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Consumer Reviews for the INFINITI Q50
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Loved my G's, but the Q50 is a beaut!
rogue36, 09/01/2015
2015 INFINITI Q50 Premium 4dr Sedan AWD (3.7L 6cyl 7A)
I've owned 5 Infiniti G-Series vehicles over the past 12 years, starting with the original G35 in 2003. Needless to say, I love the car. I've always preferred its styling, comfort, and value compared to other entry luxury sedans. I was hesitant to get a Q50 after reading the bad press it received, but the new styling really appealed to me and the technology in my 2012 G37 was feeling … old (particularly the audio/navigation system). After several test drives of the Q50 and its competitors, I liked the Audi A4 the best, but only slightly more than the Q50 and the lease deal on the Q50 was so much better there was no way I could pass it up. Looking back, I'm glad I didn't get an A4 -- its styling is so boring compared to the Q50.
Overall I really like the Q50. The powertrain is excellent - smooth acceleration and quiet at highway speeds. The cabin is comfortable with nice feel to the materials, supportive seats, minimal wind and road noise, and good visibility. The Bose "studio on wheels" is thankfully just as good as it was in the G37. I didn't get the Technology Package (which I somewhat regret) so I can't comment on all the cool ADAS features. I like the car, but I do have two reservations: the steer-by-wire system, and the infotainment system.
I wanted Around View Monitor to help with parking in my cluttered garage, and I really like entry/exit assist where the seats and steering wheel move out of the way to make getting in & out of the car easier, but to get these two features I had to take the "direct adaptive steering" system. I'm not a professional driver, but even I can easily feel the difference between DAS and the hydraulic steering gears used on the G-series in the past, and I prefer the old steering feel. That said, it wasn't a deal breaker for me. I use this car for my daily commute on boring mostly-straight highways. After three months I can honestly say I've gotten used to the DAS feel and it doesn't bother me anymore. In fact I appreciate the lightness of the steering while making low-speed maneuvers. I did however have one incident where I was taking a tightly curved on-ramp at excessive speed just for the fun of it (which I did all the time in my G's) and in the middle of the maneuver I felt the car turn in slightly without me moving the steering wheel. It scared the heck out of me. I don't know if it was the DAS system making an adjustment, or something else happening, but it was very disconcerting. Bottom line: DAS makes me nervous and I would prefer not to have it.
As for the infotainment system, it has a nice set of features but the execution is bad, not terrible, but bad. I have a lot of complaints about the system, but I'll limit myself to just mentioning two of them: 1) When listening to HD Radio the song title and artist name do not appear on any screen anywhere. Not on the radio screen, not on the navigation screen, and not on the instrument cluster screen. It's ridiculous. I eventually found that information buried two levels deep in the "controls" menu, where it makes no sense for it to be and is basically useless. When you listen to music from your phone or iPod the song title, artist name, and even album art are prominently displayed -- why wouldn't they do the same for HD Radio? Even more crazy, if you turn HD Radio off you do get the song title and artist name displayed - though in the old style scrolling text format. It's really frustrating and I hope Infiniti offers a software update to fix it. 2) I like to put my iPod or phone into random mode and just manually cycle through my songs. Weirdly, in the Q50 there is a span of time where you can't hit "next" to go to the next song -- the system says "retrieving album art" and won't respond no matter how many times you hit the button. That window of time seems to be from 1 - 3 seconds after a song starts playing, which can really be annoying when I hear a song I rather not listen to and want to quickly skip to the next one. I either have to hit "next" immediately or wait 3 seconds. It's a minor thing, but still, didn't anyone do user testing on the system?
Anyway, it is a great car and I am happy with my purchase. I recommend it to anyone who appreciates a sporty rear-wheel drive (or rear-wheel biased AWD) sedan and wants something that looks more elegant and interesting than the boring German sedans.
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