Hey everyone,

I got my car to the dealership for its yearly service and a few minor warranty issues. This time I was given a W223 as a replacement car, much better than the gnarly CLA200 & CLA180 I got the last two times. Well, I couldn't help but post a comparison between my '18 S560 and this S500 (not sure which year it is), and believe me, I am going to be as unbiased as I can. Also, I didn't take any photos from the interior yet, but I'll append them later.


Exterior:
So, like many others, I joked that the new S class looks like a Hyundai from the outside. In earnest, it's not that bad. Some lines are very reminiscent of the W222 and the car is still imposing, perhaps a bit less, but definitely not like a Hyundai. I think the one I got is the long version, and in terms of looks, I wouldn't mind owning that.


Interior:
This was very weird. It has the Nappa leather I think (not sure if it's the exclusive or not, but let me know when I upload the pictures later) but the console/dashboard is less impressive than in the W222. The part of the dash that meets the windshield looks decidedly less premium than my S560's vinyl version. The yacht-like aesthetic they tried feels kinda bland and even a non-exclusive Nappa W222 feels nicer.

I liked the screen. It's a fingerprint smorgasbord of course and were it mine, I'd install some form of tempered glass, but the new OS is WAY more responsive to the point it makes my COMAND feel godawful to use, with the wheel occasionally skipping a beat, menus taking a couple of seconds to load and so on. The "Hey Mercedes" feature is very useful, especially compared to the rather clumsy and slow voice recognition in my car (which is why I rarely use it).

The heads-up display is more impressive and feature rich but its focus feels wrong. Not sure if it can be adjusted, but whereas in my car I had no eye-focusing problems, in the W223 I was getting crosseyed trying to look at it. I didn't have the 3D console as far as I know so I cannot comment on that, but all these feel definitely nicer in the newer version.

I miss the central console buttons. I was so used to them, while now having those buttons on the middle-screen just feels... wrong. Thank god it's not all on-screen buttons though.

The steering wheel is nicer as a whole, I had the all-leather AMG-style version in the new car, but the leather seems less nice than my plain all-leather wheel. The steering wheel buttons are not that bad, but I prefer the more haptic buttons of my car and even the more definite feeling the capacitive buttons had. In the new one, I had to confirm that adjusting the CC limit by +1Km was applied by looking at the HUD.

The rear of the car didn't have the middle divider (as my car does), but the car did have the tablet and the screens. Didn't test those out yet, but I expected them to be way more useful that my useless rear screens that no passenger of mine ever managed to operate without some form of assistance from my side. Then again, I don't have rear passengers often, so I wouldn't mind not having them at all anyway.

My seat was not as comfortable in the new car as in mine, but the contour thing with its bolsters felt way more immediate and more definite. I'd definitely take that over my car's, combined however with my car's more comfortable seats.


Cabin noise:
This is way worse. OK, it's not like an A-class level of cabin noise, but compared to the W222 it's not really close. Not just the engine noise (more on that later), but environmental sounds are not as well isolated as in my W222. My benchmark is my garage's door, which makes a very specific creak when it opens. I can barely hear it when I'm in my car, but in the W223 I was almost shocked by how much louder that noise was.



Engine:
I'm comparing a V8 M176 versus an inline-6 the newer model has, it's a bit unfair, I know. But......... the engine is not anywhere CLOSE to the smoothness and quietness the V8 has. It's more noisy (in not a nice way), it feels like it's struggling a bit more to get going and were I in the market for a W223, the 580 would be my only option (assuming no S63). I haven't slammed my foot down and see how it accelerates, the dealership is merely 8Km away through the city and this being a replacement car I don't want to use it at all if I can avoid it. It's a mild-hybrid as I was told, but I didn't experience any of that.



Conclusion:
The W223 feels newer, snappier but at the same time... cheaper? I would prefer my S560 over this replacement car, however there might be other configurations that are nicer. As things are and from my limited perspective, I wouldn't go blindly with a W223; a comparison would definitely be in order.
Thank you for reading this far!

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Useless side note which I wanted to share. I recently renewed my warranty for 2 years or 30K Km, for a total of CHF 4800. I asked my dealer to quote me a price for a full set of discs & pads + labour, since they are due for a replacement from the looks of them. He replied in a nonchalant manner that "you don't have to pay anything; these are included in the warranty and we replace them if they're worn out". Told him that I'm planning two big road-trips in the next couple of months and to check if they could change them now and said "sure!".

Is this a Swiss only thing, or do other countries do the same? Given the costs of discs & pads even in indie garages, the labour as well as the few minor warratny things I've asked them to fix, I've already got my money's worth on the warranty already and more. How the heck do they make any money?

 

Interesting about the 'free' full set of discs and pads. These are wear and tear parts which are (almost) always not covered in a warranty.
Swiss thing? I do not know. At least your particular dealer is so generous. Maybe he wants to massage you into buying the next S-Class from him? Maybe he is in a super good mood because he has no investment related to Credit Suisse?

 

I have no idea. I also believe this is not something that differs between dealers here, considering we're talking about the official Mercedes chain in Switzerland.

In any case, he has my repeat business; in a couple of years when my warranty is toast, I'm selling the S and going for an SL63 from this dealer, given that my car was in pristine condition when I got it, but I still can't make heads or tails of how they make money with customers like me.

 

Thank you for this comparison. My biggest question for a W222 owner is how did you feel about the W223 instrument panel vs the W222. To me it looks like a big downgrade (it just looks cheap and unfinished to me) but maybe one wouldn't feel that way having driven both. Also disappointed to hear that the inline six was less smooth. To me that would have been one of the bigger draws of the W223.

 

I liked it, perhaps because it was more customisable, but I didn't really mind the tablet look. Don't get me wrong, the W222 one is better integrated in the whole design, but the panel wouldn't be the thing that bothered me most about the W223. As for the engine, I might be spoiled by the M176, but the smoothness and the better cabin insulation made the W222 a more pleasurable machine to be in.

 

Thanks for the prompt reply. Was funny bout the cabin insulation is I thought one of the raves in the reviews of the W223 was how quiet it was, but I think I have read other posters make the same comment that the W223 wasn't as quiet.

 

Great to read a direct comparison for the two cars, I have a w222 S500 and love the looks and amazing quietness

 

I have a 2017 S550 4-matic. When I had a 2021 W223 S500 as a loaner I thought it was quieter and rode smoother than my car. In my experience, the cabin isolation was better in the W223 than in my W222. But the engine, the inline 6 with the mild hybrid system, was sorely lacking, just like the OP said. We agree 100% on that. But I also felt like the hybrid and ICE system felt a bit clunky. I could feel when the hybrid motor kicked in and out, and I definitely felt it when the regenerative brakes kicked in and turned off. There would be a slight decrease in brake presssure as the car came close to a full stop. Not a big deal when there's no car in front, but definitely had to pay close attention when following another car. I had the car for close to 2 months and never quite got comfortable with it.

 

Surprises me that you found it louder inside...all the direct comparisons I have heard find the 223 quieter, including people who have had both...

 

Good review thanks for posting. Another reason to keep my 2018 s560 for the long haul. Just did my brakes and rotors today. Parts were 1000 dollars for aftermarket Power stop z23 rotor and pad kit. I have the mb extended warranty on my car but no way would it cover brakes here in the USA. I find the mb extended warranty covers less and less. Would not even cover the right front suspension drop problem I had last winter and that was related to a previous dealer warrant repair where they replaced the right front control arm a year before and left the sensor loose leading to the problem. I argued some but then the service writer said he’d take 10 percent off the 177 dollars the repair cost so just paid it. He said the charge was for coding and coding was not covered under the extended warranty.

 

Remember this thread is not comparing 222 and 223 categorically but about two individual cars (OP's specific 222 and a 223 loaner), which hardly can fully represent the 2 generations.
The trim levels, options installed...etc all affect the comparison.
Just one simple thing like the tyre's size, brand and model, pressures, runflat or not...etc will give different (can be drastic) impression on ride quality and noise.

Nonetheless, some comparisons can still be relevant (eg the use of touchscreen in 223 vs 222's more traditional approach).

 

Same issue here. I purchased the extended warranty nearly 30% of the times, but recently I learned to decline it all the time. Reading between line I found that the excluded items are usually those items that are likely to fail, while the covered items/parts are those that are unlikely to fail that early.

 

100% no way they cover brake wear in US, I was still under the full factory warranty when my stealership tricked me into replacing my rear pads, I should have called to ask more versus looking at text message, but after talking to my Indy mechanic I found out I had 50% life left when the asked me to replace them for like $450 bucks.

Thanks for the writeup, best loaner I got from Autobahn Motors in Redwood City, CA was an E-Class

 

I guess the best loaner I ever got was a brand new fully loaded C class a couple of months ago from Naples Mercedes. I was actually pretty impressed with the car being a mild hybrid and all the improvements to the features over the years and the big mbux touch screen.

 

Fair enough, indeed configuration can differ. However, not only I noticed a louder cabin with this car having 19" wheel on normal city roads (versus my 20" ones), the difference in the garage door noise when opening was with the car stationary. More about the noise later.


Anyway, today I went to pick-up something from a store downtown and I went by car. I had the opportunity to drive it through the city with traffic as well as a 100km/h road. Getting to that road from 30km/h to 100 gave me the opportunity to switch to Sport+ and slam my foot down the throttle and see how she flies. To say I was disappointed, it would be an understatement. The car is relatively nimble, but the I6 (with the mild hybrid) and its supposed 430hp didn't feel near as quick or satisfying getting there. My S560's engine starts screaming like an angry barbarian when I'm in Sport and I put my foot down, this one was very unsatisfying both in terms of acceleration and noise. Remember how I said that it's louder but not in a nice way? I stand by that.

The cabin is definitely louder both on the road and in the traffic jam. It's actually not that bad when the car is going; the tyres are not THAT noisy, but I could hear other cars' engines when jammed, whereas mine would offer more isolation than that. Not earth-shattering differences, but definitely noticeable.


I can't believe I'm saying this, but I like the experience of getting inside the car more than in mine. Everything is newer and snappier. I still feel the W222 is more stylish, but the "getting-in" experience is nicer. I hope that makes sense, but boiled down it means that I could get used to the interior given time and choice.

I love the central screen. I believe it should have been better integrated and looking less like a tablet (same for the instrument cluster), but I love it. It's so nice to use and it's so much more responsive. I also got the 3D option apparently and while I can say that it's impressive, I'm not sure it offers much to justify getting it.


After I got my package, I got in, and used voice commands to navigate me back home. That's without pairing my phone, merely vocal commands. I use the English UI for my S560, and giving vocal commands to navigation always leads to a failure. It expects you to read German street names with an English accent (e.g. you'd normally pronounce Jung as "yoong". Not "jang", "tzoong" and so on, as an English speaker may pronounce it). It's confusing and it works badly, unless we're talking easy names (e.g. IKEA). I've noticed that this is much less of a problem in this car.

I loved how it actually tells you to which lane to stay on when turning, since streets in Zürich can be at times confusing. Traffic light recognition apparently works, but I don't trust the car to stop on its own; I know mine doesn't, this is a loaner and I don't want to FAAFO.

Distronic in this car also seems smoother. The one in W222 is too abrupt when it comes to stopping, but this one slows down way sooner and smoother. Noticed similar behaviour on both the traffic jam as well as when getting close to a stopped car in a traffic light.

Traffic sign recognition seems worse though. At some point, within the city it suddenly changed the speed limit to 100km/h from 50 with no provocation or reason. Mine never did that and at first I was shocked, because I've become so reliant to that system. It also missed a sign that was blatantly obvious and I had to manually change the limit. The car is clean btw, I don't think it's a dirty sensor issue.


And also, a weird fact. When I set the navigation coordinates, the system suddenly said "turning read light on", on its own, and after the voice prompt had ended. Huh? How?
I used the voice command to turn it off, it did, and immediately after it said "we need to work on our relationship". No we don't, you are a car. Shut up car, you know nothing.


Anyway, here are a few more photos I snapped, and thanks for reading.

 

Thanks for posting your impressions OP.

 

I wonder if your loaner has the laminated glass that is standard in the US but optional in europe? Something doesn't sound right...as an example Streamliner who is very critical and difficult to please says his W223 is quieter than his 3 W222s, and he hates his W223 otherwise so no bias there.

As for the engine, of course an inline 6 is not going to feel anything like the V8, especially under heavy throttle. Thats not a negative about the W223, thats more fairly compared to a 450 222.

 

It does, I can see the light reflecting differently on the windshield from an angle, and the windows have a darker tint that cover almost (but not completely) all of the window. Same as my W222, but I think it's standard here as well. I don't know, perhaps a piece of rubber might be missing or something?

As for the I6, I did mention that it's unfair to compare the two, the criticism is targeted to the engine rather than the chassis itself. I did not expect the difference to be that significant though, and as such I don't think I'll consider a non-V8 in the future when time comes to replace the car.

 

In order to know for sure you have to roll the window down and look at the edge and see if there are two panes.

The engine is a very good engine, its just not a V8.

 

As I mentioned, the window has that. They have a darker tint that cover almost all of it.

The I6 is not for me and my personal take is that it's not smooth enough for an S-class, not one I'd buy anyway. But that's in the eye of the beholder.

 

I don't think anybody would choose the I6 over the V8 if both were the same cost...

 

It is NOT a HP indictment, it is a Torque indictment.

Torque is what accelerates cars
Torque is a rotational force,
forces cause acceleration f = m×a
and there is a lot of mass in an S-class............

 

Fair point. I'm seeing now that the I6 has about 70% of the M176's torque, so that aligns with my experience.

 

As you may have noticed by now, In the USA you are on your own dime as we say.
Never saw a dealer be so gracious as to just replace my rotors and pads…..thats a nice thing…..

 

Just read in Consumer Reports 2023 Annual Auto Issue where they said that the W223 did not ride as well as the W222.