I am in the market for an E63s wagon. I have an opportunity to purchase a well priced extremely well spec’d 2020 with Comand vs purchasing a more modestly spec’d 2021 with mbux. I know there have been some other updates for the 2021 year. Do you guys think that a 2020 with lots of carbon and carbon brakes for a good price but with older tech is the better play here? Will I really miss the mbux?

thanks for any advice.

 

I cancelled a 2021 car and bought one of the last pre-facelift cars.
I could not see that there was anything in the MBUX that shouted out buy me!

 

Personally I could care less about MBUX, just more tech to go wrong. 2020 for me. Carbon brakes over flashy tech all day. It's an AMG, drivers car.

 

This is a great problem to have - I am envious. After living with MBUX in a GLE for a year, it is nice, but not sure other than livelier graphics that there is actually more to it. Also - you avoid the center touchpad, which I think is tough to operate in a day to day sense in a moving car. I'm looking at a 2019 CPO E Class as a second vehicle, and moving "back" to COMAND isn't a concern to me. In your case, if the 2020 has the color and options you like, it feels like that is the right play.

 

Do keep in mind they made some other changes to the 2021. The suspension in comfort mode is much softer. Plus the screen graphics is better and the 2021 has some cool controls on the steering wheel similar to what Porsche uses. If I were in the market I would only get a 2021 and avoid 2018 to 2020 model years. I had a 2018 and traded it in. Did not care for the car myself. Way to stiff for me in comfort mode and had some other issues too that I did not like. I like my 2019 E450 much better which replaced the car. If I drive a 2021 and really did like that I might consider a trade of my low mileage e450.

 

If you are in the market for an E63 you should post in the AMG W213 section. The facelift definitely has an improved chassis and driving dynamics over the pre-facelift. That's what would sway my decision. Same reason I went for the FL C63 vs the PFL C63. The FL drives better. Technology definitely mattered for me as well, but mainly because the old old COMAND system is quite outdated now. However, the NTG 5.5 system and specifically for the 2019+ models isn't much behind MBUX. Both use the new Mercedes me connect platform and app so they get OTA updates, mainly for the maps so far. MBUX has nothing over the 2019+ NTG 5.5 in this regard. I've had MBUX in a few loaners, and frankly I'm not that big of a fan. The UI is optimized for touch and to this day I find touchscreens a bad idea in cars unless you are stationary. So while moving, the UI is awkward to navigate using the physical controls. Touch is essentially futile in an AMG while moving. Your finger will bounce around and it'll feel like target practice. I much prefer NTG 5.5 in that regard. With COMAND you also still get the jog wheel in the center console. I never use the touchpad in the center console and with the facelift that's all you have. I do use the touch controls on the steering wheel a lot, but with MBUX it requires a lot of swiping and you have to swipe in the right direction to get to the control that you wanna click on. It really is not very good to navigate if you don't want to use the touchscreen. Another thing about MBUX is that AA/CarPlay are not full screen. MBUX also seems to be a lot more buggy. It has IMO been rushed out the door. Hopefully they fixed most of the issues for the W213 FL, but you don't know until you've lived with it. The AI based voice control system is certainly cool, but for what I do use voice control, the system in COMAND works equally well and it gets periodic updates together with the map updates.

 

Thanks everyone for the very helpful Info. The AMG forum wasn’t allowing posting for some reason which was why I posted here.