Rating the best infotainment systems might seem kind of silly. The idea when you buy a new car is to find one that’s safe and reliable and holds its value, right? We’re not far from a time when a radio of any kind was optional. Cars from the 1980s were still shipping to customers with blanking plates where an audio head unit would be. But with every passing year, infotainment systems further integrate themselves into the driving experience. They’re increasingly necessary to operate certain functions of the vehicle, and if they’re poorly designed or too complicated in their layout, it can mean the difference between a pleasurable drive and one that’s maddeningly frustrating.
The industry knows it, too. Every year, J.D. Power and Associates sends a battery of 223 questions to purchasers of new vehicles, asking them how satisfied they are with their purchase. The automotive industry lives and dies by the J.D. Power Initial Quality Survey (IQS), just as it does by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s (IIHS) crash test program or the annual new car issue from Consumer Reports. A failing grade on the IQS can wipe out a lot of good work for an auto manufacturer.
And what’s causing the industry and its customers an exceeding level of pain right now is infotainment. Overall vehicle quality is improving, by a level of 2 percent in J.D. Power's 2021 survey. But that number is below where it has been in the last decade, and the number one item that’s dragging those scores down is infotainment and how it integrates with a mobile device.
“Owners are caught in the middle when vehicle and phone technologies don’t properly connect,” said Dave Sargent, vice president of automotive quality at J.D. Power. “This year, there are many examples of smartphone technology not working as intended in new vehicles. With more vehicles being fitted with the wireless technology owners want, the study reveals an increase in connectivity problems between smartphones and vehicles, leaving many owners unhappy.”
According to J.D. Power, a quarter (25 percent) of all problems cited by new-vehicle owners are in the infotainment category, and six of the top 10 problems across the industry are infotainment-related. Further, it’s smartphone integration that tops the list. From 2011 to 2021, voice commands were the number one problem that new car owners cited as their biggest complaint. For the first time since 2011, that’s been displaced by smartphone integration.
Part of that is the swift change from wired to wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto compatibility. “Owners want wireless connectivity, and the industry has responded,” Sargent said. “However, this has created a bigger technical challenge for both automakers and tech companies. Automakers generally are the ones facing the wrath of owners, but this is definitely a shared problem. Owners don’t care who’s at fault—they just want their phone and their vehicle to talk to each other.”
And too often, they don’t. Or when they do, they do things that you wouldn’t expect. For example, the use of Apple CarPlay takes over the infotainment screen entirely, forcing other vehicle functions like radio or GPS to the background in a way that’s often difficult to navigate out of, especially at 65 mph. The problem that integration was supposed to solve—distraction from a mobile device—gets worse in these situations.
So what makes the best car infotainment systems so good? Collectively, the editorial staff at CarGurus drives well over 200 new vehicles every year. The things that we complain about are typically the absence of user-friendly controls, the lack of or latency in tactile feedback, and delays in the time between asking the system to do something and actually seeing it done. In general, touchpads and center dials seem to be more frustrating to operate than not. And any controls that require weird hand gestures—hello, BMW—ranked at the very bottom, not only in our evaluations, but also according to J.D. Power.
Here’s how our four favorite systems stacked up, across nine different brands:
The Best Car Infotainment Systems in 2023
Dodge, Jeep, Chrysler, Ram, and Fiat
Unquestionably, the system that has been a regular favorite is the Uconnect system, which is built into Stellantis (formerly Fiat Chrysler Automobiles) vehicles (with the exception of Alfa Romeo and Maserati). Uconnect has been integrated into the dashboards of these vehicles since the 2009 model year, but the automaker's history with smartphone integration goes all the way back to 2003, when Chrysler became the very first North American automaker to offer Bluetooth connectivity in a new vehicle.
In 2013, the Chrysler brands added Uconnect Access, a subscription service that included a built-in WiFi hotspot, text message receipt and response, and app-synced controls to unlock doors and start the engine. Uconnect 4 launched in the 2017 model year and included wired Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. At that time, the processing power also increased, resulting in lower latency, improved touchscreen response, and higher screen resolution for more intuitive graphics.
Current models ranging from Jeep SUVs to the Chrysler Pacifica minivan and Ram 1500 pickup truck offer Uconnect 5, which both Alfa Romeo and Maserati will adopt in coming years, finally switching from their own home-grown systems. The key difference in the current Uconnect 5 system is the ability to save multiple user profiles, up to five. That means you can customize your own home menus, vehicle settings, and other preferences, and switching between users only requires one tap.
The navigation system used to be Garmin-based, but Uconnect 5 switches to TomTom, providing traffic information, estimated time of arrival, and over-the-air updates.
And here’s an important thing to think about: Pretty much all infotainment systems are quickly obsolete. Owners of vehicles based on 3G wireless technology, for example, are learning that significant functions of their cars are no longer going to work as that technology sunsets. Uconnect 5 has a Telematics Box Module to help plan for future technologies like autonomous driving features and capabilities that aren’t currently offered.
On top of all this, the best part of Uconnect is the ease of use. It’s simple to navigate from the first second you sit behind the wheel. Redundant controls for volume, radio station, and major heat functions mean you can adjust these variables without taking your eyes off the road. The steering wheel-mounted volume and station controls are positioned on the back of the wheel, where your fingers touch, and they have been since about 1999. They’re perfectly located, and we’re glad to see they've never moved.
With every new iteration of Uconnect, we get nervous that our favorite infotainment system will be “improved” to the point where we hate it, but in five generations, that hasn’t happened yet.
Kia
In J.D. Powers’s 2022 IQS, Kia owners reported 156 problems per hundred vehicles, putting the brand in fifth place in the entire industry. That number of problems falls well below the 180-problem industry average, was significantly higher than those of Toyota (in 14th place with 172 problems), Ford (10th with 167), Honda (17th with 183), Subaru (21st with 191), and Mercedes-Benz (20th with 189). Part of that success lies in the way the brand has integrated its infotainment systems and the ease with which they operate.
Kia’s infotainment systems have undergone steady evolution, starting with the first-generation UVO system that debuted at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show. As one of the first infotainment systems developed in conjunction with Microsoft, using the computer giant’s Windows Embedded Automotive platform, UVO was a huge deal at the time. It arrived in production models, including the Sorento, Sportage, and Optima, for the 2011 model year, and it was quickly rolled out to every car in the lineup.
In 2014, Kia abandoned the Windows platform and worked with Google to develop its second-generation platform, which allowed the easy integration of Google Maps and Google Places. If you’re familiar with those apps on your phone, you’re familiar with them in the car, too. Voice control was a huge advance in the second-gen UVO update.
Kia has also offered a suite of UVO telematics services, which were recently rebranded as Kia Connect. The latest suite of services includes cloud-based traffic information, remote locking and unlocking, as well asa charging station finder and remote climate-control operation for EVs, among other features.
Kia’s infotainment systems continue to impress with stylish displays like the 12.3-inch touchscreen and 12.3-inch curved driver information display available on higher Sportage trim levels, but Kia’s insistence (along with sibling brands Hyundai and Genesis) on only offering wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with its smaller touchscreens remains an issue.
Hyundai and Genesis
Like their sibling brand Kia, Hyundai and Genesis have been consistent higher scorers in J.D. Power surveys, with luxury brand Genesis ranked fourth overall in the 2022 IQS, and highest among premium brands, coming in ahead of Lexus and Cadillac.
A lot of manufacturers are integrating infotainment not only into the center stack, but also into the instrument panel, and Hyundai and Genesis offer some of the best executions of this concept. Hyundai refers to this as the Digital Cockpit, a flat-panel display that incorporates the familiar speedometer and tachometer with navigation features, plus head-up display info cast on the windshield. Controls for the cockpit are easily scrolled through intuitive steering wheel mounted controls.
The multimedia system in the center stack is a standalone touchscreen. We noted that the touchscreen is very responsive, which isn’t always the case with automotive touchscreens. A surprising number of cars still come with touchscreens that don’t seem to do what you want them to because you’ve touched slightly in the wrong place, which is maddening at highway speeds. The Hyundai screen seems to do what you want it to.
You might be sensing a theme here, but we also really liked the array of knobs and buttons that provided shortcuts to the touchscreen's different levels. The radio functions are one button away, and volume is operated by a simple knob. Nav functions are similarly one button away from any screen you’re looking at. Climate controls don’t look much different than they would have in the 1990s, and that’s not a complaint. In seconds, you understand exactly what these buttons do and how they operate.
As you’d expect from a premium brand, the Genesis controls are a bit more elaborate, but they do most of the same things. All of the redundant controls are still there, just in glossier buttons. The climate controls are dials with temperature displays rather than up-and-down switches, but the concept is similar. The Genesis models have another center-mounted Multimedia Controller touchpad, but honestly, we used the touchscreen more than we did the center controller. In almost 100 percent of the cars we’ve driven, it's more frustrating to use the center-mounted dials and touchpads than it would be to simply reach out and touch the screen.
Cadillac
Cadillac makes this list mostly on the strength of the 38-inch OLED display that debuted in the Escalade in the 2021 model year. The high-tech display is a cut above Cadillac’s other infotainment offerings—and those of most other luxury brands.
The OLED interface is actually three screens nestled together. It starts with a 7.2-inch diagonal touchscreencontrol panel to the left of the steering wheel, then moves to a 14.2-inch instrument cluster display, and then finally migrates to a 16.9-inch infotainment screen in the center of the dash. It’s a very nicely integrated series of screens that you’re going to start seeing on a lot more vehicles in the near future.
The 7.2-inch screen controls functions like the trip meter, as well as different views of the instrument cluster. The 14.2-inch instrument cluster can be customized from a traditional set of gauges to a full-width map showing navigation functions. There's also an “augmented reality” view that uses the front-facing camera to provide a more precise view of the road ahead, plus turn-by-turn directions and road sign information. Finally, the available night vision system displays on the instrument panel and shows warnings of people or animals ahead that may be missed by the arc of the headlamps.
The massive 16.9-inch display in the center is a touchscreen that operates in much the same way that an iPad would. You can move icons around on the screen by pressing and holding, then dragging and dropping icons where you want them. There’s a “home view” on that screen that contains four panels of commonly used features, including audio, navigation, phone, and park-assist features.
The operating system scored Cadillac a second-place award in the J.D. Power Tech Experience Index, behind Genesis, and there’s a reason it didn’t score higher—in our opinion at least.
Genesis and Hyundai both have redundant, familiar controls for commonly used functions like the audio and climate control features. Cadillac does not. Everything is operated either by touchscreen inputs, using the steering wheel-mounted controls, or using a center dial with a volume control and app buttons in the console. It’s not the absence or presence of these controls that degrades the system slightly; it’s how they’re laid out. Jump in a Hyundai or a Genesis and you’ll know in an instant how the main controls work. The Cadillac requires a bit more of a learning curve.
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