seanlin

We love our new RX450h. It drives really well. Very comfortable.

I have been playing around with Lexus enform. I dont see any special about it. Seriously, I am not so impressive about it. What do you think? I dont think it worth money to renew it unless they come out with a very cool update.

I have been use Acuralink and aha. I think Acura connect and Acura steams are much better so far.

I am attaching few acuratlink pictures from my phone.

BertL

I would agree.

Lexus has a long way to go on functionality, while improving reliability and packaging of their electronic offerings compared to their competition -- be that Acura, Mercedes-Benz, etc. Even though Lexus just provided me with a free 1-year extension to my Enform Apps Trial, I still don't use them and assuming there are no dramatic improvements, I won't pay for them when my "2-year trial" is up next year. This thread from a couple weeks ago has further thoughts from me and a couple others in this regard.

Fortunately, you have a 1-year free trial on not only Apps, but the rest of Enform capabilities, as well as SiriusXM Music, Traffic, etc -- much longer than some competitors -- on your new RX, so enjoy the parts that you find useful in the meantime while you're crusin' down the road.

vlad_a

I will agree. If I had an option of not buying it, I wouldn't. Unfortunately, it is an integral part of RX450h packaging. Absolutely not paying a monthly fee for it.

Nimimi

According to the letter from XM, the music trial is for only 3 months. The weather, traffic, etc. is for one year.

BertL

Yes, well I stand corrected -- it seems to depend on when you purchased your RX, as Lexus.com is even citing the only 90-day trial when I checked just now. FWIW, my 2013 RX450h, delivered June 2012 came with a full year of free SiriusXM Music, Weather, Traffic and Travel-whatever (I don't use it) as confirmed on the SiriusXM site where I registered -- I don't start paying until those trials are up next month. Interestingly, my future MBZ to be delivered in August will have a 6-month Sirius Music trial, but only 3 months of traffic and weather. I guess we all have to read the constantly changing fine print.

seanlin

Hi Bert,
How do you like MBZ in-car app so far? It has google local search and has google street view. Looks kinda of cool in youtube video. How's the real life experience with it?

Youtube video for people like to see:

BertL

Have not taken delivery of my SLK yet -- It is scheduled to be completed the first week of 2014 production around June 10, so I probably won't have it until late July or early August-timeframe. I plan to create a thread here on CL comparing Navigation/COMAND, Voice Recognition, and Enform/mbrace technologies, packaging, etc after I've had the MBZ for at least a month or so. My hope is the thread will be a good adjunct to my 2013 RX450h First Impressions posts from last year, as my SLK will have the latest stuff available from MBZ, just as my 2013 RXh does from Lexus.

My preliminary thoughts reading the MBZ manuals and literature, with some videos, and going through their rather extensive iPhone/iPad apps is the MBZ environment appears superior to Lexus in many ways -- both in capability and packaging. From the MBZ forums I've been watching for the past 6 months, they appear to suffer from some similar problems we see with Lexus in this new world of connecting autos with the web, and in some different ways as well. MBZ I believe by it's nature -- for the good and bad of it, reliability-wise -- is a bit more progressive in these areas, e.g. they just made iPhone Siri integration and a downloadable offline Google Maps mapping capability retroactively available as a pay-for-upgrade on many 2013/4 models that incorporate their new 2nd gen 4.5 head unit (which includes capabilities sorta what we got in the upgraded Lexus head unit in the 2013 RXs to support Enform Apps). MBZ also made a recent announcement over the next 4 years, they are going to let Garmin run the underpinnings of their navigation, so they are moving forward... I'll reserve further judgement until I've had some practical time with my new MBZ to compare with my years of owning Lexus. It's all just speculation on my part now, so more to come in a new thread when I have real hands-on experience in late summer or early Fall.