Physical buttons outperform touchscreens in new cars, test finds

Physical buttons are increasingly rare in modern cars. Most manufacturers are switching to touchscreens – which perform far worse in a test carried out by Vi Bilägare. The driver in the worst-performing car needs four times longer to perform simple tasks than in the best-performing car.

The screens in modern cars keep getting bigger. Design teams at most car manufacturers love to ditch physical buttons and switches, although they are far superior safety-wise.

That is the conclusion when Swedish car magazine Vi Bilägare performed a thurough test of the HMI system (Human-Machine Interface) in a total of twelve cars this summer.
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The results speak for themselves. The worst-performing car needs 1,400 meters to perform the same tasks for which the best-performing car only needs 300 meters.

The easiest car to understand and operate, by a large margin, is the 2005 Volvo V70. The four tasks is handled within ten seconds flat, during which the car is driven 306 meters at 110 km/h.

At the other end of the scale, Chinese electric car MG Marvel R performs far worse. The driver needs 44.6 seconds before all the tasks are completed, during which the car has travelled 1,372 meters – more than four times the distance compared to the old Volvo.

BMW iX and Seat Leon perform better, but both are still too complicated. The driver needs almost a kilometer to perform the tasks. Lots can happen in traffic during that time.

Dacia Sandero and Volvo C40 perform well although they both have touchscreens. However, they are not overloaded with features. Volvo shows that a touchscreen doesn’t need to be complicated.

Anvandarnam wrote

Reject the touchscreen takeover - Embrace the physical knob 👌

Anvandarnam wrote

Nice to have this confirmed by actual testing.



https://www.vibilagare.se/nyheter/physical-buttons-outperform-touchscreens-new-cars-test-finds

Reject the touchscreen takeover - Embrace the physical knob 👌

Anvandarnam wrote

Got my second G99 this week and apparently now they give a continuous notification when the driver is weating sunglasses since it can't scan your eyes...

JABCAT wrote

I was not happy to find out I cannot turn off/uncheck the "fatigue alert" in my M2 like I can in my wife's X3MC. Almost every week I drive 250 mi from Dallas to Austin & back. Sometimes that drive takes 3.5 hr, sometimes 4.5-5 hours. I'm constantly bombarded with the "we think you should take a break" alert.

The irony is that the alert requires me to take my eyes off the road and make a selection on the screen out of 3 choices:

1. Yes, find a rest stop
2. Remind me again later
3. Cancel for this trip

Anvandarnam wrote

Embrace the physical knob 👌

RM7 wrote

Welcome to last week.

Anvandarnam wrote

Six years later I was overcome by the need to have a car with actual knobs and buttons. It does have electric seats and windows but nothing else.
Cassette deck is OEM+ with BT on the AM band.

afadeev wrote

Do you actually own a cassette tape?
I still remember what they look like, but don't even know if anyone sells those anymore. My kids wouldn't know what to do with them. Same goes for CDs, VHS tapes, and phone booths.

No, I don't miss any of the above!

YMMV,
a

zx10guy wrote

Apparently Mazda didn't read the memo when they engineered the third gen 2026 CX-5.

With the off topic, I'm always a proponent of physical media. Don't have to worry about compression ruining the quality of the material. Don't have to worry about the content streamer quietly removing content you paid for. I still have CD/Bluray-4K players. If need be, I can hook up a VHS or tape deck player. Still have a very good quality Onkyo TA-2600 3 head cassette player/recorder. I'm actually waiting on Magnetar to have stock again with their UDP800 MKII 4k player to replace my Oppo Digital UDP 203 4k player. And if you look at street prices for the UDP 203, you'll find prices that are at least double what they were new showing that there is demand for quality physical 4k players.

On the vinyl front, I have a VPI HW19 Jr. with a bunch of upgrades connected to a Vincent Audio tube phono preamp.