KeithL

I wrote an extensive review of the overall car, but wanted to write s short review on AcuraLink. I came from a 2014 Audi A6 which had basic online services. Nothing to the scale that Acura offers, but in this case Less was More! AcuraLink The Next Generation is a sad showing of technology compared to what is available today and the state of technology overall. To me AcuraLink is where OnStar was years ago. Let’s start with the basics, sure there is an app that allows you to see the status of your car doors, light, oil, tires, etc. It is decent, but painfully slow. Whatever back-end system they are using and cell service I can’t imagine anything being this slow today. It also is hit of miss as to whether it can communicate with my car.

Let’s move onto the navigation service. This is where Acura misses the target by miles. First there si no send to car form any browser, Google Maps or Apple Maps. You MUST use their app and that is a pitiful excuse of an app. First it seems to use Bing (really) and your searches needs to be fairly specific or you will not get what you wanted. Once you find a location you can select it then send to car. When you get in the car and start it up the item will pop up and ask if you want to set it as a destination. I would love to just save it to my address book, but no, not that easy. Also if you send multiple destinations to the car it becomes a confusing mess trying to get them set up as points along a destination.

Now let’s discuss the in car online destination function. First you have to hit the Blue online button by the map lights, and the screen comes up as it dials home via the cellular service. Hope you are not in a rush or near where you want to be, as the initial connection is painfully slow (30+ seconds at minimum). Then you get voice prompted to select your item, in this case we say New Destination. You can then speak your lookup and it will try to find it, but beware, you will get the list back spoken to you one item at a time listing the name and address and you tell it to send the one you hear that you want. When I am looking up a place name, like say Whole Foods in Alpharetta, I have no clue that the address is, so how do I know which one it is reading to me is the right one? And if it did not find an item it will send you to an agent and that can be painfully slow as half the time they have no idea what they are doing. You can easily be online 2-5 minutes just working through this mess. It is far easier to pull over look up the item on the phone app and send it to the car, WTF!!! My Audi was simple, you hit the button and said “Online destination ..” then the name of the item” it took maybe 45 seconds to come back with a list on the screen that could then be shown on the navi map and you selected the one you wanted. It also used Google. I was able to look up things just like on Google, even things like my Doctors and such. Audi’s online feature is 5+ years old and light years ahead of Acura’s new Next Generation!

I have not tried the concierge service and probably won’t. really and disappointed and while I want to subscribe for Connect I am not sure it is worth anywhere near what they are charging. I still have 60 days left and will decide when I get closer, but if this is their Future for online services they are nuts and will get left behind by everyone else.

spoiler900

Maybe if Acura offered this service for free (even for the 1st year) that would help but personally I would not pay for such services

Quandry

It's been a while since I was able to the the "send destination" to the car, but if I remember correctly, but after receiving the address it is not displayed or remembered as a previous address.

Panthers1521

I hear you, I love my wife's Audi, the TLX is painful how crappy the UI is.

CheeseyPoofs McNut

I think this is one of the things they got dinged for in the Consumer Reports "Reliability" survey that came out recently. Seems half baked at best which is really sad as the technology isn't rocket science at this point - they just need a few dedicated engineers who are committed to making it shine.

a77

I actually thought the maps feature in acuralink pretty handy and by far the easiest way to load an address into the system. I always found what i was looking for easily though once or twice it did not get received by the car and i used the concierge button. which worked fine, if a little slow getting through. In canada you got one year free. Now they want 190 bucks to continue the service (without the concierge which is even more. I get having to pay for the concierge. I don't get why the basic software should be anything but free. Especially as it includes the feature to call emergency services automatically. On Hondas the service is free. But you have to pay if you have an Acura. Just can't get my head round that.

KeithL

They want money because there is cost to maintain the backend server systems, pay for the cellular service and if I recall if the voice search does not return anything it goes to a live person. In the end they need to go with real Google search which would do far better at returning accurate results and then it would support send to thus no app needed. Also AcuraLink needs a personal address book so I can pull from it in the car or resend items to car. Audi has a far superior setup other than their web portal being a mess.