After spending a hot Houston summer last year thinking that the IS's AC isn't strong enough for this side of town, I found this setting today that was turned on under climate.

I disabled it and noticed a difference right away.

Well...hell...

 

Yeah. This is a little trap laying far in the back of the menus.
For little heat, eco AC is okay, but if you need all you climatic system's power, you need to deactivate it.
Lots of modern cars have those though. They plenty of sense in in-between climate and "not extreme" heatwaves.

 

Yeah, for hot air during winter (barely ever used here) this made no difference I'm sure.

...but for Houston's humidity and heat during the summer months, you need all the cooling you can get...

Maybe I should really read the entire manual of this car...who knows what else they sneaked in there...

 

Also,

The bottom right option according to the manual is to engage the pollen filter.

When running the AC in "Auto" mode this always gets disabled.

What does it really do? Is there a separate filter somewhere or the air doesn't pass through the cabin filter unless this option is engaged?

 

The owner's manual does not specify whether there is a separate filter.

 

Just wanted to add - from my experience, the cabin filter is definitely used even when the dust/pollen filter is not engaged. At least, I can only conclude as much based on the stuff my filter caught after 1 year and 9k miles.

 

Interesting; I checked mine with 6K miles and no pollen filter option used and it looks brand new.

I wonder what on earth it actually does (if anything at all). I just know when I activate that option, the fan speed increases by two bars.