You can use the BMW Connected app to see a 360 picture of your car! Paul reviews BMW's latest version of iDrive, BMW iDrive 7.0 and also walks you through the BMW Connected Drive application on the iPhone. Is iDrive still the best infotainment system in a luxury car? Watch and find out!
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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.
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MotorTranscript
00:00 G'day, I'm Paul. BMW's iDrive system has been around for ages now. It's one of my favourite
00:04 systems and it is advanced compared to a lot of other infotainment systems on the market.
00:09 The latest version is iDrive 7, so today what I'm going to do is take you through a detailed
00:13 review of iDrive 7, the screen in front of the driver plus the BMW remote connected app.
00:19 If you want to check out some of our other infotainment reviews, we have a whole bunch
00:22 of them there from different manufacturers. You can click on the playlist up the top,
00:25 but otherwise, let's get into it.
00:27 Today we're sitting in the M8 competition, so in addition to showing you the standard
00:31 features of iDrive, I'll show you some of the M menus that are specific to M cars.
00:35 So if you don't have an M car or you're not looking at getting one, just disregard those,
00:39 but the rest of the system is going to be virtually the same.
00:42 So iDrive 7 is a 10.25-inch screen. It's both a touchscreen and it also uses the iDrive
00:48 controller down the bottom here, which has this rotary knob and it has a touchpad on top of it,
00:53 plus a bunch of shortcut buttons above it and below it as well.
00:57 The home screen has several menus. So this is your default menu with navigation.
01:01 We have radio hooked up here and telephone. If I swipe across, you can see some of the
01:05 M menus that are on display and one more gives you status of the vehicle journey,
01:10 your current traffic situation and a compass.
01:12 You can customise all of these menus by clicking up the top here and then changing around what
01:16 you want on each page, adding more pages and putting as much detail as you want in there.
01:21 Let's kick things off with media. So in the media menu, you'll find the radio details,
01:26 AM, FM, DAB plus digital radio. You can stream music online. You also have the ability to pair
01:32 your phone to do Bluetooth streaming. There's an internal hard drive for storage of contents
01:37 inside. What you'll also find here is one of the gesture controls to control audio volume.
01:42 So by using my finger, I can turn, go like that to turn it up and down. I can use hand
01:50 gestures to answer calls and reject calls as well. The stuff's kind of pointless, to be honest.
01:54 I don't know that you'll ever be sitting in the car doing this to turn it up and down. So
01:58 it's a bit of a funny feature, but it's there anyway, in case you want to use it and you can
02:02 disable it as well if you find it frustrating. Jump into the comms menu. This is where your
02:06 phone sits. This is also where you'll find additional features like the calendar, tasks,
02:10 email. You can actually pair the calendar to your phone so that it uploads daily.
02:14 You can always find your calendar reminders here. And if you go out for a drive and you've got a
02:18 meeting coming up, the car is able to tell you. You can also hook your phone up via Apple CarPlay
02:23 and it's wireless Apple CarPlay as well. There is no Android Auto system, unfortunately,
02:28 and there is wireless phone charging as well available in some cars. So it means you can
02:31 charge your car while you also have Apple CarPlay running on the screen. Let's jump into the nav
02:35 menu. The nav in this car is really impressive. The screen is very high resolution and it's very
02:41 fast. So as I flick around here, zoom in and zoom out, it's a good indication of how quick
02:47 the processor is behind the screen. And then you can see here as well that on major roads,
02:52 you'll find traffic information. So this road here is all green, which means traffic is great.
02:56 It will then route you around traffic issues. Now in terms of entering destinations, it's quite a
03:00 clever system. So if you want to use the QWERTY keyboard, you can do that, or you can just start
03:05 writing on the top there. Works well if you're left-handed, but I find being right-handed,
03:09 that's a little bit tricky to do. And I think, I don't know what the stats are, but I think a lot
03:12 of people are right-handed. So if this was a left-hand drive car, that would be a much
03:16 easier system to use. But let me know in the comments below if you have iDrive or a similar
03:20 system with a touchpad. Do you ever use this, or do you just go straight into the screen or use
03:24 the rotary dial? Next up is the car menu. This is where things get really fun. If I go to the top
03:30 here, I'll walk you through each of the menus. So the driving information shows you your previous
03:34 driving history, how much fuel you've consumed, your average fuel consumption, your average speed
03:38 and your last journey time. You've also got sport display. So depending on which car you're driving,
03:43 this will display different things. Here in the M car, we have the G meter. You also have
03:48 newton meters and kilowatts and engine temperatures. And on top of that, in all-wheel drive cars,
03:53 you'll be able to see the energy flow. So the M8 Competition, for example, is all-wheel drive.
03:57 It will show you when it's sending torque to the rear wheels and also the front wheels.
04:00 The M menu is specific to M cars, and I'll show you this quickly. You can configure what the M1
04:06 and the M2 buttons do. So they're located here on the steering wheel. They're red. These are
04:10 shortcuts to configure the car's drive modes. So if I click on configure M1, it allows me to select
04:15 what the car's going to do when I select M1. So I can configure the engine, transmission, chassis,
04:21 steering, brakes, the works, everything so that one push of that button will deliver those results
04:26 straight away. And I don't need to go fishing through the menus. Same story with the M2 button.
04:30 You can also set what is displayed on the heads-up display. Here with M cars, you can have a
04:35 tachometer on the display plus your navigation data. There is a lot of configurability, and you
04:40 can also change whether you're getting a full heads-up display or a minimised version. And
04:44 then finally, we have the settings for the instrument cluster. We can customise everything
04:48 that appears ahead of the driver, what kind of information you want, what kind of information
04:51 you don't want, and how it reacts to certain inputs such as these buttons and the buttons
04:55 on the steering wheel. Next up is vehicle status. This is where you're going to find all of the
04:59 car's warnings. So you can see here tyre pressure monitoring, engine oil level, which only works
05:03 when the car's on, and then any control requirements. If you've got servicing coming
05:07 up, if there's a flat tyre, this is all going to appear in this menu here. And it will also appear
05:11 ahead of the driver, but if you ever need to catch up on any messages you've missed, they will all
05:15 be in this menu. The settings menu is interesting here because if I start going through this, I love
05:19 the way that as we switch between the different context menus, you're getting displays of what
05:24 the car's doing. So it makes it easier to understand what you're about to dive into and
05:28 change. So if we go into general settings, you'll see here you can configure everything in here. And
05:32 this is what I love about BMWs. I'm a bit of a tech guy, so I love being able to go and change
05:36 literally the colour of the lights inside the car, or whether this screen is showing one thing
05:41 on the left or another. And it's all pretty straightforward. As you hover over these menus,
05:44 you'll see the contents of them inside. So you don't need to go into a menu to find out what's
05:48 in it. It gives you a preview before you click on it. Same story with exterior lighting, you can
05:52 customise what the lights are doing. And with the driver assistance systems, given that some of
05:56 these cars are going to be used on racetracks, for example, you can adjust the level of safety
06:00 intervention so that you don't have the car interfering or thinking that someone's going
06:04 to crash into you when they're not. And you can have full control over how much of this is active
06:08 or disabled at any time. And then as you scroll through, you'll see the rest of the settings for
06:12 displays, vehicle access, interior lighting and comfort inside the car, plus what the buttons on
06:17 the key do. You can customise how many windows open, how many windows close, whether it opens
06:21 the boot as well. So there's a high level of customisability through the iDrive system.
06:25 Unique to the higher-end cars in BMW's range, and also available through the BMW Connected
06:31 Store, which is where you can add extra apps to the car for a fee, are some of the other features
06:35 such as experience modes. So in this car here, we can set different ambient lighting, temperature
06:40 and seat ventilation if we want to go executive. Or if we want to go expressive, we can adjust
06:44 the ambient lighting to suit. You can then customise each of these modes as well. Kind
06:48 of a redundant feature, but I think if you can pick it up for free, why not?
06:51 The carrying car is interesting. So I had a long drive in the M8 competition and was feeling a
06:56 little bit drowsy. I was able to hit the vitalise button. And what it does is it fluctuates
06:59 temperatures inside the car from no fan speed to high fan speed at 18 degrees. So the whole point
07:05 is to keep you awake and get that cold air on your face, which kind of gives you a second
07:09 lease on life while you're driving. And then you have a relax function as well that can do the
07:13 same thing, just to make you feel a little more calm inside the car. Finally, in the settings
07:17 menu, you have driver profiles. So if you have several drivers, you can assign profiles to them
07:21 for different settings within the car. And then you have the owner's handbook that appears on
07:25 the screen here. This is another good system because everything is inside the car. Yes, you do
07:29 have a printed manual, but if you need to figure out how to do things, it'll show you videos and
07:34 give you instructions on how to do everything. Let's have a look at the apps menu. So I mentioned
07:39 before that within the BMW Store, you're able to buy apps for the car. So you can see here all the
07:44 apps that have been purchased for the car that we're in. These come standard with the car in
07:48 Australia for a period of three years, I believe. So this is all free of charge. But then if you
07:52 want to add extra things, so I'm able to add the digital key for the car, which allows me to lock
07:56 and unlock the car using my phone instead of a car key. This is something that you need to book
08:01 through the system, pay for it if you need to, and then it gets downloaded to the car. So it's a bit
08:05 like the Tesla system where they add features over time. But in this instance here, it's stuff that
08:10 you can buy that is fitted to the car as hardware, but isn't activated as software. And one feature,
08:15 just as an example of that with BMW and iDrive, is the drive recorder. What BMW was able to do
08:20 was activate the AEB cameras within the car to record as a dash cam, so that if you ever run
08:25 into an incident or have an accident, you have footage that's available. That's an example of
08:29 a feature that they rolled out with a remote software upgrade, and the buyers can add to
08:33 their car for a set fee. Next up, let's talk about the BMW Connected app. It's one of my favourite
08:38 features of iDrive because it allows you to connect to the car remotely, see what the car's doing,
08:42 and there's also a really cool 360-degree camera feature that I'll show you in a second. So that's
08:46 what the home screen looks like. It shows you your exact car and the configuration you've chosen,
08:51 although the colour's wrong on this. Our car's frozen blue, but that's white for some reason.
08:55 It shows you the fuel level in the car, the amount of range you have left, and if we jump over to the
08:58 info menu, it shows you exactly what's going on with the car. So at the moment, we have the door
09:02 open and the window down. You can also check any warnings that are appearing in the car, any
09:07 services you have coming up, any software upgrades that are available, and the enabled features that
09:13 you have through that BMW Store. If you jump over to the remote menu, you can remotely lock and
09:17 unlock the car as well. So one push of this button allows you to send an unlock command to the car,
09:23 and it will unlock the car. You can flash the headlights, see exactly where the car is located,
09:27 ventilate it as well. If it's a hot day, you can get some fresh air running through it.
09:31 Schedule your ventilation. This is especially handy on BMW's electric and plug-in hybrid cars.
09:36 And then this is my favourite thing, the 3D view. Check this out. So one push of that button,
09:40 what it does is it brings up the cameras around the car, and then it allows me to do a 3D view
09:47 from anywhere in the world. So I could be sitting overseas somewhere on a beach,
09:51 car could be in the garage, and I can press the 3D view button. It'll show me exactly where the
09:54 car is and what's going on around it. Love this technology. I don't think anyone else does this.
09:59 And then finally, if we jump over to the destinations menu, you can send destinations
10:03 to the car. So a good example of this is I had to send my wife an address that she was going to.
10:08 She had no idea where she was going. Through our Tesla, it has a similar function to this.
10:12 All I did was type in the address, sent it to the car, and it instantly came up on the
10:16 nav system and started directing her to where she needed to go. Finally, you have activity and the
10:21 hub menu. The hub menu is just news from BMW that they want to push out to you. It shows you
10:25 a preferred dealer. Also shows you the subscriptions you have booked, and also extra subscriptions you
10:30 can buy through the store as well, so they can extract a little bit more money out of you.
10:34 Okay, moving on from that, we have the screen in front of the driver. Now, unfortunately,
10:38 I've got to start the car. This is a bizarre thing. The engine start button doesn't actually
10:42 activate the accessory systems. So I'm going to have to start the car. It's going to be a
10:45 little bit loud, which is good. There it is there. Turn the exhaust off.
10:50 Okay, so you're presented with a lot of information here ahead of the driver. On the left-hand side,
10:55 you have your fuel level. Right-hand side is engine temperature. And then in between,
10:59 it's littered with other functions. So in the standard display, I'll run you through the sport
11:03 displays in a second. You have a speedometer to the left, tachometer to the right. Speed is
11:08 integrated on the left-hand side, navigation map in the centre, and then you have fuel consumption
11:13 in the window to the right. You can go through the BC menu, which brings up different displays,
11:19 shows you your turbo pressure, engine temperatures, power gauges, and then with the M cars,
11:25 you have the G gauge. You also have your radio details. What you can then further do with M
11:30 models like the M8 Competition is put it into a sport display for the M mode. That disables some
11:37 of the assistance systems around the car and changes the display ahead of the driver. So now
11:41 you get speed in the centre and the gear you're in directly in the centre. So you're having all
11:45 the critical information ahead of you. And then in front of the driver, you then have a tachometer
11:49 on the heads-up display. You can go one step further by pushing and holding the M mode button.
11:54 That then allows us to activate track mode. Track mode disables all the safety systems.
11:59 It disables the radio and anything else that's going to distract the driver. And it strictly
12:03 focuses on giving you information about speed, gears, and going faster. Finally, what you're
12:08 able to do with the steering wheel controls, you have your radar cruise on the left-hand side,
12:11 but on the right-hand side, you have a scroll menu that allows you to run through the different
12:14 radio stations, voice recognition button as well. Excellent voice recognition system. It either uses
12:19 the car's infotainment voice recognition, which works really well, or it will go straight through
12:23 your phone if you're paired with smartphone mirroring. And finally, you have a telephone
12:27 button on the steering wheel as well. So that has been a detailed look at iDrive 7, plus a couple of
12:32 the bits and pieces around it as well. You can check out the rest of our channel for more car
12:36 reviews, more infotainment reviews, and other fun content. Also, if you have enjoyed this video,
12:41 don't forget to like it, hit subscribe, and the bell icon as well. That'll tell you each time we
12:46 publish a new car review. But until next time, take it easy.