BMW Nailed Infotainment and Control, But Had Some Quirks

It's kind of cool that BMW nailed infotainment and control stuff and sent it to every single one of their models for sure. However, they messed up one thing - where you put your phone. For some reason, they've had the iPhone 13 Pro (not Pro Max anymore) in here, and it barely fits. It's not a wireless charger, so when it's in there, you can't plug it in. That means if you had a Pro Max, you wouldn't actually be able to fit your phone in here.

The cup holders are another story. They're called "Pro Clip" and they're supposed to be useful, but honestly, they friggin suck. The little arm things that hold the cups are too tight, so only small cups will fit. You could theoretically put a large drink in there, but it would fall out. That's not good enough for us; we need better cup holders.

Moving on to the visors, BMW did a great job with these. There's a nice big moonroof that lets in plenty of natural light, and they've got cool red seats that are not bad - just not the most comfortable. The seats do have extra bolstering, which you can adjust for added support. However, I feel like my butt won't get into the seat comfortably, and it's a bit like the X3M seats from before. They also used a nice shade of red that's different from other cars with similar colors.

The backseat is actually pretty good, though. We've got "peasant blockers" there, which I love. They're like shades for your eyes, but they're really useful for blocking out the sun or glare while driving. The trunk room is also pretty good; we can fit all our carry-ons with ease when the seats are folded down. There's even a nice little privacy blocker to help keep things organized.

One feature that BMW got right is the optional carbon fiber package. I love it - the quality is great, and it looks really sleek. However, they could have done better with the interior colors. Instead of using gloss black, which sucks, they should've used a more interesting option. Maybe something like exposed wood or branding to give it a unique look.

BMW also did a good job with backup assist. I had trouble backing out of my driveway when we tested this car, but the backup assistant feature made it easy. It would get me all the way out safely, which is convenient for tricky driveways.

Overall, BMW did a great job refreshing the X3 without screwing anything up. They enhanced everything in this trim and still managed to keep it looking good in other trims. However, if you change the trim, the bumpers don't look as good as they do on this particular model. Still, it's not a major issue.

The price of this X3 starts at $66,900 CAD, which is kind of steep for an X3. However, with all the options added in, the price gets to around $84,335 CAD. That's still relatively high for an X3, but I think it's worth it for the features and quality you get. The previous-gen X3M was around $90,000, which is more in line with what I'd pay for a lower trim X5.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: eni'm yuri i'm jacob with your drive 2022 bmw x3 m40i with launch control yeah those are punchy heart options solid launch horsepower and torque 382 horsepower 369 pound-feet of torque from a 3-liter turbo inline 6 cylinder with a 48 volt mild hybrid so this is a refresh yes and the mild hybrid is the addition to the powertrain and then refresh on the outside we've got a bunch of different looks and on the inside we've got the newer infotainment and the newer gauge cluster just like every single other bmw so do you want to start with the looks from the outside you know it okay so front end they slimmed down the headlights a little bit but made the grilles even bigger they added a little gap in the daytime running lights which i think looks really awesome and then what i also noticed is that it looks a lot more like the new two series yeah and i'm not really a big fan of the two series but i think the styling and the new design language actually works quite well here yeah just like mercedes where their styling works better for suvs than it does for cars but the m2 i think is going to look awesome better than the m240i yes and then moving on to the side kind of the same body lines and everything and this is a cool color it's kind of chalk kind of bluish yeah it's got like that subaru kind of khaki blue color where it's slightly bluer chalk like you said different enough from chalk that i'm happy yeah and it's got like metallic in it it's pretty cool and then we got some really nice wheels because bmw always does really nice wheels i do like these wheels and then we got nice big red brake calipers behind that and what would be the continental recommended tire for an x3 m40i the sport contact six and winter's coming soon so make sure you get some viking contact sevens for all of your cars yeah go to continental tire dot com slash the straight pipes and check what fits your car or click the link in the description because typing all that might be tricky true and now to my favorite part of the looks is the new tail lights yeah so the tail lights now are officially called by bmw pincer claws so they took my lobster claw meme joke from honda and then they just like adapted all right whatever so pincer claw is now in a bmw press release but i mean hey it makes sense they do look like lobster claws and they kind of look like the ones on the two series as well i do think it looks better here for sure it goes all the way around and like i think it's just an awesome shape and then from the side view that whole thing is red and it gets illuminated i just really really love the tail lights here the thing that i don't like about these tail lights is when they're not lit they're just very dark all right a little push through cliche corner i'm gonna go in comfort mode with one traction off because that's what the car is at right now and it's pretty good very fast i remember the x3m kind of overheated on track when we drove it in the states and the x4m yeah the differential because we were trying to drift it but on normal roads you got to go quick a little bit perfectly fine those are great actually better than perfectly fine surprisingly very good and continuing on with the looks we've got cool exhaust tips that i actually think look a lot better than previous bmw exhaust tips yes for m sport type models where they're actually connected and you can't see like the disconnect so it's pretty good here they did a great job of making it all look nice so overall looks very nice from the back and we should take a listen from the outside pretty cool that they let you rev it all the way out yeah and it does sound really good that inline six i'll let you floor it while we're driving later okay so i have some minor details that i'd like to get into with this so this is an m sport it's not a full m model but there's so many m badges on here it's actually kind of ridiculous i will count them out and i'll put a counter in the bottom right corner for how many i found let me know if you found more than that i counted 19 badges 19. do the m side view mirrors count as an m batch no but that is a thing that they just added to this that makes it even more m like they tried to take so many elements from m into m sport i'm kind of disappointed with how they did that i mean the m's are fast we love the m340i here if i put this in sport mode no i'm not saying it's not fast i'm not saying it's not good it's just too many m badges i'm okay for not a real m it's close enough how many badges is the real m going to have is it going to have less it might have less they do that kind of stuff sometimes and i'm cool with that too and then you have to pay extra to have even less and then they'll black it out so you can't even see them what i really want to know is leave a comment below if a bmw ever came stock with the three color stripes on the grill ever if there was ever a stock bmw that did that yeah or a razor or a real race car i'm gonna go with no though and then briefly moving into the interior so this updated gauge cluster it's the one that all the rest of them have in the last x3m we did it had those kind of analog circle looking digital screens yeah those are really cool because we love that in the previous generation of m2 as well and then that also had the old weird style shifter where this has the normal style shifter and command center everything's all good and then the infotainment is the new one wireless apple carplay wireless android auto then we've got the drive recorder good lane keep highway drive assist all that fun stuff that i absolutely love and we have a hilarious feature in this one where it shows us the news while we're driving with like a photo and it's pretty distracting like i i actually want to know what this article is so i click on it and then it shows a bigger picture yeah i can't scroll while driving but i can read it out in the top right corner it's like a car shouldn't be giving me this stuff they're giving me phone information but built into the car so technically you're allowed to do this yeah a little crazy all right your turn to drive all right launch control that is very very smooth and i even saw the e-boost logo light up during that launch so explain e-boost to me it's a 48-volt mild hybrid it's not anything that special so many cars are getting this now basically some of the electronics from the car run off a hybrid system now very very cool and the zero to 60 is around four and a half seconds which is very very quick so let's use this zf eight speed auto which we love so much in every bmw and every car that has it and send it into cliche corner and yeah like you said earlier this rips i'm i'm i actually am in sport mode with the traction uh in medium and you get the back end out a little bit it's good it's fun i heard you flying around over there i went limp the limp test is that now a thing so it is all-wheel drive it's x-drive it is rear biased and you can feel it when you put into sport mode sends more to the back and the m40i is more rear biased than the regular versions of this car m40 has a good amount of power it really is like we loved the m340i it's this is great as an suv that's why i deserve so many m badges yes yes i'd say like 50 of the m badges would still be appropriate and the steering is also very very normal there's nothing weird going on doesn't feel like that first m5 that we drove the suspension is also really good it is adaptive we can't change it it is the m sport suspension not too stiff it's just right and in terms of drive modes all the same modes that we've ever had in bmws we've got sport we can go to sport plus comfort eco pro it's kind of cool that bmw nailed infotainments and control stuff and they sent it to every single one of their models for sure but one thing they screwed up is where you put your phone yeah for some reason we do have the iphone 13 whatever pro this is it's not the pro max anymore and it barely fits in here it's not a wireless charger so when it's in there you can't plug it in yeah there's no room so if you had a pro max you wouldn't actually be able to fit it in here a couple of cup holders yeah pro clip yes pro clip okay also these cup holders friggin suck yeah the little little arm things are too tight and you put a drink in there but but it will fit a small cup just fine so that technically sort of passes just not very good no that's a fail because i don't like it i'm going to be stricter with my fails i like that you're eating you don't like it fail let's check the visors three two one yes good job bmw so inside we also have a nice big moon roof we've got cool red seats they're not the most comfortable but they're not bad i just can't get into a comfortable position yeah and they do have extra bolstering which you can adjust which is really nice but you and i just can't get too comfortable in these seats for some reason i feel like my butt won't get right into the bottom corner of it yes it's a little bit like floatiness exactly i feel like i didn't like the x3m seats either and the color of red that they used for these seats is really good it's totally different than a lot of the other reds out there so if you are shopping for one of these head to tsp.truecar.com to see discounted local price offers and then definitely sit in one of these at that dealership see if it's as comfortable for you as you want it to be and then backseat room is actually pretty good and we even have peasant blockers back there which i love so much baby shades peasants baby shades oh man baby my baby does not want to see peasants all right maybe yours does mine doesn't mind and then trunk room is pretty good we can fit all our carry-ons we fold all the seats down there is a ton of room we've got a nice little privacy blocker and throughout this entire interior we do have the optional carbon fiber package and i love it it's really nice carbon the quality is really good and it is gloss there is a bunch of gloss black in here which does suck so that is the one thing that they didn't totally fix in this generation instead of carbon fiber it would be cool they made like a cowboy version with like exposed wood and branding does germany have cowboys does germany have cows i mean they have cows but are they different than our cows are they skinnier cows i don't know they're faster cows germany let us know they go on the autobahn are german cowboys like like alberta cowboys where they like wear the hats and stuff and like i don't know like what does a german cowboy look like let us know if you have a german cowboy friend relative if you are a german cowboy if you know what the equivalent of a cowboy in germany is let us know because we're probably being very ignorant right now oh and then another fun feature that i used was the backup assist yeah i had in my long tricky driveway and i just did backup assistant got it all the way out so if i actually had this as my personal car in that driveway i would use that feature all the time there you go it's a convenient feature so to end things off how did bmw do with this overall refresh of the x3 they did a very good job of not screwing anything up just just enhancing everything in this trim but if you change the trim the bumpers don't look as good in other ones but still not screwed up like it's it's still a really good car like this this suv i think it's their best seller it makes total sense because they couldn't screw this up so i guess it's time we get to the price this one starts at sixty six thousand nine hundred and ninety dollars canadian and this one is optioned out to eighty four thousand three hundred and thirty five dollars still kind of a lot for an x3 i feel like that's what i'd wanna pay for a lower trim x5 yeah and i do recall that the previous gen x3m was kind of around 90 000 but it is really nice it is really fast and it's got a whole lot of cool features and we both pretty much love bmw interiors the most yeah these interiors are really really good very thoughtfully laid out adios amigo see you next tuesday or friday\n"