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Since the infotainment display’s debut in the 1986 Buick Riviera, the technology has grown from an afterthought displaying radio stations and CD information to the centerpiece of a car’s interior with navigation, music, weather, and many other capabilities. 

Today, infotainment innovations are a mixed bag. Some are pretty good, while others are just average. In some cases, the tech has been downright terrible, either because automakers are trying to be too clever or an experiment proved an ineffective overreach. Currently, automakers are busy stuffing the biggest possible displays into their vehicles, with mixed reactions from the general public. 

Regardless, Consumer Reports has noted on multiple occasions that the infotainment is a common pain point. I once owned a 2019 Honda Accord that refused to connect to Android Auto, and it was bad enough that I eventually sold it. In any case, here are some infotainment systems that we’re not terribly fond of, and why they’re so bad. 

A common online complaint is the infotainment display that dominates the entire center stack. This definitely looks cool in press images and showroom floors, but real-world complaints have stacked up for years. The biggest issue is that having everything controlled from one screen requires a lot of menu fumbling while you’re driving, which is distracting and dangerous. This issue is compounded if the system is underpowered, laggy, and hard to read. 

There are some notable examples of good infotainment displays that are ruined by this experience. BMW’s iDrive is arguably the best example. The automaker has promised some wild stuff for iDrive over the years, but many current models house everything in the screen for a cleaner dashboard look. Tesla arguably popularized the practice, and similar styles are still being adopted by automakers like Mazda, which now puts a massive screen in its 2026 Mazda CX-5. 

In cars with physical controls, the AC button may look different, but it’s usually in the same general area and performs the same task. On any given infotainment-only setup, you have to go two or three menus deep to find the same button, especially if you use Android Auto or Apple CarPlay.

The multi-screen infotainment layout was a trend that mercifully ended nearly as fast as it started. It was championed by Honda and its luxury brand, Acura, in the mid-2010s and picked up by Infiniti in the latter half of the decade. The system has its benefits. In our review of the 2016 Honda Accord, we noted that there were some good notes on a dual-screen infotainment display. The bottom screen would be used for control, and the upper screen for things like music and navigation. Seems simple, right? 

The problem was inconsistency. Some Honda and Acura models still didn’t have Android Auto or Apple CarPlay, so folks who used phone mounts for Google Maps had no use for the upper screen at all. Additionally, since the driver now had two screens to pay attention to instead of one, it was often panned for causing even more distractions. Infiniti seems to have done it slightly better, but the same issue remained. 

This tech has its fans, but ultimately, it led to a cluttered and disjointed experience that would be usurped by larger screens in later model years. Honda and Acura both just use larger displays with physical HVAC controls these days, which has gone over well. Infiniti still uses two screens, but modern implementations seem to be more coherent.

Old infotainment systems left much to be desired. They were ahead of their time, and technology had not caught up enough to make these things fun to use. A great example of this is the Uconnect system found in Jeeps and other Stellantis products. The auto giant has been using Uconnect since 2005, and the latest version, Uconnect 5, was launched in 2020. In general, most agree that Uconnect has improved from its early years and that those early years were pretty rough. 

Early models were plagued with all sorts of problems, including slow interfaces, connection issues with cell phones, and confusing menus. Stellantis attempted to improve the system with later versions of Uconnect, but just couldn’t get the formula right. In 2017, I test drove a Jeep Cherokee with Uconnect 3, and while I didn’t find it entirely terrible, it lacked modern features like Android Auto, and had a weird assortment of HVAC controls in the infotainment menu despite also having physical controls. On the plus side, it could engage those controls when I remotely started the thing, which was cool.

Compound all of the above with the fact that some people’s systems just flat stopped working once Stellantis shut down 3G support, and you have a series of infotainment systems that would be better lost to history.

When it comes to disappointing infotainment displays, few have mastered the art as well as Volkswagen. The company was quick to move everything to the infotainment display, starting with the launch of its MIB II system in 2015, and continuing through the third and fourth iterations of the system. As the system evolved, Volkswagen seemed to want the most futuristic setup possible, but didn’t look before they leapt. 

Volkswagen’s mistake is that they took the lack of physical buttons a little too far. Not only were HVAC controls housed in the infotainment display, but the brand also removed them from the steering wheel and replaced them with capacitive touch buttons. People hated this decision so much that a group of them sued the automaker over it. For a few years, there were several Volkswagen models with virtually no physical buttons.

Eventually, Volkswagen made a 180-degree turn and vowed to bring back physical buttons to its vehicles. This was largely hailed as the correct decision, as sometimes there is such a thing as too much. Regulation may have prompted this change rather than customer complaints. 

Hyundai brought the Tucson into its most recent generation in 2022, and it was, by all accounts, a very nice vehicle to drive. It was comfortable, quiet, and the interior felt modern and cool. It also had some unique features like a diffuse ventilation system that passively cooled the cabin. It looked quite nice in photos as well. I was enough of a fan that I took it for a test drive just to see what it was all about, and outside of a slightly sluggish engine, most of the vehicle made me quite happy. That is, of course, until I tried using the infotainment display. 

Hyundai messed up two things on its early infotainment attempts on the Tucson. First, most of the controls were capacitive touch buttons, which I can promise you are impossible to hit unless you look directly at them. Every press emits the same beep, so even if you do mouse around and hit a button, there’s no way to know which one you hit without looking. Add to that the fact that the most touched part of the car was wrapped in easily scratched and dirtied piano gloss black plastic, and it was a recipe for disaster. 

Hyundai got the message a lot faster than some automakers and redesigned the center stack in 2024, alleviating most of the complaints. 

Mazda’s infotainment situation has varied over the years, but the company held out on actually giving drivers a touchscreen a lot longer than some other automakers. Mazda’s most popular vehicle, the CX-5, didn’t get its first full touchscreen until 2024, and owners of prior model years had to use workarounds to get them to work. Instead, drivers were greeted with a rotary dial that would control the screen and several other physical buttons to make selections and use as shortcuts. 

The logic here was that Mazda wanted to give drivers a tactile way to control the screen without needing to lean forward. This meant less attention was pulled away from the road while driving. However, this is a tricky thing to implement. By all accounts, it worked okay on Mazda’s stock infotainment software, but struggled once Android Auto and Apple CarPlay became popular, since those systems were designed for touchscreens. Mazda attempted to fix this by giving drivers touch capability while in those modes, but ultimately, the company caved and just made them all touchscreens. 

Of course, now Mazda is pulling a Subaru and Volkswagen, and the first interior space pictures of the 2026 CX-5 show off a big screen and virtually no physical buttons. So, if this list gets rewritten in a few years. Mazda may be here yet again for another reason.

Mercedes-Benz makes a lot of really nice cars, but they haven’t always had the best infotainment systems. For many years, Mercedes used its COMAND system, which was found in a variety of vehicles in many configurations. It was launched in 1998 and continued until Mercedes introduced the MBUX system in 2018. In the two decades of use, the COMAND system had its ups and downs, but it’s generally considered to be on the lower end of the spectrum in terms of user enjoyment. 

This was for a variety of reasons. The system was known for being limited in its functionality, even as it evolved. It was also known for having finicky, complicated menus that took too many presses to perform simple tasks. Like Mazda and other automakers, Mercedes added a physical controller for the interface, which wasn’t always a touchscreen. Plus, some implementations were hideous to look at. In short, Mercedes made every possible mistake with the COMAND system, and the only consistent thing about it was its inconsistency. 

Mercedes largely remedied its problems with the MBUX system, which is considered better in every way, from general functionality to improved voice controls that people might actually use. The switchover had its own set of drama, people losing COMAND features on one or two-year-old cars.

If there were a hall of fame for bad infotainment displays, Ford’s original Sync system would probably be an inaugural inductee. This is also a very good example of an automaker being too smart for its own good. In an effort to cover every possible use case, Ford made the Sync system way too complicated, which made it a chore to use. Ford launched the system in 2007 and used it until Sync 3 in 2015 and Sync 4 in 2020. The automaker released Ford Sync 5 in 2025. 

The Sync system was hated for several reasons. First was the aforementioned menu system, which required many taps to achieve anything. If that wasn’t bad enough, the voice controls were unreliable, the screen often required multiple presses to register anything, and the system was riddled with bugs. 

Ford’s systems have improved, starting with the release of Sync 3, which, while it does have its fair share of hate, was still an improvement. These days, most agree that Sync 4 and 5 are better than their predecessors, so Ford is trending in the right direction.

Lexus was one of the handful of automakers that attempted the approach of using screens with physical controllers. The tech was known by several names, including Remote Touch. The system was similar to those used by Acura and Mazda. It used a mouse-like touchpad near the gear shift that drivers would use to control the UI, and it came in many sizes, shapes, and configurations. Lexus started using the tech in 2013, and kept it in cars through the rest of the 2010s and into the early 2020s. 

People really didn’t like it, and it’s much for the same reasons as all of the other physical control systems in use by other automakers. It was clunky to use and often required more concentration than simply tapping on a touch screen. This was compounded by the early learning curve, although some drivers did get used to it eventually, and some even liked it. Earlier systems were also rather slow, which required some extra attention, as you simply couldn’t just tap the screen again if the first one didn’t register. Some vehicles even omitted proper cup holders to make space for the touchpad, which wasn’t a great design decision. 

Lexus eventually gave up on the touchpad in 2019, although it took a few years to phase them out of their production cars. Today’s Lexus cars are all touchscreens.

Honda’s luxury brand introduced touchpad systems in 2019, and the idea was to put the screen really far away on the dashboard with a controller so that drivers didn’t have to lean forward to interact with the screen. If you’ve seen the interior of an Acura RDX, you’d know that it would’ve been quite a reach. 

Of the major automakers with a touchpad, Acura’s was the least awful of them, and the tech even had its fans. However, ultimately, Acura did suffer many of the same issues as others, where using the touchpad, at least at first, required more attention than expected, causing distracted driving. Since the system is newer, Acura has avoided the laggy issues from earlier touchpad attempts from Lexus and other rivals, but the touchpad still isn’t the best with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, which are designed for touch interfaces. 

Despite Acura’s trackpad actually having fans, the automaker decided to start dropping the trackpad in the 2025 model year to join everyone else in going with a full touchscreen. The first car to get the change was the 2025 Acura MDX. 

Toyota is known for its reliability. While it makes cars that routinely surpass the 300,000-mile mark (with proper maintenance, of course), Toyota’s infotainment systems have been a low point over the last decade and a half. It started with the original Entune, which launched in 2011 and even came with a subscription service that the company axed a couple of years later. Toyota released Entune 3.0 in 2017 to mixed reviews, and the software wasn’t backward compatible. Toyota said goodbye to the Entune with the launch of the Toyota Audio Multimedia system in 2025. 

We could probably do a whole article about what made Entune bad. The original system was bloated, laggy, buggy, and came with a subscription service that was universally hated. When Entune 3.0 came out, Toyota left all prior vehicles in the dust with no backward compatibility. Entune 3.0 didn’t come with Android Auto or Apple CarPlay, despite most other automakers having already added it by then. Apple CarPlay didn’t appear until 2019, and Android Auto in 2020. 

The latter years of Entune 3.0 weren’t too bad, but it’s clear that Toyota made a good decision by nixing the system entirely with its new infotainment interface. For the most part, Toyota’s biggest sin was that it was too slow to listen to feedback and incorporate modern features when compared to other automakers. 

The Subaru Starlink system was arguably the worst part about owning a Subaru for many years. It’s pretty easy to make the argument because the rest of the experience is actually pretty good. Subaru has reasonably reliable boxer engines that it still uses after all this time, and people enjoy the all-wheel drive systems for snowy weather. They’re also noted for being comfortable, although you’ll probably want the upgraded engine if you want good acceleration. 

It’s not until the infotainment system that things get dicey. Subaru put everything in the infotainment display on many of its models, with a huge, vertical screen that houses everything. These displays are slow and laggy, making a chore of minor temperature adjustments, which users report gets even worse in very cold or very hot conditions. 

Subaru seems to be following its competitors and backtracking on screen-only tech. The 2026 Outback, for example, has a large horizontal screen with physical buttons. So, if you’re shopping for a brand new Subaru, you may be delighted to learn that you’ll have real buttons again that actually work.