Voice Controls
Junior Member
Joined: Nov 2015
Posts: 69
Likes: 6
From: North West England
C238 E220D 4Matic
Voice control in my 2018 E-Class is poor compared to my previous C-Class as is the command and sat nav. For a luxury car maker I expected more but have been disappointed.
Junior Member
Joined: Nov 2015
Posts: 69
Likes: 6
From: North West England
C238 E220D 4Matic
Originally Posted by petee1997
Strange comment! I find my 18 MB much better than my previous 15 CLS.
Junior Member
Joined: Nov 2015
Posts: 69
Likes: 6
From: North West England
C238 E220D 4Matic
Originally Posted by petee1997
Maybe your voice control is defective.
Super Member
Joined: Nov 2017
Posts: 669
Likes: 142
From: Hermosa Beach, California
2018 E400 Coupe
I don't see why a hard drive would be a better choice for stirring music. Hard drives are a dying technology, giving way to much more reliable and compact solid state devices. My 2018 E400C has 3 or 4 USB slots and a slot for an SD memory card. I have 173 hours of music on one 32GB low profile flash drive (about the size of a dime, including the USB connector) in just one of the slots in the armrest storage compartment.
Super Member
Joined: May 2014
Posts: 620
Likes: 65
From: Florida
2018 E300 Luxury - P3 and more
I've not tried the voice commands on the 17 or 18 E-Class, but my '15 E350's voice system is poor compared to my 2004 (14 years old!) Infiniti voice system. That system was designed to control ALL of the functions, given that the car had a central screen, a COMAND-like joystick on the dash, and everything was buried in menus. While logical and reasonably well laid out, everything required multiple button presses. Want to change the radio station? [Radio] then[Up]/[Down]. Want to change the fan speed? [AC] then [Up]/[Down]. Or you could just hit [Voice] on the steering wheel and say "Radio 96.5" or "temperature 72 degrees" and it'd do it. It even supported "More bass" or "defrost". Not too shabby for a 14 year old car.
Why hard drives? Capacity, and to an extent, reliability. I have a 1TB USB drive shoved in my E-Class' armrest. No, it's not full, but IIRC I have >300GB of audio on there, perhaps more. Solid state storage doesn't do anywhere near as well with heat as traditional hard drives do. To be honest, the car's 10GB HDD partition was too small to be useful to me, and seemed dated considering the SD card slot and wide availability of cheap SD cards. I do get a chuckle at the Apple crowd who are clueless as to how to move music from iTunes to an SD card.
I don't see why a hard drive would be a better choice for stirring music. Hard drives are a dying technology, giving way to much more reliable and compact solid state devices. My 2018 E400C has 3 or 4 USB slots and a slot for an SD memory card. I have 173 hours of music on one 32GB low profile flash drive (about the size of a dime, including the USB connector) in just one of the slots in the armrest storage compartment.
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Super Member
Joined: Nov 2017
Posts: 669
Likes: 142
From: Hermosa Beach, California
2018 E400 Coupe
As I said, my 32GB jump drive has 173 HOURS of music stored on it, and it's only half full. Using that as a crude measure, a 1TB drive could store approximately 11,000 hours of music, roughly 450 24-hour days' worth. Oh, and a 1TB portable HD costs a tad more than a 32GB jump drive. As for reliability of HDs vs. other media, well, just be sure to keep backups of anything you wouldn't want to lose.
Newbie
Joined: Jun 2020
Posts: 1
Likes: 0
2018 E400 Coupe
Member
Joined: Mar 2018
Posts: 185
Likes: 51
From: Toronto area, Canada
2018 E400 Coupe C238
Super Member
Joined: Nov 2013
Posts: 746
Likes: 178
From: NorCal
2015 ML350+2025 E350
I haven't tried every example on the linked video, but any that I have tried worked as shown. I use voice all the time.
If you have a 2018 or newer and do not have this functionality you should definitely bring it up with your Service Advisor.
Last edited by Cao Black; Jun 20, 2020 at 07:22 PM.
