Mercedes-Benz A 250 Sport 4MATIC: Technology Review

The new Mercedes-Benz A-Class has inherited the continuous screen style from the bigger (and more expensive) S-Class, the flow of the display certainly complimenting the updated interior design of the A 250 Sport 4MATIC sampled here.

Although ‘flow’ is probably the wrong word, as the design constraints of imposing a level eyeline from the 10-inch instrument screen across to the central 10-inch infotainment array seems to impose some minor issues.

I’m 182 centimetres tall – six-foot in the old money, and I found it difficult to find the optimal seat and steering wheel setting for comfortable driving that did not include the annoyance of having significant parts of the instrument panel screen from being obscured.

The central infotainment screen of the Mercedes-Benz A 250 is at a good height for rear view and 360-degree camera display presentation, but for the dash, even as a digital dash, there is a bit of an argument to drop it lower and set it back a bit from where this one is placed.

It is not a big issue, there are plenty of themes that can be customised on both screens, and one of these will surly work for you, your proportions and what information is important to your drive. Customisation is king, here.

There is certainly a look to the interior that is hard to ignore, too. It can be polarising, but the customisable mood-lighting with the option of animated colour rotation that flirts between understated glacial greens and blues to ostentatious and vibrant with volcanic reds and yellows is likely to appeal to many in this segment.

Air-vents caused the most controversy in our testing, separately lit and finished in chrome the five imposing outlets span the width of the interior and catch the eye with opinions of style varying wildly.

In our test car, the air-vents demanded more attention than normally wanted as we battled to get the climate control to behave. Often, hot air blasted from these jet-engine-like orifices with the air-conditioning on and set to a thermostat of16 degrees and the outside temperature was nudging 40 Celsius!

That was uncomfortable, and took a bunch of “switch it off and on again” techniques to remedy. This seems like a good time to talk about some of the other minor annoyances we encountered with the cars tech.

Despite some fiddling and adjustments, the Mercedes-Benz A 250 Sport 4MATIC always thought there was somebody in the middle of the rear-seats and insisted this phantom put on their seat-belt.

The wireless (inductive) charging bay deep in the front console played havoc with the Near Field Communication chip thinking I was trying to Apple-Pay for something. We have seen this occur many times in the past with wireless charging, and given the technology is the same for both features it is unsurprising it happens, it just happened with more regularity in the Mercedes-Benz.

There is no physical manual, again this is unsurprising these days, and the in car digital version is easy to access (as long as you are stationary when you do) but the text is small, and the great idea of animated videos to deliver the information is still a bit clunky, needing polish in our opinion.

Minor quibbles aside, Mercedes-Benz deliver a solid infotech offering in the A-Class for a good price – and with the option of wired Apple CarPlay or Android Auto hidden away for those that desire it.

Bluetooth connectivity is one of the fastest we have come across, as is the DAB (digital) radio processing, almost immediate in fact. The interface for selecting stations, DAB, FM or AM could use a little bit of work to improve the user experience, however.

Massaging seats can be extensively customised from a rather rigorous workout to a gentler pummelling that can be timed to kick in during long drives.

The satellite navigation system is well presented and clear in the information given – although out of the corner of the driver’s eyes during cornering, those animated clouds swinging around can be distracting.

The sat-nav is linked to the excellent voice control system. It can be disconcerting when you set an address to a suburb in a city and the system responds with confirmation of the address, neglecting to state the suburb name in favour of the city name.

The voice control system – so beloved by the carsales.com.au team at launch – is indeed impressive. It can control every aspect of the A 250 Sport 4MATIC: change radio stations, play other media, set the climate-control temperature, open the sun-visor and much more.

Like electronic personal assistants pervading our lifestyles, you can trigger the voice control by simply saying “Hey Mercedes!”; and as such, they can be triggered accidentally from time to time with sometimes hilarious results.

This vehicle, however, employs options for tech control – the excellent touchpad atop the centre console is well positioned, has hard-buttons surrounding it for all the major option categories of tech you will need. We rarely needed to sully the touchscreen with the oil of our finger.

Our test vehicle had a forward camera system for reading speed signs, including time based speed-zones.

This system also features in the lane-keeping feature which we really struggled with. Despite altering sensitivity settings, the lane-keeping – as well as the Brake Assist and even parking sensors – are over reactive.

Lane-keeping in most vehicles means either a warning only (which is an option here) or a gentle tug back on the steering to return the vehicle to the proper alignment. On the A 250 Sport 4MATIC, however, it feels like it jumps on the brakes whilst drawing the car back to centre.

Similarly, reverse parking into a high-curb space will trigger harsh braking despite the driver being in complete control of the process and aware of the proximity of the curb. Our advice is to really customise from the default settings to find the optimal sensitivity for your driving. Or, sadly, turn off the systems entirely.

There are ample USB ports, these are the smaller – but higher powered – Type C ports, so you may need an adapter for your equipment.

Generally speaking this is a slick looking and performing system. The Themes options for the instrument screen that can focus in on specific functions such as media, navigation, engine performance adds so much to the way you can customise your Mercedes-Benz. It is very satisfying.

If the bugs can be ironed out – most likely with a software update – this will be one of the best offering of infotech on the market.