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I think you dramatically over emphasize the usefulness of any HUD. I have it and its cool. But a) like someone said its close to useless when wearing polarized sunglasses (and that is about 100% at daytime here) and b) do you really look at your instruments while driving that often? I sure don't - an occasional check for temp and maybe checking fuel before I go and that's it. Don't look at it for speed (often dont care as I drive as it pleases me and in city I don't need to look at the speedo to know if I am speeding or not), rpm. and whatever is shown while driving? I use the HUD sometimes for navigation but even here I simply listen to the voice instructions more than looking at the map. In many ways I found the entire instrument cluster is most useful for when I am not driving to check on engine status, or when I load tunes etc but when I drive I barely look at it. Mostly eye candy to me.
All fair points. I wear an anti-reflective non-polarized lens from Dita so I don't have that issue, but I have used a polarized lens in the past and yes, it almost completely blocks out the HUD. The only instruments I really use are tire pressures, oil temps, and speed. I live in NYC and the highway where I live is 4 lanes wide + HOV, and can easily support traffic moving 75mph. With that being said, the speed limit is 50, and highway patrol is ruthless here. Sadly I'm forced to check my speed often, and that analog speedometer is so clutered and hard to read. The HUD helps me a lot personally. I have it set up for speed and rpm only, no speed limit, navigation, anything else. On a car that was 90k new idk how anyone wouldn't spec it for $1,000. Even more puzzling is why MB made it optional at all. Its all down to personal preference in the end, in my situation it's a fantastic option.
All fair points. I wear an anti-reflective non-polarized lens from Dita so I don't have that issue, but I have used a polarized lens in the past and yes, it almost completely blocks out the HUD. The only instruments I really use are tire pressures, oil temps, and speed. I live in NYC and the highway where I live is 4 lanes wide + HOV, and can easily support traffic moving 75mph. With that being said, the speed limit is 50, and highway patrol is ruthless here. Sadly I'm forced to check my speed often, and that analog speedometer is so clutered and hard to read. The HUD helps me a lot personally. I have it set up for speed and rpm only, no speed limit, navigation, anything else. On a car that was 90k new idk how anyone wouldn't spec it for $1,000. Even more puzzling is why MB made it optional at all. Its all down to personal preference in the end, in my situation it's a fantastic option.
I have the PFL and opted for the HUD too - just why not I thought. I keep the instrument panel showing the “AMG” menu in the middle, which shows temperature and boost under the large, digital speed indicator. If anything I glimpse at temp the most as I am tuned and here in FL it gets hot. Not unusual I run 215F on any given day. Tire pressure - why would you want to look at more than once? I check pressure occasional when I start the car to see if it’s time to top off (temp variation cause pressure to drop slowly over matter of weeks).
So, while I have the HUD I pay very little attention to it. Most when driving at night, if et all.
Tire pressure - why would you want to look at more than once? I check pressure occasional when I start the car to see if it’s time to top off (temp variation cause pressure to drop slowly over matter of weeks).
Since the PFL only has tire pressure sensors and not tire temp sensors, one has to use tire pressure to judge their tire temps. Temperature and pressure are directly proportional so if your pressures aren't rising, neither are your temps, and vise versa.
Since the PFL only has tire pressure sensors and not tire temp sensors, one has to use tire pressure to judge their tire temps. Temperature and pressure are directly proportional so if your pressures aren't rising, neither are your temps, and vise versa.
And what is the point of this? Still don’t need to look at it all the time…except if your are racing and it’s on the edge.
Looks like this thread has become about the HUD. Perhaps an additional thought to ease OP's mind is that I think the HUD has lost much of its usefulness with the introduction of the digital instrument cluster in the FL. Not only is it much more versatile in how it can be configured and the information that can be displayed, it also is much more pleasing on the eye with its crisp high resolution and sharp contrast even during daylight. I was going to option the HUD anyway, just to have it, but for 2019 it had limited availability. From talking to the GM at my dealership, the HUD had never been a popular option and I guess AMG expected even fewer customers to go for it over or in addition to the digital instrument cluster. Since I was doing European Delivery I didn't want to put my build at risk of being delayed.
FWIW, below is how I have it configured for most of my driving, but I can quickly change the left and right area with the touchpad on the steering wheel for different situations, like bringing up nav and trip information on a longer drive for example, but here's my thinking:
No useless (to me) speedometer taking up half of the instrument cluster. Just a large, easy to read digital readout for the speed that only takes a quick glance for my brain to register instead of trying to read a needle.
Above that in equally large font the current gear. Kind of a neat thing is that it shows the gear sequence left and right of the current gear in manual mode, and graying out the next higher or next lower gear if the current rpm doesn't allow it to be selected. One less reason to really need to look at the rpms in conjunction with the shift lights mentioned earlier.
Around it is the rev counter front and center, so all the key information is displayed right in the center of the cluster.
Then on the right I have all the relevant temperatures, complete with color coding of the powertrain and tires as they get hot in the canyons. The tire temps are mainly useful to know if they have enough heat in them for traction. The tire pressure is just kind of a piece of mind to know if there is loss of air after driving over something. I have a bit of a history of getting nails and screws in my tires, but once everything is up to temperature I can replace the right part with trip information or the navigation map for example.
The left side can display all kinds of info. The one I usually use is one of the AMG Performance displays with boost gauge and a summary of how the car is currently setup. Since I frequently change drive mode settings I like seeing the current setup, but if I'm navigating I might replace it with the turn-by-turn instructions or bring up media information if I'm listing to music.
Last edited by superswiss; Jun 21, 2021 at 04:42 PM.
2010 BMW E63 M6 Coupe 2023 AMG C63s Coupe 2005 YZF-R1
Good info, superswiss. I decided to pass on the 2021 and will build my own 2022. With HUD of course. While I could probably learn to live without it, it would always be in the back of my mind that my 11yr old M6 had a pretty cool HUD feature that my ~$100k brand new car was missing.
Good info, superswiss. I decided to pass on the 2021 and will build my own 2022. With HUD of course. While I could probably learn to live without it, it would always be in the back of my mind that my 11yr old M6 had a pretty cool HUD feature that my ~$100k brand new car was missing.
I hope you gonna get it. The 2022 is gonna be a very limited production run and only coupes and cabriolets. The sedan is gonna be the new 4-cyl hybrid once it has been officially unveiled. Make sure your dealership actually has an allocation. Even if they have an allocation there is no guarantee the car will arrive as you build it. The global semiconductor shortage is wreaking havoc and MB/AMG have been building cars w/o all the ordered options if they can't get all the parts in order to still get cars delivered. There have been several reports of folks receiving their cars with missing options. It's happening across the board. Same is happening over at BMW etc.
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