We all know that Skodas are Volkswagens in disguise, but Skoda has gone to some effort with the Skoda Columbus infotainment system to make it unique and add extra features to it. Paul Maric reviews the Skoda 9.2-inch Columbus infotainment system.
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@skoda
We review every new car on the market, bust car myths, cover the latest car tech and answer your burning questions.
Whether you need new car advice, purchase validation or simply love learning more about new cars and technology, we are your car experts.
Subscribe to Car Expert: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7DvMhvy3H7ntEgn9n3xQcQ?sub_confirmation=1
You'll find us dropping new video content three times a week. If you'd like to ask a question about one of our videos, simply leave us a comment. If you'd like to give us any feedback on our content, feel free to email us, or alternatively, hit us up on social media.
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MotorTranscript
00:00 Skoda is kicking some goals at the moment with infotainment systems.
00:03 We know that they share their infotainment system with Volkswagen, but there is a few
00:06 extra bits and pieces that Skoda fits, so let's have a detailed look at the Skoda Columbus
00:11 infotainment system.
00:14 So this is your home screen.
00:15 You access that by hitting the home button.
00:17 It shows you navigation, telephone, where you can add your favourites, and then also
00:20 radio, and then you can basically go through each of these menus.
00:24 What you'll notice is that as you approach with your finger, you can see the additional
00:29 context menus pop up, and that's because of this little strip down here.
00:32 There's some gesture functions that I'll run you through in just one moment, but let's
00:36 start here with navigation.
00:38 This is the main navigation screen.
00:39 You can scroll around, zoom in, zoom out.
00:42 There's automatic zoom, shortcuts to find the car again.
00:45 You can also change whether you want to go from automatic or fix a rate of zoom, and
00:50 as you approach with your finger there, you see the extra context menus appear.
00:53 You can use voice recognition, or if you do want to manually enter addresses, you simply
00:58 go through and type them in here, either as points of interest or full addresses.
01:03 Generally it works pretty well.
01:04 Let's try typing in Melbourne Airport.
01:06 There you go.
01:08 So that's immediately starting to find everything that we need.
01:11 It's really nice and fast as well, quite responsive.
01:14 So the navigation menu is good.
01:16 You also get traffic built into that as well.
01:18 So let's jump over to the menu where we have radio.
01:22 In here you have FM, AM, DAB plus digital radio.
01:25 So there's a full raft of stations there, but like Ford's sync system, it basically
01:31 makes you go through bands.
01:33 So here you can see one band, and then for me to get to the next one, I've got to select
01:36 it and then wait for it to pop up.
01:38 I don't understand why they can't all just be displayed in one screen.
01:41 It's kind of weird that it has to then break them up and you need to go looking through
01:45 different sections.
01:46 It'd be easier if they were all just alphabetical order.
01:49 Telephones, same story.
01:50 Once you're connected with Bluetooth, it all works as it will.
01:54 In addition to phone connectivity, you have smartphone mirroring with Apple CarPlay, Android
01:58 Auto and MirrorLink.
02:00 That's all controlled with a cable you plug in and then your phone is mirrored onto there.
02:04 It's all widescreen functionality too, so the screen actually looks really nice and
02:08 crisp when you have your phone mirroring onto the car.
02:11 And the advantage of that is that you can use your phone's voice recognition system,
02:14 which uses the cloud and third parties for extra functionality and also things like sending
02:19 messages.
02:20 So that's a really great feature.
02:22 If we jump back over to the menu, media, you have media storage built into the car so you
02:26 can copy music to the car's internal hard drive.
02:29 But most of the time these days people are simply using things like Spotify or third
02:35 party streaming services that they access through their smartphone mirroring.
02:38 Now the gesture controls, check this out.
02:40 If I want to swipe to the next menu, it even gives you a sound effect, which is pretty
02:46 cool.
02:47 Vehicle, this is what I love about the Skoda.
02:50 So in front of me I have another digital display.
02:54 I can configure everything that's on that display here.
02:56 So if I click on virtual cockpit, instantly I can flick through these menus and change
03:01 the things that are appearing in front of me.
03:03 And then I can simply auto, classic, there's a number of different views I can select and
03:07 they automatically update ahead of the driver so you have all of that information ahead
03:11 of you all of the time.
03:13 The other cool thing, because this is a four wheel drive, I have four wheel drive information.
03:17 So you have a compass, you have the inclination, so how far up, down or sideways you are, and
03:23 also your altitude, how far above sea level are you.
03:25 And these can all then be changed around to display different parts there.
03:29 So that's a handy feature to have.
03:31 Driving data is also useful when it comes to cars like this.
03:34 This is a diesel, it's a fuel efficient car.
03:36 This keeps tabs of how much fuel you're using and also how green you're being.
03:40 So you can see here we have a rating of 84.
03:43 That means we've been very friendly with the throttle there.
03:46 And then you even have a secondary screen that tells you how you're going since you
03:50 refuelled and how much energy you've recouped with the stop start system as well.
03:55 You've also got a lap timer in here.
03:57 So if we go to the sport menu, you can time your laps if you're at the Nurburgring going
04:01 for a blad.
04:02 Then you've got other sport displays as well.
04:04 Same story, you can just swipe up and down to have those displayed here.
04:07 I love the G meter too, that's pretty awesome.
04:10 Back to the menu, we have the rest of the functions.
04:12 So SmartLink is our connectivity with smartphones.
04:15 We also have media command.
04:17 Now this is a fascinating menu because this allows us to configure our wireless LAN and
04:21 our mobile hotspot.
04:22 So that's useful if you have kids, they have iPads and that kind of thing.
04:25 They can connect to the single hotspot and that's shared throughout the car.
04:29 So you have one data connection and then multiple users.
04:32 So that is a really, really cool feature to have.
04:34 And it uses the car's internal antenna to allow you to connect.
04:37 Which means if you've got the phone over here, it doesn't matter if the kids are in the third
04:40 row, they're still able to connect reliably.
04:42 Finally, if we go over to the air conditioning menu, I find this quite fascinating because
04:47 you have a number of different options to set climate zones throughout the cabin.
04:50 You've also got a menu called Air Care.
04:53 And Air Care Climatronic is a certain type of filter that's fitted to this car.
04:58 And it's able to optimise its function to filter pollen and also increase the quality
05:03 of air that you have in your cabin.
05:05 So it's not like the biosecurity mode you have with a HEPA filter in a Tesla, but it
05:09 still is an improved air quality inside the cabin.
05:12 So that is a pretty handy feature to have.
05:15 This is a fantastic system, 9.2 inches in size.
05:19 Skoda has absolutely nailed functionality here.
05:21 It's very easy to use, presented beautifully.
05:23 And it also means that you have to spend less time with your eyes off the road.
05:27 You can read the full Skoda Columbus infotainment review at carexpert.com.au.
05:31 You can get your feedback as well.
05:34 Do you own a Skoda?
05:35 Have you used the Columbus infotainment system?
05:37 What's it like to use day to day?
05:39 Let us know in the comments below.