These Are The Worst Infotainment Systems You've Ever Used

Infotainment has come a long way, but not for everyone.

As screens continue to dominate our in-car experiences, having a good infotainment system is incredibly important. These systems have, of course, developed and changed a lot over the years. For the most part, they've gotten a whole lot better, but not all of them have. That's what led us to our question from a few days ago.

We wanted to know what is the worst infotainment system you ever used. What completely ruined a car for you? What system was so difficult to navigate that you ended up distracted, and not looking at the road? In a lot of ways, with the tech-focused nature of most cars these days, infotainment is more important than ever.

If we're being honest, we're at the cutting edge in-car infotainment. At least, they usually work. In years gone by, a lot of those systems were downright unusable, and they ruined many a good car. We asked you about those too! For example, my 2007 BMW Z4 has a dogshit infotainment system. It makes the smallest thing, like tuning the radio station, an annoying task.

Anyway, why don't we all head down below and check out the worst infotainment systems our fellow Jalops have ever used?

Toyota’s Gunk

Toyota entune and Lexus.

Entune – the middle school programming project, while good for 7th grade science fair, is garbage in the real word.

Lexus – I would like to meet the person or team who though a trackpad is better than touchscreen. Please make sure there are no objects in the room that can be used as a weapon for their protection.

I'll give Toyota and Lexus this: these systems aren't going to crash. That being said, they leave a lot to be desired in terms of functionality. On top of that, Lexus' trackpad was the stuff of nightmares.

Submitted by: SwimBikeRun

Volkswagen MK8 GTI/R

It's not that it's bad functionally, but that it just doesn't belong in a car of this nature. And literally EVERYTHING is controlled by the infotainment system, in a 'Hot hatch.' I won't even get into the haptic controls on the steering wheel or the ones on the side for all your lights etc. Then there's the temperature "slider" interface, which doesn't even light up at night. This is exactly the sole reason I skipped buying the MK8 GTI / R, which are otherwise excellent driver's car.

I've talked to people say say these issues are overblown. I don't know. It still seems really bad to me.

Submitted by: Da Car Guru – 15,000 RPM daily driver

Ford SYNC Of Years Gone By

Early Ford SYNC, actually even some later ones like My Ford Touch ones too, only one we've had that completely lost it's mind, repeatedly, and made it nearly impossible to drive the vehicle. The system I'm my Mazda may be laggy at times but it consistently works.

My dad had a 2008 Mercury Mountaineer with Ford SYNC. It was absolutely dreadful.

Submitted by: CitronC

Jeep UConnect

I know it gets good reviews, but I didn't care for the UConnect system in the 2021 Grand Cherokee. I thought it was slow and buried lots of commonly needed things deep inside touchscreen menus.

This is one of the few submissions I totally disagree with. I love me some UConnect. Go argue with a wall.

Submitted by: BrillyOcean

Cadillac Cue

My grandma has a 2014 Cadillac ATS 2.0T Sport package (what 85 year old lady doesn't need Brembo brakes?) with an early CUE variant, and it is absolutely diabolical. The screen itself seems to vary its sensitivity at random, things are buried in places you'd never expect, and the flow is rarely intuitive. Trying to enter a GPS destination is difficult; trying to get route guidance to cancel is basically impossible. What's more, the physical buttons aren't that helpful, because while the car is 10 years old, so there are plenty of them, this is from the early era when Cadillac decided to make the center stack one giant unbroken piece of gloss black with light up, semi haptic areas for the buttons. And you have to REALLY jab them in just the right place for anything to work. At least the screen lift it up to reveal a secret hidden compartment for your illicits.

You'd think automakers would take the capacitive touch lessons that we learned with Cue and never do that again, but alas.

Submitted by: sm70 – why not Dusenberg

The Useless Outback

2015 Subaru Outback – there's a 7" or so touchscreen that does nothing, really (since the "apps" are all worthless, so we never did anything after trying them out). It doesn't do Car Play/Android Auto. And somehow they were so busy putting a non-responsive touch screen on the thing and loading it up with worthless bloat, it takes forever to start up. So you get in, start the car – and it starts blasting you with the radio, which you cannot turn off until the head unit is done fully booting and getting you to agree to their safety warnings. That happens because when you listen to Bluetooth media, you have to crank up the volume – and then at start up it defaults to radio, which might not even have been tuned to a station, and that plays at a much higher level.

But its worst offense is that the damn thing can't get basic Bluetooth audio right. The basic UConnect system in my Promaster is almost as bad on the annoyance/lag/worthless/blast you on startup/no Android Auto fronts, but at least it remembers that I've paired my phone to it and will hold on to that information for months at a time. The Subaru? Nope... We've tried it with various Iphone and Pixels (all phones with well-sorted Bluetooth connectivity), and not only do we find we have to re-pair every few days, but even once re-paired things don't work well for more than a short time.

Hot garbage – the basic stereo in our 2012 Tacoma had the Bluetooth thing figured out, and you just used the phone for maps. The fancy touchscreen in the 2015 Subaru means you still have to use your phone for maps – but loses the easy to use Bluetooth connectivity.

Wow, you are very angry. I get it. Life is hard.

Submitted by: G42dog

The Miserable WRX

My 2015 Subaru WRX with the navigation and upgraded Harmon Kardon sound system. The microphone for the hands free talking was so bad at any speed above 30mph that my wife would hang up on me if I tried to call her using it. If I tried voice to text it only got about 50% of the words correct even if I shouted the words.

The capacitive touch screen would not register some touches, especially the FM button to switch to the radio.

It was also just plain ugly and so 2010 in feel and function. Couldn't believe this is what was coming with the top of the line brand new model year car. Of course, in 2016 they introduced a new, more modern looking (and apparently equally garbage) version.

Okay, so Subaru in the mid-2010s was just brutal in terms of tech. Got it.

Submitted by: PaulCahill-Go2Fast

Honda’s Double Screen

The 2013 Honda Accord was terrible. That's all I know. A touchscreen, a non-touchscreen, controls on the steering wheel and IP, nonsensical functions and labeling. It all just never made any sense to me.

Every single double-screen is absolutely horrible. Honda's may be the worst.

Submitted by: muttons

Forbidden Dogshit

I know you don't get those other the pond, but Peugeot/Citroen makes some ; they should also be in recent Opels, don't know about other Stellantis brands.

The GPS makes me remember the hacked PDA I used for navigation in the beginning of the naughties, it's always fun, and depending on the versions you may be served with a resistive touch screen where you have to shove your finger a few inches through the screen to get your command done ; but these are after all a quite common affliction.

The worst is that at night, there is no way to dim the screen enough not to be blinded, other than completely shutting it down – and it flashes back at you as soon as you do anything on the volume or anywhere else else.

Typically made by engineers who have NEVER driven in the car.

I'm glad everyone had to deal with this junk.

Submitted by: PetroNiko

Older UConnect

I rented a 2012 Chrysler 300 for a business trip. It had a 5-1/2 infotainment screen with GPS, so I thought to myself "Great! I can leave my TomTom in my car – one less thing to pack."

Big mistake.

The GPS in the Chrysler always seemed to crap out at the most inopportune times – In the middle of nowhere SC, trying to locate a restaurant in Charleston during rush hour, etc. I eventually figured out the GPS receiver lost the signal whenever there was heavy cloud cover or if I was surrounded by tall buildings.

As far as the stereo and HVAC was concerned, the Chrysler had redundant physical knobs and switches for most functions, so I generally used those instead of the touch screen.

UConnect used to be so dreadful. Oh, how far we've come.

Submitted by: Earthbound Misfit I

Nissan’s Energy

We had a 2020 Altima as a rental while my wife's car was being repaired (after being totaled – there was no actual major damage, just the nature of the amount of damage and the age of the car), and besides the fact it reeked of smoke (clearly ignoring the "no smoking" stickers everywhere), the infotainment was one of the slowest I have ever used. Loading Android Auto took an alarming amount of time – but even changing screens in the radio itself took far too long.

Maybe that's part of the reason for Big Altima Energy? Only applies to the newer ones, though.

I'm surprised that connecting your phone to that car didn't make it catch fire.

Submitted by: MP81

Volvo’s Tablet

Volvo. Wife had a S60 loaner and no wireless carplay so we tried to use the OEM navigation. It is the most confusing system when it comes to inputting addresses. There's no address 1, address 2, etc. It's a separate "street number" and "street name" and we tried several times to input our home address to no avail. Nothing for house number??! Not impressed.

Volvo's system in the Polestar 2 is wonderful. But, you're right. Volvo's older implantation of the hardware wasn't great. It did look pretty, though.

Submitted by: Rick

i COMAND u

The COMAND system in my 2015 GLK is pretty annoying to use.

I had an early iDrive system in a 2006 330i and while it was slow, I think the hate for even the early iDrives were overblown, especially considering the era.

Early iDrive was bad. I will not listen to you. Also, Comand was kind of ahead of its time. I liked it.

Submitted by: Voice of C. Montgomery Burns

MyFord Sucks

The early MyFord/MyLincoln Touch system, which I had in a 2014 Lincoln MKS, was pretty awful.

Early MyFord/Lincoln Touch systems were pretty garbo. That being said, so was everything else. They've gotten a lot better since the early 2010s.

Submitted by: Kyree

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