Today we're taking a look at the UVO 3 technology in the dashboard of the 2018 Kia Stinger.
Now, there's a lot of tech here but this car's got to punch at a lot of different weight classes, and it comes out looking pretty good across the board.
Let's take a deeper look.
Now as I mentioned, this is a fully loaded G2-2 model.
So we got all of the dashboard bells and whistles.
But surprisingly, most of what we're going to talk about today is standard technology across the line up.
Even at the base model.
I'll point out the optional features as we go along, starting with this larger eight inch display that we have here.
Now this is an optional upgrade for most Stingers that replaces the seven inch display that you get at the base model.
So the only real difference between these systems is the larger screen.
Gives you more real estate which makes it easier to read things and also easier to tap around and hit buttons more accurately.
The other difference between the systems is this.
We've got navigation on the bigger screen.
Now I find that the screen's position is a bit of a stretch for my natural driving position when I'm on the road and over the first couple of days, I found myself wishing There was some sort of an NMI or IDrive controller down here, some sort of physical knob.
But after a couple hundred miles you get used to it.
Now the maps themselves are pretty sharply rendered.
They render smoothly, they animate quickly.
And the routes that they choose are about as good as the competition, it's a pretty good system we have here.
Now with or without maps, you get pretty good voice commands, and that's the U-Voice, part of the Uvo entertainment system.
And the rest of the interface is actually pretty well organized.
Especially because we've got this bank of physical buttons down here, that allow you to Shortcut to different parts of the interface.
Now an interesting button in the banks is this star button here.
It's a customizable key that you could set to do a variety of things.
You just pop into the menu and you find this custom button icon right here.
And you can set it to do anything from going to the Home screen to pulling up various menus.
I've got it set up to go straight to Android Auto or Apple Car Place so I don't have to fuss around with the menus and Boom, there you are, it's a pretty cool feature.
Now, it's no Audi MMI system, you're not going to wow anybody with Google Maps in your dashboard, but this is a much less expensive car, so I think I'm all right with that.
Besides, most of you are just going to want to plug your smartphone into the USB port and go straight to the Android auto or Apple Carplay interface.
Fortunately, those are standard features across the lineup, so even on the base level You can get your apps and maps right here in the dashboard.
Now powering the sound for the wide range of media sources, anything from your audio apps, to the media sources that we have here, to the satellite and terrestrial radio is an optional Harman Kardon audio system.
We've got 15 speakers, around 750ish watts of amplification, and it sounds pretty good.
Doesn't scream audiophile to my ear, but it gets really loud and it doesn't distort at high volumes.
And at this price, I think that's worth a thumbs up.
Now overall, the Kia Stinger has to compete at a wide range of price ranges, anything from at the base level, the Mazda 6, or the Ford Fusion Sport.
All the way up to this top trim level which kinda trades blurs with the Audi S5 or BMW 4 Series Grand Coupe.
Now at the lower end of that spectrum, the Stinger brings a lot of features to the table that the competition just doesn't, and in the upper echelons you've got pretty much everything you need to get the job done of driving on a daily basis without any of the bells and whistles.
But for a lot less money.
No matter how you slice it, it ends up looking pretty good, at least where the technologie's concerned.
To find out what it's like to actually drive this thing, check out our full review over on the roadshow.com where we've got on the road impressions and a lot more details about some of the safety tech.
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