The IT Nerd

If you’re looking for technology in the Mazda MX-5, there’s a fair amount of it that comes in the GT trim level. Let’s start with the safety technology:

• 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.
• 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.
• 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. One thing that I really appreciated was the fact that the LED headlights were very bright.
• You get anti-lock brakes, traction control, stability control, and electronic brake force distribution. Plus you get hill launch assist which keeps you from rolling backwards when you’re on a hill.
• Finally, you get dual front air bags, dual front side air bags.

The best piece of technology that is in the Mazda MX-5 GT is the inclusion of Mazda Connect. The combination of the 7″ touchscreen  and the HMI (Human Machine Interface) Commander Switch gives the driver a easy to learn, easy to use infotainment system. I wrote about it in detail here. It’s very good at what it does, but it is facing challenges in the form of Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. Many people who looked at the MX-5 GT asked me if those were present and were a bit disappointed that they weren’t. That shows the state of affairs in the infotainment system space and is a bit unfortunate as Mazda Connect is a very good infotainment system that I personally would have no problem using if this were my car.

Let me show you one cool thing that the MX-5 GT comes with:

If you look closely, you’ll see tiny holes in the head rest. Those holes are for a pair of speakers so that you can hear your music while bombing down the road with the top down. This system works well as I was able to listen to CBC radio at highway speeds. It’s part of a  9-speaker premium Bose audio system with AudioPilot 2 noise compensation technology in the MX-5 GT which sounds great, and the noise cancellation part works perfectly as evidenced by the following:

• I got a phone call on highway 427 while driving 100 km/h with the top down and i was able to converse with the other party perfectly. Other than the other party hearing a bit of wind noise, they could hear me fine. I also could hear them perfectly
• I discovered by accident while driving on country road at 70 km/h with the top down that the voice commands for Mazda Connect were understood perfectly.

Impressive!

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

This entry was posted on July 14, 2016 at 8:07 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.