BMW’s iDrive 8 infotainment system is not very good

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Under normal circumstances, one would expect an infotainment system to improve in every way as it transitions from one version to the next. Screens become more responsive, brighter and clearer. The software is tweaked to be better, and you gain more capabilities than before. That’s the way it’s supposed to work, but BMW’s iDrive 8 does not follow this line of thinking.

It hurts me to say this, too, for I’m easily the biggest advocate of iDrive 7 on staff here at Autoblog. There’s a perfect blend of hard controls and touchscreen controls for vital vehicle functions, and the iDrive knob ties it all together in a happy harmony. The software itself is glitch-free, super-quick to respond, and the menu structure makes sense. Most of us on staff would agree that these are all big pluses for iDrive 7, including my co-writer for this piece, Senior Editor James Riswick.

Both Riswick and I (Road Test Editor Zac Palmer) spent separate weeks in new BMW i4s that feature iDrive 8, and we came away with similar complaints.

Zac's take

Unfortunately, iDrive 8 takes a lot of iDrive 7’s best qualities, then throws them out the window entirely for a replacement that is worse. What the vast majority of my grievances boil down to is added complexity to complete tasks. Something that could’ve been done with a single tap in a iDrive 7-equipped BMW now requires upwards of three or more taps. Take, for instance, the climate controls. BMW removed all of the hard climate controls from the center stack besides front and rear defrost, then tucked them into a new “climate menu.” Temperature control remains docked at the bottom of the touchscreen, but if you want to activate your heated seats, it requires a trip through the climate menu. The same goes for fan speed, direction of the fan and anything else you can think of re: climate controls. Predictably, it’s more time-consuming to operate and far trickier to fiddle with while driving than the nice row of buttons BMW employed previously.

Then there’s the BMW’s Dynamic Stability Control settings. There is still a hard button on the center console that you can tap to put it into “Sport Traction” mode (our favorite for enthusiastic motoring), but instead of just tapping the button, now you must tap the button, then tap twice more on the touchscreen to fully activate “Sport Traction.” Why!?

Meanwhile, the new settings “menu” is a maze of icons. Accessible via the home screen of customizable tiles, the new iDrive menu just looks like the app drawer of someone else’s phone you just picked up. The previously-used column style menu for vehicle settings was much more fitting for iDrive knob navigation via scrolling and rocking. This new scattershot strategy looks like it was designed to be navigated exclusively via touchscreen – and therefore staring at something other than the road for a longer period of time. More time getting accustomed to the new structure could improve matters, and heavy usage of the voice controls to find settings might help, too, but that’s a work around. The previous structure made good sense, and this one is deeply lacking.

Finally, and I know James will concur, the whole system is just slower! Apps and other items take noticeably longer to load on the screen. There’s occasional lag when touching the screen, and it’s generally less responsive/not as smooth as iDrive 7 is. This could be a result of the software being brand new with some kinks that still need working out, but this is not the direction we expect tech to move. The new iDrive 8 should be zippier and easier to use than iDrive 7, but it’s far from that now. — Road Test Editor Zac Palmer

James' take