The IT Nerd

The Mazda6 that I’m driving this week is filled with all sorts of technology that is in a car that’s under $35,000. That makes it very accessible to the majority of car buyers.

Let’s start with actually driving the car. The GT trim level with the technology package gives you a proximity key with push button start. Thus all you have to do is press a button on the driver’s door handle. Press it and the car will unlock. Get in, hit the start/stop button and drive away. When you’ve reached your destination, press the start/stop button to turn off the car. Then get out of the car and press the button to lock the car. You never need to pull out the key fob to do any of this. But the key fob does have the ability to unlock the doors and pop the trunk, plus it has the ever useful panic button. As an added bonus, it has a backup key inside the key fob should you need it.

Now onto the safety features. This Mazda6 comes with a long list of safety features:

• Mazda Radar Cruise Control: A radar sensor behind the front grille allows the car to monitor what the vehicle in front if it is doing, and adjust it’s speed accordingly. It works and works very well. I consider this to be a safety feature as it lessens the burden being on long drives.
• Lane Departure Warning System: If you cross over into another lane, this system will buzz you on either the right or the left side. The buzz really gets your attention I must say.
• Blind Spot Monitoring: This system keeps an eye out for cars in your blind spots so that you don’t hit them when changing lanes. It works well as the area of detection was large enough to keep me safe, but not so large that it created false positives.
• Rear Cross Traffic Alert: If you back out of a parking space in a busy shopping mall and you have limited visibility to your left and right, you’ll love this system as you will be warned of any cars that cross into your path.
• Adaptive Front Lighting System and High Beam Control: I wrote about this previously and I have to admit that on some of the back roads that I drive at night, this feature comes in handy. I was always able to see what was in front of me clearly. I should also note that this trim level comes with Bi-Xenon HID headlights with LED daytime running lights that look cool. The lighting can be set to automatic so that you never have to worry about turning the lights on and off. I found that the levels where the lights might turn on to be better than most cars that I’ve driven as on a dark overcast day, the lights would come on in the Mazda6. That’s something that would not happen in a lot of cars in similar systems.
• Forward Obstruction Warning: This system detects objects in front of you and if it thinks you might hit it, the system warns you so that you can take evasive action.
• Smart City Brake Support: Let’s say that you hear the warning from the Forward Obstruction Warning system and you do not react in time. This Mazda6 is capable of coming to a stop at low speeds, or slowing down to make the impact less severe. You can get more details on this system here.
• You get anti-lock brakes, traction control, stability control, and electronic brake force distribution
• Finally, you get dual front air bags, dual front side air bags and dual side air curtains

Now let’s move on to the infotainment system. The Mazda6 GT with the technology package has a 5.8″ touchscreen that allows you to control the radio (AM/FM and Sirrus), Bluetooth, USB, and Pandora. The latter requires you to have the Pandora app on your smartphone to make this feature work. Though at the moment, Pandora is only available in U.S., Australia and New Zealand. If that changes, the Mazda6 is ready to go.

If the touchscreen doesn’t do it for you, Mazda also has the HMI (Human-Machine Interface) Commander Switch behind the shift lever. It’s a knob with redundant buttons around the sides that is quick to adapt to and use. You can use rotary, push and tilt operations to do what you need to do. Now if that doesn’t do it for you, there’s also voice commands that work very well. Tip: there are several tutorials that will help you not only use the system, but pair your phone via Bluetooth. Spend some time listening to them to get the most out of the system.

I plugged my iPhone 5 into the USB port and all my tunes and playlists were accessible. Though I did have to wait about four or five minutes for the contents of my iPhone 5 to be accessible. But beyond that, everything worked perfectly. No matter what song I tossed at it, be it MP3 or AAC, it worked. Since we’re talking about music, this Mazda6 has an 11 speaker sound system. I have to admit that regardless where I was in the Mazda6, the sound was excellent as the highs and lows were perfect and the audio was well balanced. Phone calls were clear on both ends of the conversation as well. For those of you who still use CDs, there’s a CD drive as well which is located just above the touchscreen.

When it comes to navigation, the system is powered by Tom Tom. Some things I really liked about this system:

• It always asked me if I wanted to use toll roads and high occupancy lanes when coming up with routes. That’s a very nice feature as you don’t have to fish into the options to turn off or on the ability to avoid toll roads. It also offered to avoid roads that were closed. That was hit and miss. It correctly avoided some roads that were indeed closed. But it failed to identify other roads that have been closed for months. I am guessing that either the maps needed updating or whatever source it was pulling this info from wasn’t accurate.
• Traffic was always accounted for and it would re-route me if it could find a faster route.
• The audio directions are clear and the screen offers guidance as to what lane you should be in.
• Maps can be updated via a SD Card

Now the touchscreen also doubles as the screen for the backup camera. It was easy to manoeuvre into a space as its field of vision was very good. Though I will note that the actual camera is exposed to the elements. Thus I have to wonder what the video quality would be like if the Mazda6 gets really dirty. Another observation, like most of these backup cameras, it will warn you when you get too close to an object. But from what I can tell, you have to get pretty close before the warnings start. Now one could argue that this could be a good thing as you won’t tune out the warning. But it may be handy to have more of a warning further out from the object.

Complaints? I don’t have any. But I will point out that some people may initially be turned off by the 5.8″ screen given that there are cars with 7″ and 8″ screens out there. I was at first. But I have to say that it doesn’t affect the ability to use the infotainment system and it fits in well with the design of the dash. Thus if you think this might be a deal breaker for you, try it at your local Mazda dealer. I think you’ll change your mind.

The Mazda6 has safety technology that you typically don’t see in a sub $35,000 car, such as the ability to stop itself if you do not do so quickly enough. In fact, nothing it competes against has a feature like this. Thus the Mazda6 has to be considered to be at the top of the mid-sized car pack when it comes to safety. As for the infotainment system, it’s works quite well and I think you’ll love it. Especially the 11 speakers that this trim level gets. On the technology front, I have to give the Mazda6 an “A”.

The final part of this review will tie up some loose ends and I’ll give you my final verdict. Watch for it on Monday.

This entry was posted on March 21, 2014 at 8:00 am and is filed under Products with tags Mazda. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.