The Audi Q5: A Luxury Vehicle with Unique Features and Potential Disappointments

When I put this vehicle in Sport and Dynamic mode, I found that it brought up the RPMs to about 1000 up from about 800 when I was just in Drive. This increase in RPM allowed for the turbo to spool up quickly, resulting in almost instantaneous throttle response and a smooth driving experience. The combination of the transmission with the dual-clutch and four-cylinder engine is particularly noteworthy, as it provides an isolated driving experience that minimizes vibration and harshness.

One of the standout features of this vehicle is its quiet and refined driving experience. As I mentioned earlier, there's no fake engine noise coming from the four-cylinder, only a slight amount of turbo noise. This makes for a very comfortable driving experience, especially when compared to other four-pot engines. The transmission in Sport mode is also noteworthy, as it brings up the RPMs to make the turbo spool up quickly, resulting in instant throttle response.

However, not everything about this vehicle is perfect. One of the biggest disappointments is the steering feel, which was changed by Audi. According to the driver, the steering feel is artificial and synthetic, with each Drive mode being very different. In Comfort mode, there's no feedback or connection to the road at all, while in Dynamic mode, it's almost like driving a computerized vehicle.

To overcome this issue, some drivers have found that setting individual settings for transmission and engine can make a big difference. The driver also mentioned that they prefer to leave the steering in Comfort mode when driving, as it provides a more natural feel. However, this is not always possible, as the car's dynamics are somewhat artificial.

When it comes to launching from a standstill, the Q5 performs remarkably well. With Dynamic mode set to manual and stability control turned off, the driver was able to put the car through its paces. The transmission rev-matched perfectly with the engine, resulting in an almost magical driving experience. This is one of the reasons why the Audi Q5 has become so renowned for its exceptional automatic transmissions.

One of the most significant aspects of this vehicle is its value proposition. After spending time with three different iterations of the Q5 over a week, I can confidently say that it's not just another generic luxury car. The underbody, weight balance, and distribution are all top-notch, making it a premium offering for those willing to spend upwards of $50,000.

Of course, there is stiff competition in this segment, and Audi will need to continue improving the Q5 to remain competitive. Nevertheless, with its exceptional driving experience, refined build quality, and impressive performance capabilities, the Audi Q5 is well-deserving of its price tag.

In terms of pros and cons, one of the standout features is the isolated refinement driving experience. This is arguably the best 4-cylinder automatic transmission combination available without gimmicks or fake engine noise. Another significant advantage is the ride quality, which remains comfortable even when the adaptive dampers are turned off.

However, there are some areas where the Q5 falls short. The styling is undoubtedly bland, with some critics likening it to a PT Cruiser. This may be an unfair criticism, but it's clear that Audi has not attempted to push the boundaries of design in this segment.

Finally, one of the most significant drawbacks of the Q5 is its lack of driving enjoyment. With artificial steering and no connection to the road, some drivers may find themselves disengaged from the vehicle. However, for those prioritizing comfort and refinement above all else, this may be an acceptable trade-off.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwelcome to the Audi q5 video now you might be here because you're interested in vaporizing around $56,000 now granted this tester is almost fully loaded and it does include the $9,000 prestige package there is a lot to cover so let's get into it I'm gonna be in 3q 5s this week a qs5 this and an additional one and much like the other audi videos i've done on the a5 and the q7 already continues to impress me with the modernism and just minimalism in most of their interior spaces there are not too many gimmicks all the textures the plastics the alloys the leathers the seating surfaces are really really impressive the buttons and switches and all the physical controls are also one of the highlights of this interior for example something I complained about on a lot of cars with HUDs they don't have physical controls to adjust it it's all in the infotainment you got to go dig around for that here they put the HUD control on the side so you can raise and lower it just with a rotary knob and push it in to turn it on and off I mean it just doesn't get more simple than that and a lot of the that organ ah mcc's and usability is all throughout this cabin now the hits keep coming this Center stack area I rave about outies HVAC controls on all their cars because it takes what's worked for the past 25 years and adds a little bit of flair with the modern technology you can see your temperature inside the rotary knob for the driver and passenger all the main functions are physical controls and then they have these touch sensitive controls where the screen is to know what vent selection you have the rear passenger section I mean this is just really really good here then all your other drive selectors are all physical below it your drive modes your auto stop start traction control all of that is below and you have a OneTouch screen off button down here that's physical no setting favorites no trying to figure it out I love that now I'm going to shut this door for some privacy it's an extremely quiet space again this is about comfort and luxury that's why you're buying this and there's some more pros that I really enjoy the armrests for your right arm it has a ratcheting style armrest here and it is extremely versatile the space on the inside is pretty good it has a sliding tray for sunglasses and like your phone the cup holder well is really well designed pretty much the whole center console area is pretty good except for this kind of slit where you can put your key and if you have a smaller phone it's gonna fit but my like average size HTC does not fit in here which is really annoying now it's time to get on to some of the negatives the first negative is and you don't even notice this in most cars your left arm usually you're resting it on the door on the q5 forget it unless you are just you're unless you're wide like football player wide I am always slipping off here or you have to lean like this to keep your arm up here it's got to be one of the biggest snafus of the interior design of this car I'm not sure why they did it other than just increase like hip room or shoulder room the next thing I don't particularly like is the Digi stick in the center and for the most part it works but I just sometimes it just won't go into the gear maybe I don't have the button push down all the way again it's trying to solve a problem that didn't exist in the first place and I know a lot of cars are using this the second thing and probably one of the biggest things and I'm going to talk about this in another video is the copycatting the bandwagoning of the infotainment screen being tacked on to the dash like this and this is a luxury car and when you have cars that are like $20,000 doing this all the way up to 55,000 it's just laziness its laziness and design instead of integrating into the dash which is a lot more expensive they just stick it on here the bezel is huge it looks cheap it looks like a kid's my first tablet and you know again it just drags this whole interior space down and people are like well everybody's doing it well that doesn't mean that it's good it just means that everybody's getting away with it for right now so the next part is I really like the technology implement a here for the MMI or the basically the infotainment screen when you get over the placement of it yes its line of sight all the usability is really good your control rotary knobs really solid the way you select the way you get through menus it is extremely quick its BMW quick I don't know that if the usability is quite there but it's certainly not as complicated and I think a lot of people that are in get in here in terms of mapping software the way that you control your eq changing your media section is just really really good on here it's definitely one of the best infotainment out there alright let's get back to the pros and here's some more technology that I'm really impressed with and that is the digital gauge cluster if you opt for it which was designed by Nvidia using a Tegra based processor it is one of the best graphically designed digital instrument clusters on the market it's fast it's quick it's legible and readable in any light and you during the daylight hours you can't believe it's digital sometime that's how good it is the way that you can switch from Google Maps to regular maps to kind of customizing it a little bit is super impressive the only two things that I don't like about it is well it's not very three-dimensional you know you don't have rings like BMW does and the worst part about it is the black levels are really bad at night it's not McLaren bad like if you've seen that video but there's no where it's nowhere near the BMW gauge cluster in terms of black levels at night it I swear you almost need an ND filter to kind of bring the brightness level down because even at the brightness at the lowest setting it's still too bright for me so that's something to talk about now getting into the backseat much like the front is extremely comfortable these seats are great you have a little bit of recline feature here and you can move the seat kind of forward and forward and back it's a little bit stiff to work but you'll figure it out the seats have cutouts for both sides so if the driver a passenger's farther back you get a little bit extra room and this is a highlight of course you have a window shade in the back to kind of block the Sun in this huge panoramic sunroof you also have heated seats and a little bit of HP HVAC controls on the back for the passengers as well it's a nice place B I wouldn't mind traveling in here but the best part about this interior space with the prestige package the interior lighting or ambient lighting that you can adjust and it should be on all the models because it elevates the luxury levels so much to be able to tweak the floorboard lighting or the dash lighting or the door lighting and it just looks really slick at night it is just an amazing place to be if you if you like stuff like that let's check out the back yes the electronic rear liftgate which is standard on the q5 you can do it via a remote or the button once this is up you can adjust this based on your height you know I can raise it a little bit higher but it's nice that you can drop it down a bit if you're a shorter person now this rear cargo space is extremely deep and the actual height of the opening is also very good where you sacrifice is the width I can't fit my 42 inch slider with wise which I can on my 25 year old Civic which is really kind of weird and confounding this rear space also houses the subwoofer and the spare tire which does not take air which is really cool when you fold down these seats it's a manual adjustment there's no electronics which is good and then you can crawl in the back here and if you have a kid that's throwing a temper tantrum just throw them in the back here there's plenty of room for that let's take this in the shop and take a look at the technical aspects welcome to the in the shop segment with the Audi q5 on the bend pack lift now this is your opportunity to take a look at this part of the vehicle which you normally wouldn't see now for 2018 this is an all new body structure for Audi for the q5 it's been redone and while the exterior may look similar the proportions may look familiar they've changed some things so let's go over some of that there is an extensive use of aluminum on the q5 much like many Audi's now they have changed the front suspension on here and it looks very familiar to what we saw in the a5 coupe you have lower aluminum control arms and it's a split design you also have a dual ball joint setup on the bottom and then you have a third ball joint for your tie rod and then you go up and your fork design to your upright is all aluminum to a split upper a-arm with two ball joints up top now the whole point of this is to give the suspension well it gives it more rigidity in the hub the knuckle design and it's supposed to improve steering feedback and you know on a vehicle like this you're not feeling much and a lot of that has to do with the electronic power steering but they have remounted the power steering rack to the middle that you no more even in between the two wheels and it's again it's about directness more solid feel now along the whole front half of this cart you're gonna see this composite material looks like carpet across the whole underbelly of this and this is to reduce NVH road noise and a lot of the a lot of the suspension and the substructure of this car is designed for quietness and that's what they're doing as you stumble to the rear of the q5 you are going to notice a multi length design in the back and this multi-link has five links much like the front suspension also has the same now in the back there's less aluminum being used you do have it in the knuckle you have it in the upper control arm and the sway bar end links much like the front but everything else is steel here your carrot subframe carrier your lower control arm and pretty much everything else now you'll see how the aerodynamics flow all the way to the back they have the lower control arms covered up which are aluminum and you know they're trying to do a good job flowing the air out the back including opening up the rear bumper to prevent parachuting again this reduces drag now you'll see this much like we saw in the Tiguan where the exhaust outlets are now pointing down towards the ground and you have fake exhaust finishers on this car this is a new trend we're seeing and for the most part you're seeing the composite panels all the way through into the wheel wells to reduce Road and tire noise you also have a vibration Isolators here which is connected to the subframe again this is a luxury car they're trying to isolate you from the surroundings the last thing to talk about is this vehicle does not have the adaptive dampers kind of like our a5 tester this just has a separating coil spring from a shock and the front are just coil over shocks which use ZF sachs dampers now the good thing about this is again they're not adjustable they're not electronically controlled there's no air suspension which means this will not be as costly to replace and the ride quality is extremely good with not having 20 different drive modes controlling the shocks I like the way that this is set up this is going to be less maintenance than a lot of vehicles with the more advanced suspension so let's take a look under the hood now that I'm under the hood of this 42 hundred pound q5 you basically have one engine option the VW and Audi's tried-and-true 2-liter direct-injected turbocharged engine with a cast iron block now something I didn't talk about with the VW GTI was the fact that if you get this Mexican made version here you do not get the dual injection motor with port and direct injection like our European friends do so that may be a big deal for somebody that's looking at this but other than that this thing has been you know modified changed it is solid and it is smooth as hell for a four-cylinder there's literally I mean just basically no complaints you could possibly have and then you pair it to the 7-speed dual-clutch that is absolutely amazing in here and it's one of the best 4-cylinder experiences you'll have and I said that about the Audi a5 as well I mean they have this figured out there's literally no vibration no shutter no fake engine noise I really like driving this now you only get all-wheel drive you can't even opt for you know front or rear wheel drive it's all wheel drive only and I don't know why you wouldn't buy it that way anyway but that's what you get with this version of their system it can literally decouple the differential and the rear wheel drive segment of it where it will operate purely and front-wheel drive mode on the highway and why you'd want that is there's no parasitic loss which should improve fuel economy if you're just you know trying to use this as a commuter now weight balance is pretty good you can take a look at that here before I get into the drive of the q5 setting off in the Audi q5 and much like the a5 I've got out of this has all the same pros and cons there is an extremely good command of the road in the q5 because of its higher height you feel like you see everything without it being just totally immense in terms of size you know it's it finds kind of the right balance between maybe a car form-factor and an SUV and I think a lot of people that are gonna buy this are gonna appreciate that it's easier to park the parking sensors the camera system works really well pretty much everything technology wise is working really at a high level here now in terms of driving comfort and quietness that's pretty much why you're gonna buy the q5 it is extremely plush the overall seat positioning for the passenger and the driver and the people in the backseat you're gonna I just can't imagine you not wanting to spend time in here a lot of it is the seating surface a lot of it is just the way that you feel in here namely at night with the ambient lighting which I kind of talked about in the interior you know and then like the HUD isn't annoying all the technology works with the driving experience now some of the kind of negatives about the driving experience here is this feels like an extremely removed driving Experion I saluted driving event when you really start to get on the road you don't feel much and I think maybe that's kind of the design philosophy but at the same time you know it can get a little bit boring now as I come to this stop I'm gonna take a look and see how this gets out I'm gonna put this in sport and dynamic mode and I find that sport does kind of the best thing for the transmission and that it brings up the rpms to about 1000 up from about 800 when you're just in drive and it's enough to get the turbo spooled up where you get instant pretty much instantaneous throttle response and the smoothness of this four-cylinder is pretty remarkable this has got to be one of the best combinations of transmission with the dual clutch and the four cylinder the way that it is completely isolated from you you don't feel the typical vibration and harshness that you do with a lot of four poppers and you know there's no fake engine noise coming off of this all you hear is kind of you hear a little bit of turbo noise but not much and it's just a really quiet its really quiet driving experience and what are the big disappointments about the q5 is the steering feel now they change the position of the rack and just you look at the front suspension you would think okay I'm gonna feel what's going on and you don't feel anything you don't feel anything at all and you know each Drive mode is pretty much synthetic you go from comfort to dynamic and all it does is artificially increase the effort and I find that I'm running my settings in individual mode where the transmission and the engine are in kind of the dynamic setting and I leave steering in comfort is that that's the only way I feel like this car is kind of natural but I'm not gonna fool you you're you're not gonna feel anything driving this now I'm gonna bring this to a stop and see how this gets off the line I have dynamic mode set manual mode set and stability control off and we're gonna see you know how this launches let's take a look I'm gonna brake torque it a little bit first gear the transmission will Auto upshift regardless of your settings you can never have full manual control over it but it will always allow you to downshift properly and it is really good and how well this car rev matches it's really unbelievable and that's why I said it's one of the best automatic transmissions I've been in it's just too bad they've kind of neutered the experience to not allow you that full control but I have my doubts that anybody is ever going to really put this in manual mode and drive like that anyway final thoughts on the Audi q5 now I've been in three different iterations of this vehicle over the course of a week and my biggest takeaway was I was afraid that this was gonna be some slap together generic you know wannabe luxury car for people that want to spend outtie money and the truth is it's not you look at the underbody the weight balance and distribution the overall build of the chassis the fit and finish and everything that it delivers for you know fifty thousand plus dollars it's well deserving of the price tag if you are a luxury car buyer and I think just spending a little bit of time in the cabin appreciating some of it you're gonna get it now there's stiff competition here in this segment and they're gonna have to keep making this better and better so here's the kind of the pros the pros are it's an extremely isolated refined driving experience and it's one of the best 4-cylinder automatic transmission combos you're gonna find without having to resort to any gimmicks in terms of like fake engine noise or just stupidness in the driving experience that is its best feature the second thing is it rides so good without having adaptive dampers or air suspension and all the complications of that you just really leave it in normal mode and you drive it and it drives good all the time now it is a more floaty it's a softer riding car which is great because that's what you want in this if you want the sporty version you can get the sporty version and then you trade off a lot of that ride quality of course but the other big pros is its fit and finish is great the build quality is great and overall it looks very premium for the part the negatives are its styling is extremely bland in fact with the lift gate up I thought it kind of looked like a PT Cruiser and and I know I probably shouldn't say that but it does look like that a little bit because of its Smosh dimensions but it's not also the negative is you're not gonna look back at this vehicle and be like oh look at that look how great it looks it just looks very mm conservative the last negative is pretty much there's just no driving enjoyment you don't have a very connected feel you're not feeling a lot of passion driving this vehicle and I know most people that are gonna get it or just want a calm comfortable driving experience and that is exactly what it delivers on I hope that helps and I'll see you the next video\n"