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Car review

Audi A3 Sportback

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Anyone stepping out of the comparatively minimalist cabin of the earlier A3 and into this new one can be in for a shock, albeit principally a pleasing one. There is a greater diversity of supplies and a dashboard that’s, to a level, break up in two, with a extra driver-focused design.

Audi acknowledges that this era of A3 has been criticised since launch in 2020 for the end and design of its inside, and so the precedence for its mid-life replace was to present the cabin a top quality and charisma enhance. So there are actually illuminated door panels (30 colors obtainable), redesigned air vents with elective chrome surrounds, a smaller gear shifter and a raft of latest upmarket supplies and color schemes.

Plus, the infotainment runs the most recent era of Audi’s infotainment platform – giving entry to inbuilt apps and varied paid-for features on demand – and the usual package listing has been prolonged to incorporate a wi-fi cellphone charger, ambient lighting and luxury air-con.

The result’s a cabin surroundings which straddles the contentious digital-physical divide to nice impact. The touchscreen – properly built-in and unobtrusive as it’s – is crisp of graphic and swift of processing velocity, with its menus laid out sensibly and easy accessibility offered to the features you’ll need to use on the transfer. But it’s removed from all-powerful, with the A3 retaining a wholesome smattering of toggles, switches and buttons throughout the sprint, console and steering wheel – every sensibly positioned and with a satisfying tactility about it. 

Top marks, too, for the ADAS integration; you solely must press one bodily button to carry up the digital driver aids, so turning off the velocity restrict and lane-keep bongs is the work of 5 seconds.

As in different smaller fashions within the Audi vary, there isn’t a secondary touchscreen for the local weather management settings. Instead, there’s a small cluster within the decrease part of the dashboard with easy-to-reach bodily buttons that make frequent changes potential with out glancing away from the street. This is the preferable set-up in our opinion.

Aside from that, there’s 6mm extra elbow room within the entrance than the pre-2020 automobile, and 3mm extra within the rear, due to a rise within the automobile’s width. A 7mm enhance in entrance head room and 2mm extra shoulder room are additionally welcome, if small, enhancements.

The boot capability of the A3 stays the identical as within the earlier era, at 380 litres, and this will increase to 1200 litres when the rear seats are folded ahead. From Sport specification up, these are break up 40:20:40, fairly than 40:60.

News, TVs

Samsung’s Frame TV Got Even Better At CES 2024, But It’s No Longer The Weirdest Product

The slick Frame TV is a showcase of Samsung pushing the boundaries of minimalist way of life design into its shopper tech merchandise. It stands out as an oddity, aesthetically, that’s. But the corporate is now pushing the identical formulation into audio gear, and the result’s a brand new known as Music Frame. Technically, it is the Samsung HW-LS60D.

Imagine the Frame TV aesthetics however for a speaker. Samsung says it is “the world’s first customizable and personalised wi-fi speaker with a built-in IoT hub. It’s fairly versatile, too. On its personal, it is a wi-fi speaker that may be paired with a telephone or PC over Bluetooth. But there’s extra to it. It may even create a digital print of pictures on an acrylic plate with a matte end on prime.

It may also be related to a Samsung TV to boost the audio output. Depending on the present audio configuration, it may possibly double as a subwoofer and rear speaker, as properly. The firm has fitted a pair of tweeters, woofers, and mid-drivers. Samsung has additionally deployed its Samsung SpaceFit tech that may sense the atmosphere, which permits the Music Frame to mechanically modify audio output.

Car review

Volkswagen ID 3

Despite being roomy and very on-trend with its minimalist design and layout, the Volkswagen ID 3’s cabin didn’t previously live up to the high standards of perceived material quality for which VW has become a byword over the past 25 years.

Surprisingly hard- and plain-feeling plastics were employed on the dashtop and the doors, almost all of which were finished in various shades of grey in our test car. Save for a few flashes of glossy black plastic on the centre console and a bit of fabric upholstery on the doors, the test car’s cabin was not only slightly dull to look at but also relatively uninviting to touch. By its own admission, in fact, its interiors were “frustrating”. 

For the new ID 3, though, VW has added plusher materials including a new door trim, now a soft fabric consisting of 71% recycled materials. Soft-touch plastics are also abundant, but glossier items do remain. It’s impressively refined and quiet as well, which in combination with the much more welcoming interior (in our car’s case lifted by the optional interior pack) means the ID 3 is now somewhere you wouldn’t mind spending time.

From a functionality point of view, the ID 3 is considerably more impressive. There’s a real sense of airiness in the front half of the cabin, aided largely by a low-set and entirely clutter-free centre console. There’s no gear selector or manual handbrake lever taking up room here. Instead, it houses a couple of large storage cubbies and cupholders, with plenty of room for phones, wallets, keys and anything else you might care to rid your pockets of. The transmission selector is grafted on to the side of the instrument display, like in a BMW i3.

With a wheelbase longer than that of a Volkswagen Golf and a Kia e-Niro, second-row space is very good, too. Our tape measured typical rear legroom at a very impressive 760mm – 10mm more than you get from the Kia, and only 10mm less than you’ll find in a BMW 3 Series Touring. Headspace isn’t quite as abundant, at 940mm, but average-sized adults will be able to get comfortable easily even when sat behind a taller driver.

Boot space is 385 litres with the rear seats up, which puts it on par with the Golf but behind the Kia, which has a 451-litre load bay. The boot floor is flat, although there’s a fairly sizable loading lip to negotiate.

VW ID 3 infotainment and sat-nav

Even entry-level models come with Volkswagen’s 10.0in Discover Pro Navigation infotainment system as standard. 

This infotainment system was due for an upgrade, with a larger touch screen and back-lit temperature sliders, but frustratingly neither of these features will be introduced until next year. 

It’s now powered by Volkswagen’s 3.5 software version, but our short time with the system still brought up some technical glitches, plus latency and loading issues as seen in the previous model. But all is not lost though, as the system will again receive continuous improvements through over-the-air updates.

Generally, it works well and is graphically rich. It takes practice to learn how best to navigate and operate it, though, and getting familiar is best done with the car parked. Also, the same reservations we had with the Mk8 Golf in terms of usability (lack of control backlighting, lack of shortcut buttons) apply here, too.

You get Apple CarPlay and Android Auto as standard, both of which can be accessed by either USB or Bluetooth connection. You can pair up to two mobile devices to the system wirelessly.

The system will also respond to voice commands, albeit not as consistently as we would like. It will retune the radio well enough when you ask it to, thanks to recognition of ‘natural’ commands. However, asking it to input an address into the nav system was almost impossible in our test car, and depended on just the right order of ‘town/street/number’ input. This needs improving.