E634Me

I've been paying for the various Mbrace services since I got the car. I don't really get much use out of them except for perhaps the WiFi when the family is along for a drive, but half the time that doesn't work and I have to call Mercedes and get them to kick start it.

I sort of rationalized the expense as being OK because I mistakenly thought the SiriusXM service was part of the package. Wrong.

Last night after picking up my car from service for a map update, the SiriusXM service had coincidently stopped working and I had a message saying my subscription had expired. After much calling about it turns out that for the past almost two years I've been driving around on a trial package that for some reason only ran out recently.

Really debating now whether I need any of these services. I mostly just drive 4 miles to/from work and on longer trips my daughter always wants to plug in her phone and play her songs so satellite radio really isn't required. I can listen to local FM channels or Spotify on my phone if desired on the short drives to work.

What do you all do? Is there really any benefit to Mbrace in this day of smart phones with Car Play?

diamondblak05

In my humble opinion, it's the most useless service ever and a waste of money!

BC-2

I canceled after the free trial. Overall, it was of very little use for me. The one thing that was useful was the WiFi connection and that was only because the navigation seemed to use a search engine to find addresses, points of interest etc. Since canceling all that, the navigation searches have been very poor.

David Bogle

i have not seen the value, i have unlimited phone data, my phone maps are better, it goes on and on... just not sure what Mbrace offers that is of that value.

FastWgn

And in other markets - including Canada - you can instead use your phone as the data connectivity. Makes so much more sense. MB simply did a bad deal with Verizon and now have to live out the contract. Probably made sense when they did the contract many years ago.

superswiss

I have the new Mercedes Me Connect services in my 2019 C63S. mBrace has effectively been discontinued, but the services are essentially mostly the same. First three years are free, so I don't have to pay anything until 2022. I do see value. I do use the internal navigation so the traffic data is helpful, even if I just have the map up to see the traffic and make my own routing decisions. It also alerts me of traffic incidents on the current road even if I'm not actively navigating. The navigation has much better POI etc. searches if the services are active. It searches online and not just locally. The maps are regularly being updated. I already got three map updates this year. They are automatically pushed to the car for one's home region (western states for me) and the other regions can be updated by downloading the update from the portal onto an SD card or USB stick and then just plug it into the car and let it update. I like the phone app, too, particularly the ability to share locations from any of my phone apps directly to the car, so I get a prompt and can start the navigation. It's a new improved app for Mercedes Me Connect. Much more convenient then plugging in the phone for CarPlay, but I do use Google Maps, Waze via CarPlay as well depending on where I go. The remote access features are nice, too. I get an alert on my phone if I forget to lock the car and can lock it remotely and I can always see where the car is. Useful when it is in for service, which my car currently is so I can keep taps on it and see the mileage on it. Also great to quickly check how much fuel I have left before getting into the car, so I can plan in a gas station stop. Haven't really used remote start other than playing around with it, but I might use it occasionally in the summer to cool down the interior on a hot day. There are a bunch of other cool features, for example it shows parking structures on the map and how full they are as well as gas prices under most gas stations. Recently I just discovered that if you put in a navigation destination and don't park right near it, the phone app automatically offers walking directions to the final destination. Kinda cool in unfamiliar areas when I can't park near the actual destination. I quite like the services overall and given that it doesn't cost anything for the first three years, I'll probably end up renewing them in three years if I still own the car.

MBBoss18

Good information you've shared, thank you. Question- is this the SD card navigation or the Command navigation you're referring to?

superswiss

The COMAND navigation. The SD card navigation does not integrate with the Me services. It's just Garmin running in the car, but Garmin has online services as well that I assume work with it, but they are entirely separate and independent of the Me services.

MBBoss18

Well that's good to know. I was considering it for that reason, to integrate my Mercedes me features. Guess I'll save that money then. Thanks for responding.

GeoE63

I just called them 5 times to transfer service from the original owner of the car. The first time they hung up on me since I did take their offer to extend the service for $750. Every time afterwards they tried to up sell me on their service. It was such a frustrating experience, I gave up. Two days later, I got an email stating that I could register. After the crappy and unprofessional service that I got from them, I will never buy their service. MB USA is better than that! It seems like they farm out the registration to a company that solely works on commissions.

nw66

got wifi package for £20pm vodafone off mercedes me works well when fone service is ****