Is the Viagraization of car displays the inevitable result of drivers requiring more information or is the cheapness of screens manufacturing its own false necessity? How much better is the experience of driving a car with a gigantic screen compared with a smaller one?
Before I get too far: this isn’t an anti-screen rant. As much as I love the pure driving experience of my old BMW and its little orange pixelated single line of text, the reality is that half the time I drive it there’s an iPhone magnetically attached to the dashboard. Everyone is driving around with a screen these days and it’s just a matter of how much screen is enough screen.
I’ve now driven the same car with two different screen sizes and I’ve come to the conclusion that a small screen is totally fine… up to a point. The boat can certainly be so small that the motion of the ocean becomes meaningless, though I think the size people think they want is much smaller than the size they actually need.
Honda On Honda
One of the perks of this job is that I semi-regularly borrow cars from automakers to review. This gives me a chance to see the latest and greatest in-car technology. I’ve been able to witness the evolution from a single-DIN head unit with a display not even large enough to show all of a song’s name (“Mr. Brights…”) to cars like the Mercedes EQS with its 56-inch curved display ‘Hyperscreen.’
When I bought my new Honda CR-V Hybrid earlier this year one of my big internal debates was over which trim level to get. The car I reviewed was a top-of-the-line CR-V Touring, which comes with a nine-inch screen in the dash. It seemed like an entirely usable screen and on par with what I’m used to in the class.
I’m the kind of person who tends to set a car to CarPlay and leave it there for most of a trip, though Honda did have a cool “Power Flow” graphic that I got a little obsessed with looking at while trying to hypermile. If there was any downside to the large screen it’s that the bigger the screen the more automakers want to put on those screens and, increasingly, that means replacing buttons.
Hell, the Cybertruck has the damn shifter on its screen, as David pointed out in his review:
The shifter works, and it isn’t confusing like some shifters can be, but I still struggle to find a worse transmission shifter in the automotive industry. There’s a reason why the Ford F-150 has stayed with its T-handle PRNDL shifter despite the fact that it takes up a bunch of space and doesn’t actually mechanically connect to the transmission: That’s what Ford’s customers want. They want a physical, substantial shifter. Ram went to a rotary dial, and that received a bunch of criticism, though I think most folks are used to that now. But this “shifter” in the Cybertruck? One with minimal feedback to tell you what’s going on and one that you cannot use without looking — it may work, but that doesn’t mean it’s not the worst of the bunch.
The CR-V thankfully doesn’t have a transmission in the screen, though it lacks tactile buttons for simple things like accessing the phone or radio if you get the larger screen.
After a week with the CR-V Sport Touring, I decided the extra $3k or so to go up to the Sport-L trim level to get a bigger screen wasn’t worth it. Was I just cheaping out in a way that would haunt me later?
Regrets, I Have A Few
I was quite pleased to receive my Honda CR-V after almost a year of searching for the perfect replacement for my imperfect Subaru. The car looked great and I was immediately happy that I went for the cloth seats, which felt more comfortable around my flat white tuchus. Was it a bad idea to skip the automatic powered liftgate? Nah. I’m not Dwayne ‘The Rock” Johnson, but I can close a hatch on a CR-V.
Unfortunately, my first instinct was that the screen was too small. I liked that it had real buttons, including ones to immediately switch to phone mode, which is the one I think most people probably need the most. It was also nice to be able to quickly switch to the radio (shoutout WFUV). I didn’t like the small size.
The difference between seven inches and nine inches never felt greater. Whenever I’d load up the CarPlay screen all the logos suddenly felt very small. I generally don’t like turn-by-turn audio and prefer to actually look at the map and the map felt tiny.
This feeling faded after a couple of weeks. The map itself is way larger than the one on my phone and I can see where I’m going while also easily clicking through the various screens if necessary. It started to dawn on me that the desire to have a larger screen is a desire we’ve created.
We all walk around with screens in our pockets and those are, for many of us, the screens we interact with most. No rational person complains about the size of their giant iPhone 16 Pro. It’s been three months with the car and I no longer mind or even notice the size of the screen. If I had a Tesla and everything was routed through the screen this would be annoying, but I thankfully do not have to do everything through a screen because Honda was nice enough to provide buttons and toggles.
The integration of the screen into the dash, where it pops out like an iPad, isn’t ideal, but it’s fine. I think the space looks better with the nine-inch screen and, if it was only an extra few hundred bucks I’d have probably gone for it. For more than $1,000? Not worth it.
Is there an ideal size for a screen? I think anything in the 9- to 12-inch range is about perfect. This is the size of the second screen in the Lincoln Nautilus and that works perfectly well for me. Can you go too small? Absolutely.
The Ferrari F8 Tributo has this little screen integrated into the gauge cluster and it’s, what, maybe four inches wide? That’s hilarious. It’s fine for your Podcast and Messaggi, but I can’t imagine that it’s so great for your Mappe. I’m not even sure this was worth the effort.
In conclusion: Don’t complain about 10 inches because seven inches is probably fine, though 50 inches is too much, and four inches likely isn’t enough unless you’ve got really good tactile controls to go with it or very small hands.
521 phone call notifications. Bruh.
Absolute animal
Im looking at screens for my motorcycle. The cheap car play options. I think I would do fine with a 5″ screen
That’s what she said! Ahhhhhhhhh
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
7 inches is fine for a screen, keep infotainment on there but basic car functions off. And integrate the screen into the dashboard, don’t have it sticking up like a tablet mounted to the top edge of your dash.
It’s much easier to hit things on a touchscreen while moving if you can brace your hand on an edge or surface below it, so a screen needs to be small enough to reach any point
To me it’s not so much the size as the functions.
I’m currently test driving the new Mini, and while the large round touchscreen looks cool, it feels like a massive information overload as nearly everything is there, including vital information like the speedometer and turn signals.
I have a few different sizes and I prefer the one in our 2021 330e the most. It’s a 10.25″ screen, but in a very widescreen aspect ratio, so it’s no taller than most 7″ screens but lets you have a good size map with music information off to one side (I’m using Android Auto). I have a 7″ aftermarket in my Miata. It does the job. I also have the 12″ portrait mode screen in my RAM that is like (2) screens stacked on each other and you can only use the top half for Android Auto or Carplay. In that configuration, the maps seem small to me, but I like having the option to have map info on the top half and music info and controls on the bottom half. Screen resolution makes a huge difference too. The BMW and RAM have high resolution screens. My aftermarket Kenwood in the Miata isn’t as high of a resolution and everything is scaled up as a result.
Dick jokes aside, I think reasonable sized panel is a good thing. One can reach all the buttons without too much moving. Unlike tv, the size is more like hindrance than an asset.
I like that in my skoda enyaq (ID4 derivate) you can lean your wrist into pad to keep it stable while using the touch screen. like entering address, etc.
You really needed to end this article with a “What I’m Listening To While Writing” of Betty Blowtorch – Size Queen
I use my phone with Google maps for nav and music/pods. I like the heads up display in the car. The tablet on the dash is seldom used and if I had a choice in the matter it would be deleted. The screen adds nothing to the driving experience it just complicates setting up the car the one time that needs to be done. This could be easily done using an app which i could delete when i complete setup.. 18 Honda Accord touring.
To paraphrase Aerosmith, my wife loves the big 10 inch….display in my car and the one I added to hers.
We previously had the double din 7″ Pioneer style, and they were ok, but our Bolt has a 10″ , some of that real estate is taken up by hvac info, but most of it’s usable by carplay, and I replaced the 7″ pioneer in her car with a 10″ Atoto.
As an example of how much difference 3 inches can make, when I replaced the head unit, keeping the cheapo backup camera we had that flashes a red “STOP” at the end of the parking line overlay, my wife tells me”This new radio flashes STOP on the backup screen!”….I gently informed her that that was built into the camera and it’s always done that, she just didn’t notice it before….
And she’s out there driving folks, I’m sorry, nothing I can do about it, keep an eye out for a white 2014 Forester.
But I will say the Tesla and Mach-E giant screens that get rid of the buttons are a little much, when the Lightning came out I actually preferred the “Pro” fleet truck version with the regular style screen as opposed to the giant portrait style 32″ flat screen TV they stuck in the higher level trims.
You would think the screen size matters, but it’s really the vibrating massage seats that matter.
Couldn’t agree more! I always get the smallest phone I can when I update, not the biggest, and “small” screens in new cars are plenty big.
That’s what she said.
/had to be done
Thank you for doing what many of us were thinking.
The other question about what info is on the screen: Who else in the car needs to know?
Final Q: I am waiting for a car that can adjust its screens to my prescription, as I am near-sighted/astigmatism for driving, but I cannot read the screens with my glasses on. Yes, I’ll be getting bifocals (or only high-nose glasses, not sure which).
A Subaru, you say? What kind, pray tell…
10 inches in the Audi and 8 in my Sierra. These seem adequate. Both have climate controls that are physical knobs and buttons which is the real important thing. At the end of the day a bigger map screen is more convenient but there’s a point of diminishing returns. It think that 7-10 inch point is it. That said, if someone wants a bigger screen, then they want a bigger screen. And auto makers will give it to them to try and earn their money.
My favorite thing about the 10-inch screen in my Defender? Turning it off.