The IT Nerd

The 2018 Hyundai Kona 2.0L Luxury is a sub-compact SUV packed with healthy amount of technology in it. Let’s start with the safety aspects of the vehicle:

• It has a back up camera with excellent clarity and a great range of vision. It also has lines on the screen to help you to position your car when backing into a parking space or parallel parking. Plus there’s rear cross traffic alerts and back up distance sensors to make sure that you don’t hit anything.
• You get autonomous emergency braking which will bring the Kona to a stop if it detects an object in front of it, and you take no action to avoid said object.
• Blind spot monitoring is included. Not only does it warn you when you are about to do an ill advised lane change, but it also alerts you based on distance and relative speed.
• One real highlight is that lane departure warning and assist functionality is included. It is one of the better systems that I have tested lately and I say that because any steering corrections that it makes are gentle and don’t freak you out. Plus if it has to make an audible warning, it does so in a way that doesn’t freak out you or your passengers.
• There’s an attention assist feature which monitors your driving and will suggest that you should take a break if it thinks you are getting tired.
• You get automatic headlights so that you never forget to turn the headlights on or off.
• Six airbags are standard.

The only thing that is missing from all this safety tech is tire pressure monitoring. While not required here in Canada, it is odd in 2018 to see a car without it.

The Kona also comes with a lot of technology to make life easier for you:

• Android Auto and Apple CarPlay are included which is important as there’s no built in navigation. That sounds like a negative. But it is not because most people I know who have access to Apple CarPlay or Android Auto in their cars never use the built in navigation system. Thus nothing is likely lost by its omission. It gets served up on an 7″ screen which is extremely sharp, has great contrast and is viewable in all lighting conditions. The infotainment system user interface was easy to navigate and didn’t display any lag whatsoever. That was completely in line with other Hyundai products that I’ve tried recently.
• There’s a six speaker audio system that sounds good as I had no complaints when I was listening to radio or tunes from my iPhone. You can serve up AM,FM, audio from your phone via USB (which will also charge your phone) or Bluetooth, or SirusXM Radio.

The final part of this review will tie up some loose ends and I’ll give you my closing thoughts on the Hyundai Kona. Stay tuned for that tomorrow.

This entry was posted on August 16, 2018 at 9:00 am and is filed under Products with tags Hyundai. 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.