2015 INFINITI QX70

Great Performance Hampered by Horrible Technology

Performance: 0 Comfort: 0 Fuel Economy: 0 Fun To Drive: 0 Interior Design: 0 Exterior Design: 0 Build Quality: 0 Reliability: 0 Comfort Rating: 3 Performance Rating: 5 Interior Rating: 4 Reliability Rating: 5 Safety Rating: 4 Technology Rating: 1 Value Rating: 3

I owned three Infiniti FX cars - 2006, 2009, 2012. Was finalizing purchase of 2015 QX70. The majority of the really important things on a car - safety, drive, handling, reliability - all of my cars were excellent. There were a few areas of concern over the years, and since the model doesn't seem to have changed in over a decade, they continued to be issues. Rear seat room was adequate, but due to the shape of the rear doors, getting in and out was a problem for some passengers. Kids should be fine. Rear cargo capacity was fine for me -- but this isn't going to provide the mega-capacity of some SUVs. Most recently had a car in Midnight Mocha with brown leather interior - a nice deep root beer color. The metallic exterior paint appears as a deep, eggplant purple in many lighting situations, including daylight/sunlight. The basic interior choices for the car are either graphite gray or light wheat. The brown interior results in a hodgepodge incomplete look - a sort of cheap, half-finished shortcut. Seats and parts of the dash are substituted with nice brown leather, but all other leather and trim remains the standard graphite - such as the doors, portions of the dash, etc. Brown floormats over the basic graphite carpet looks odd. That's poor attention to detail reminiscent of a half-finished job or a cover-up. Since all other exterior color combos provide for graphite or wheat interior, this issue should only occur with a Mocha/brown leather equipped car. The car was fun to drive, and had great exterior styling. However, for any driver who finds technology to be important - the FX and QX70 miss the mark by alot. ALOT. The software and user interface for Navigation, Bluetooth, and audio entertainment are bad. Just plain bad. Test other cars, and almost all will demonstrate much better controls and interfaces. Only one USB outlet in the car, voice interface that works poorly and freezes are some of the problems. Limited information display when using your own devices via bluetooth or USB, and even for the Satellite radio. No ability to control music selection with voice commands. But the most astonishing problem is the severely outdated navigation dataset loaded into new cars. Whatever source Infiniti uses for nav-data is horrible. Roads and business in existence for several years simply don't appear in the Infiniti's Nav. Not even brand new cars. As I prepared to buy the QX70, my fourth Infiniti, I decided to pay particular attention to the Nav/entertainment system. I tried several different automobile brands. I found that design and software varied from manufacturer to manufacturer - with many aspects of the Infiniti being the worst. I made a list of several destinations, all established in early 2014 or in prior years, and then tested the 2015 cars from several manufacturers. Even tested the 2016 QX70. Not one business from 2013 or 2014 was found on the Nav dataset in the 2015 or even the 2016 QX70. At least 80% were found in all of the other 2015 cars, and often 100%. If you don't care about user toys/entertainment/navigation --- then the QX70 is a fantastic car. If driving a relatively high-priced premium automobile with horrible technology, out-performed and out-designed by many budget cars will bother you.... avoid the QX70. Or, at least test these systems in the QX70 before finalizing a purchase/lease decision. After 9 years, I decided it bothered me too much, so I switched to another manufacturer's crossover. I'll check back in on the Infiniti when I'm ready for a new car in a few years - if the technology is updated and comparable to other manufacturers, I'll probably return to being an infiniti owner.