me. For individuals who stated their own opinion, I have a lot more tolerant for them however.

boe

No I'm not - I'm saying it should have both for people who want a touchpad or a **** or a joystick AND a touchscreen. I didn't see a reason to go on about reasons for the other provided it was both. Maybe you conveniently didn't read what I wrote and were looking for a reason not to accept someone would want both. Maybe next time I should put the conjunction AND in 20 point font since capitalizing the entire word didn't make it stick out for you?

Mike728

Go ahead and see how easily it would be to use the nav in the ES as a touch screen.

Gekko

pretty easy especially given that you're typically only reaching over once at the start of your trip. BTW - the Remote Touch UI also freezes while driving which is a whole other discussion. so they crippled the Nav by removing the touchscreen and replacing it with an awful imprecise 1980's joystick and didn't even add the benefit of accessibility while in motion. modern day smartphones and tablets have proven that touch is the best UI input to date (yes even in cars) yet Lexus chose to go backwards IMO.

Fillykonk

I happen to like the current setup regarding nav screen/joystick interface. I must admit I didn't at first but as I have fine-tuned the joystick movement and gotten use to its interaction I have found it easy to use. I also like the fact that no touchscreen avoids the messy fingerprints such a screen would acquire as is the case in my wife's 2009 Odyssey and its recess avoids the glare all to common on her van's screen. But to each his own.

FmrAccord

I personally really do like the remote touch in the ES. Our other car has a touchscreen and I have difficulty maneuvering my finger into the small areas in the touchscreen while the vehicle is moving. For me, the remote touch in my ES is far easier to use while moving.

Gekko

well love it or hate it my guess is that the Remote Touch is going away and they will move all of the new model cars to either the Touchpad or whatever is their next new thing.

boe

A reasonable response - that is really the point of this - to each his own. You don't want fingerprints - I have no problem with that. If it included BOTH as I said you could continue to use the joystick/touchpad interface and others who weren't worried about fingerprints could use the touch screen - everybody is happy except those who insist you must only do it their way and if you aren't you are wrong for not accepting that everything should only be done their way.

Gekko

i would never buy the last model year of a car right before the redesign - regardless of discount. you'd be still paying the "new" premium for a soon to be dated design. it's a new old car!

bc6152

My laptop, the one I'm on right now, has either touch screen or mouse pointer. That, to me, is the best way to handle the NAV system. The wife's Honda has a touch only for music stations. I'm always looking at smeared fingerprints. Ugggh. Additionally, I'm hoping that some of these previous posts are wrong as far as a major redesign only in 2019 or 2020.
I have a 2013 and hope for a new car in MY 2018 - but only if a redesigned Lexus ES. Have to wait and see...

AMNss

I have two cars one with touch screen and the other with the mouse. I prefer the mouse since it doesn't let you get distracted from the road as much as the touch screen.

chromedome

Every single day, with the aftermarket nav unit I installed on my ES. The touch screen is almost unusable because it's so far away from the driver, so I end up using the remote touch mouse lookalike. Even then I still prefer to use my phone because it's a lot faster and gets traffic updates.

I've got the stock touchscreen nav unit on a previous gen RX. It's easier to enter a destination on that - while stationary of course - but climate control settings are a total pain to use on the touchscreen.

I think the problem is that most car screens are too small and far away. I've tried the monstrous screen on the Tesla Model S, loved it because it's big enough and close enough for easy text entry. Climate control buttons are on a dedicated strip at the bottom so it's not that hard to use, unlike on the old RX where climate control buttons are on a separate screen.

pab12

News from the Detroit auto show was that a new Camry is going to be released for 2018. I bet that means a new Avalon and ES will follow by late 2018 or 2019.
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My karma just ran over your dogma
Current Hers: '13 Lexus ES350
Current Mine: '08 Jaguar S-Type 4.2

ayanomich

As a newby to the Lexus brand, and having dealt with both touchscreen Nav systems (2015 VW Passat/2007 Acura TL/2003 Acura MDX) and what I would call a round remote touch system **** style (2014 Acura MDX) I find my 17 ES350 remote touch to be a lot easier to use than the aforementioned. Working with computers daily using a wireless mouse, probably has contributed to my liking the ES system since I am basically doing the same arm movements in the car. Touchscreens by nature of where they are in most cars, i.e, located lower on the dash, do have glare problems, and my old Passat massively so in the late afternoons with the western sun coming in thru the back window. Also the ES nav location is easier to look at and doesn't involve as much eye time as others have mentioned.

The idea of a dual touchscreen type/touchpad, remote touch whatever sounds like an idea, but no way could the nav screen be where it is now on the ES for a touchscreen. So Lexus would have to put two screens in, which could be done as Acura has, but it would really have to be some hell of a system and probably cost more bucks too.

lesz

You have hit precisely on the reason why a screen that could be used either as a touch screen or as a mouse-controlled screen wouldn't make much sense. To use the screen as a touch screen, the screen would have to be moved to a location much closer to the driver. That location most likely would be about where the radio is on the ES, but, if the screen were moved to that location, doing so would eliminate two of the main advantages of the mouse-controlled screen in the ES, which are elimination of glare and the ability to quickly glance at the screen without having to turn one's head away from the road. If you take away those two advantages of the mouse-controlled screen, there would be little point in still allowing the screen to be controlled by the mouse.

Also, the noticeably improved voice control capabilities in the 2017 ES result in it being less important whether the screen is a touch screen or a mouse-controlled screen. On my 2013, the voice control system was, for me, virtually useless. The number of functions that could be controlled by voice was limited. Using the system was cumbersome, and, more often than not, the system didn't recognize what I was telling it to do. One of the first improvements that I noticed when I got my 2017 ES was how good the voice control function was. Not only can it understand plain language, but the number of things that I can now control with my voice is much larger than it was with the 2013 ES. Not only is it simple to set the navigation system with voice commands, but you control must functions of the audio system and climate control systems with voice commands. Best of all, the system actually understands the commands. Thus, I find that there is less need for me to use the mouse, and, if there was a touch screen, I would have less need to use it, too.