When you buy a new car, it comes with its own ‘infotainment’ system – a screen that provides information and entertainment while you drive. Vehicle manufacturers are borrowing technology from the world of consumer electronics, bringing your car ever more closely into alignment with your phone or tablet.

These infotainment systems bring with them some excellent benefits for drivers, but also a few potential pitfalls.

The advantages of infotainment systems

Essentially, infotainment systems give you access to vastly more functions and features.

• They provide feedback from the car’s cameras – and once you get used to reversing and parking cameras, it’s hard to go back to driving without them.
• They allow you to use on-screen maps to navigate.
• You can connect your phone to the system and use it hands-free, so you can make calls and receive text messages without needing to look at your phone.
• By connecting Android Auto or Apple CarPlay, you can have access to your everyday apps like Google Maps and Spotify.
• You may be able to use voice commands to control functions in the car that would otherwise require you to push a button.

In future, your infotainment system will also improve your safety. Since 2018, new cars in the European Union must be able to connect to emergency services in the event of an accident. That means cars must all have SIM cards and be connected to the internet, providing extra advantages like live traffic reports, weather forecasts and Wi-Fi hotspotting.

But there are a few downsides, too

There are a few problems that can crop up with infotainment systems which you’d never encounter with old-fashioned knobs and dials:

• They can be highly distracting. US research conducted in 2017 found that drivers using infotainment systems were very distracting – worse than using a phone or even texting while driving. However, it’s worth noting that systems have evolved considerably over the past five years, so some improvements have been made.
• Not all systems are easy to use and they can be annoying. A survey of more 73,000 drivers in the US found that drivers disliked their systems if they had one of the following issues: a touchpad/mouse controller; everyday items requiring too many steps to find; overcomplicated menus; slow responses; and poor speech recognition leading to misunderstood commands.
• Even with a reasonably good user interface, too-small symbols or text can be a struggle for long-sighted users.

Considering the infotainment system when you choose a new car 

Shop around! Try out the infotainment system on every car you’re thinking of buying. Ask yourself some questions:

• That huge infotainment screen in the centre of the dashboard might look impressive, but will it be distracting and prove to be a safety hazard?
• Can you easily read the screen without looking away from the road for too long?
• Is the user interface intuitive – can you quickly find the function you want or is it buried under various menus?
• Is it simple to use, or overly complicated?
• Does the system respond quickly to your taps and commands?

If you drive an older vehicle and you’re used to classic knobs and dials, you’re accustomed to simplicity, instant responses and haptic feedback (you can feel the dial ‘clicking’ around, so you know how far you’ve turned it). You may find infotainment systems particularly frustrating.

Some infotainment systems still have dials, although this is becoming rarer. However, manufacturers do recognise these challenges and newer systems are being developed that include haptic feedback on touchscreens. In general, newer infotainment systems are more user-friendly, because manufacturers are combining feedback and experience to keep improving the useability.

So, take your time, make the most of those test drives, and don’t be shy about asking plenty of questions and trialling each infotainment system to its fullest.