I just looked at the manual for voice command for my 2016 S550. First, I was disappointed that it couldn't perform basic functions such as climate control or changes in settings. Perhaps changing color of ambient lighting, seat massage etc. without having to go through the menu. And if I wanted to use the phone, it did not appear that I could simply say, "Call Joe Biden" as Siri will do on my I-phone. Other than possibly navigation, is there anything people use voice commands for? Do later models have more advance capabilities? First, disappointed to find lane keeping assist useless due to constant hand on reminders and now this. Lots of promise of technology which is not very useful.

 

I use it to make phone calls- it works well for that if you know the terms to use such as landline/mobile etc. Other than that I don't need it for anything.

 

The trend is to do away with voice command features as the typical cell phone will replace them. I've given up on telling the nav where I would like to go as the addresses are so many times too complicated for the MB system to interpret. If I tell it a house #, a simple street name, a town, and a state, it works about 80% of the time. If the address includes multiple directional avenues, such as 10045, Hemingway Place NE, Hwy 49-South, Atlanta, GA,,,, there's no way in hell it will gather that up without a glitch. Many have said to break the address up into segments, e.g., give it just the town and state. Wait for it to ask you for a street, then state the street. Then wait for it to ask you for a house #. Give it a house #, etc. etc. ----but this is just too time consuming. I mainly use my nav system for giving me directions after I've placed the cursor over the spot I want to go to and then click "start route guidance". That is only good in cases where you know geographically the satellite view of the destination. After I get there, I store it for future use.

With Google Maps, it's very intuitive just by speaking the full address.
As far as phone use, it's about the same.

 

Yes, later version of COMAND have more capable voice recognition, and MBUX has an even better natural language recognition. Both also get updated. Whenever there's an online map update which occurs about every 6 months there's also an update for the voice recognition that can be downloaded and installed. I have noticed new commands being added with those updates and existing commands working better over time. With the COMAND 5.5 system in my '19 C63S coupe I can control cabin functions such as ambient lighting, climate control, passenger seat heating etc. I don't use those very often, though, except for turning off the passenger seat heating when the wife gets out and leaves it on, so I don't have to reach over. I use voice control mostly to enter navigation destinations. I just say something like "Navigate to Home Depot". Basically I use it for functions that are cumbersome via the physical controls, either because you have to navigate a few levels deep or have to enter text. For some phone related functions I use Siri directly. In the later systems you can press and hold the voice control button on the steering wheel to activate Siri/Google Assistant instead of the car's voice recognition. I use this mostly to send text messages while driving as it works much better than text message dictations in COMAND, however I use COMAND to read text messages on the screen. When a text message comes in I just say "Text Messages" and COMAND brings them up on the screen, so I can glance at them and decide if I need to reply or if it can wait. Overall works pretty well for what I use it and having the option of using the phone's digital assistant for phone related functions is a plus. Of course I also have CarPlay when I want to use Google Maps etc. for navigation for example, so the whole phone integration is much better in later systems.

 

SUPERSWISS Thanks for the great answer. It would be optimal if voice commands could do anything in the car menu and leave the nav and phone calls to the phone. It sound like the newer cars may be there, at least if voice covers most of the menu functions.