Is the $135/year worth it for MB Connect on facelift W222? There are a ton of features on the new MBUX vehicles, but not sure what we get on the W222.
What's everyone's experience?

Thanks!

 

TBH, that's mainly for you to decide. I have pretty much the same Infotainment generation in my C63 as the W222, so the same online services that apply. The basic services such as vehicle status, SOS call and others don't require a subscription, but additional services such as live traffic, map updates, remote lock & unlock, remote start etc. are part of the paid subscription. So the question is are you gonna use those services enough to make it worth it. Only you can really answer that. With the current 10% discount you are talking $11 month. I know many complain about subscriptions, but if they deliver enough value to you then that's like two coffees at Starbucks.

FWIW, my car came with 3-years of Mercedes me connect included and I have renewed every year since then. TBH, I don't really drive the car enough to truly justify it, but I do like the live traffic information and I use the built-in navigation mostly when I'm going on road trips rather than CarPlay. I also have geofences set up around my dealership and indy, so I get notified when the car is taken off premise and things like remote lock & unlock come in handy when I need to grab something from the car and don't have the fob on me, as well as getting a notification on my phone if I forget to lock it, and then I can lock it remotely. Occasionally I use remote start to cool down the interior on a hot summer day when the car was parked outside and while Apple Maps already does this, having the car's parked position on the phone in an unfamiliar area is kinda handy to find the quickest way back to it.

I'll probably gonna renew again this year. I have to wait till August before I can renew, so hopefully they'll still have the discount going by then, but even at $150 it's still gonna be worth it to me.

 

IMO, yes

 

I have a 2018 and bought 5 years of service a couple years ago, glad I did. My 18 has fewer features than 19 & 20 W222's but still worthwhile.

 

Same here

 

IMO when you have a car as great as this $135 a year to have all its features available is a small price to pay

 

Agree, it's the same as having the internet radio for less than $200 a year. Some people just use their phone for source of audio but to have the sat radio installed and not use it is a strange concept to me when you consider the cost of the car.

 

I used to have a subscription for the sat radio, but I cancelled it during the pandemic, because I just wasn't driving enough and I'm still not driving as much as I used to years ago. Even before the pandemic, I didn't drive as much. I don't have a commute and I don't daily drive. I do most of my errands on foot. So the point is I'm not using the sat radio. I don't really listen to radio/music in the car much anyway. It's playing more like elevator music in the background. I prefer to listen to the V8. So I just use free HD Radio these days to listen to my favorite local station. I do have to say, I missed sat radio on a recent road trip. The main reason I subscribed to sat radio in the past is that I don't have to constantly scan for something to listen to in the middle of nowhere, especially in parts of the country where every radio station is Christian Rock or some Evangelist.

 

HEY!!!.....I like Christian Rock...and Evangelist..
But does Sirius XM still offer live traffic? I'd buy a subscription to satellite radio if they offered live traffic, but I can't tell one way or the other.

 

Haha.... Yes, Sirius XM still offers live traffic, but Mercedes hasn't used it in their cars for at least 6 years. Some models even longer. It's all coming over the data connection now. But yes, that was another reason I had a Sirius XM subscription in my previous car. Funny enough, like sat radio, live traffic via satellite means you receive it anywhere you are, regardless of cell coverage. I had cases in the past where the nav system took me on the fastest route way out in the wilderness due to traffic, road closures etc. farther down the route. Now if I'm driving somewhere w/o cell coverage, it doesn't know what the traffic situation is 100 miles down the route and may not take me on an alternate route to avoid it.

 

To be fair the sound quality is much better streaming it through the phone than over satellite, but I get your point!

 

I love all the features and find it very useful. But. Even with live traffic, directions are sometimes off, and i use waze or Google maps sometimes through android auto. For audio, you can pick your favorite phone app and play it through your Bluetooth media connection.

 

My old 2007 S600 had live traffic. I never paid anything for it, so if there had been a subscription I guess the previous owner had never cancelled it. I find the nav in my car pretty much useless unless I'm looking at the next street to turn on. The crowd sourced Waze and Android Auto are so much better than any factory nav system could ever be. I certainly see why most cars no longer have nav systems installed from the factory and instead rely on the use of those apps syncing to the car screens.

As far as Sirius/XM goes, their prices are always up for negotiation. I pay $7.26/mo (including taxes & fees) for their select package (around 200 channels) which covers my car and my wife's Odyssey. So definitely worth having that convenience, even though the signal is very compressed and not as good of quality as streaming from your phone.

 

Interesting....One of the reasons I like facory navigation over phone based systems is for the very beginning of th route. My in car navigation always knows what direction the car is pointing, whereas apps wait until the car starts moving. This frequently results in u-turns, expecially for in city driving. I really dislike that!! And like @superswiss said; there are times when there's no cell phone signal, for me that's at least once per month. SatNav is better in my use case so I'll reach out to SiriusXM again to see if they have live traffic, or if it's been discontinued.

As for Waze, I love it for highway driving but it gives awful directions for in city navigation, at least it has for me. I've used in primarily in Seattle, where the directions are atrocious at best. But I've also used it in Denver, PHX, Tuscon, LA, several drives Seattle to Montana and Portland, and a few other cities. Waze is great for traffic alerts and spotting LE, but terrible for general directions. Both Google and Apple maps have provided far better directions for me. And Google maps has started including road alerts, like objects on road and disabled vehicles parked roadside. If they integrate LE alerts I'll stop using Waze altogether.

 

In-car navigation systems have evolved since 2007 quite a bit. Online live traffic has been added, and MB is even about to integrate Google Maps in the future cars with MB.OS. To categorically dismiss in-car navigation systems is a bit ignorant. Modern systems get regular map updates over-the-air, so they stay updated, and yes as mentioned, one reason I use the in-car navigation system is that the apps become rather useless if there is no cell signal. I've made similar experiences with Waze. I deleted it years ago after it got me badly stuck in San Francisco downtown traffic. It insisted on unprotected left turns against streams of pedestrians. The navigation system in the car told me to stay on the highway, but against my better judgment I trusted Waze. The alerts in Waze are also mostly outdated. The cops have moved on and such by the time I pass, so I rather rely on my trusted radar detector and knowledge of local hiding spots.

I do use Google Maps frequently as my wife's car doesn't have a built in navigation system, and I use it occasionally in my car over CarPlay and I use it while traveling in rental cars or when I have a service loaner. But like any navigation system it has at times given me terrible directions. I typically use Google Maps before setting off to see what the traffic is like and if it's too bad, then I postpone or cancel my trip, but when I do head out, the car navigation system pretty much gives me the same route most of the time. At times it actually even gives me a better route.

 

Sat Radio as mentioned is easy to get very cheap. I called to cancel mine as I was paying 5.99 plus tax for mine and about the same for my wife's car. The offered me both for the 6.99 plus tax as noted above, about the price of a good pint a month. I have found the sound quality pretty good, not as good as my Tidal Full Res but I like the variety and I cannot stand to listen to AM or FM anymore, too many commericals!!

 

I just can't believe you think the sound quality is anywhere close to Tidal High Res. XM sound quality is like 10% the bitrate