All dealerships should be able to update the infotainment software, in fact mine updated it without me even asking. Honest opinion? Mine runs fine and I think it's a great system that's very easy to use. I've had my car over 3 months now and it came with v20 and only problem I've encountered was my favorites were erased (happened once), HUD did not come up (happened once), navi lady came on and music was cutoff and did not come back on driver side (happened twice), the system rebooted itself but music was still playing while this was happening (happened once). That's pretty much it plus the occasional slow boot up time. I've now been updated to v25 for the maybe close to 2 months now and none of the issues has resurfaced. In fact, it's been running fine ever since.

There are others out there that seems to be running into problems with their system. Being a forum, people will come on here when there's a problem so it does look more serious than it is. Good thing is Mazda is on top of it and working hard fixing the bugs.

 

First off, dealers can update the infotainment system. Plenty of people have posted about getting updates, so that's no issue...although you might need to confirm that the dealer is actually aware that there's a new version.

As to the complaints, I get that people are finding some bugs, and I've noticed a couple myself, but I absolutely love the system. It integrates easily with my phone, the navigation system does what I need it to, the ability to use the control knob or touchscreen (when not driving) is handy.

I'm not the best person to judge because I'm coming from a 2004 Prius, although the nav in that car was top notch for the time. Most systems would probably feel pretty amazing to me.

I'd recommend getting in one and playing with the system a bit. If reading people's thoughts on these things has taught me anything, it's that this is all pretty subjective. We all have different needs and different peeves. I love the look of the system, some people prefer the integrated dash look. I find that the phone integration is everything I need, but someone else might find it lacking.

 

Mine was buggy before Version 25. After that update, it crashed the very next day, but we haven't had trouble with it since. When we go in for our first oil change, I'll make sure they go ahead and update to Version 27. We've been happy with it.

 

The system is actually pretty good, I had it crash a couple times under the old v20 software, but problems are minimal under v25... Dealers should be more than happy to help sort out issues with these new cars and if they aren't it's time to find a new dealer...

 

The problem is how frustratingly close to brilliance it is.

First: It's *not* the best audio in the industry, but to get something this good, including solid nav at this price point, it's definitely excellent in comparison.

My problems fall into one of three categories:

- It's still buggy.

- Some of the design choices are boneheadedly stupid

- The Gracenote database just sucks.

Despite all of that, there's a very powerful system there and I'm hopeful that continued improvements and SW versions are likely.

 

The problem is how frustratingly close to brilliance it is.

First: It's *not* the best audio in the industry, but to get something this good, including solid nav at this price point, it's definitely excellent in comparison.

My problems fall into one of three categories:

- It's still buggy.

- Some of the design choices are boneheadedly stupid

- The Gracenote database just sucks.

Despite all of that, there's a very powerful system there and I'm hopeful that continued improvements and SW versions are likely.[/QUOTE

Thanks. I have to find a vehicle to mess around with so I can form my opinion. But honestly, I never bought a vehicle, (and I buy every 2 years) that the entertainment system was "buggy". I usually buy the upgraded stereo in all my cars and have never encountered a problem. This is a make or break feature for me before purchasing.

 

I have to say I haven't seen a NAV/Entertainment system in a car be 100% perfect.. I don't think it will ever be seeing as they are designed by car makers.. that being said I think what we get from Mazda is a very solid offering. The Nav is up to date and I haven't given me a bad/odd route yet. The sound system is very good imo for a car at this price point, on par with higher luxury cars I think. I've owned two modern BMW's including a M3 and I think this one sounds almost as good as those, I'd give the M3 a 9 our of 10 for sound, i'd give the Mazda a 7.5... if it had a sub it would be at least an 8. I think it has a little learning curve but over all its pretty intuitive, all the options and settings are generally where you expect them. It does remind me a lot of my bmw's system in how it operates which I think is a good thing. I think it beats other cars systems in this price range hands down and it looks like Mazda is going to keep the updates and features coming at least for awhile so I am really excited about that. It's new and has some bugs here and there (wouldn't save my contacts addresses once to favorites, but worked the next time I tried). Overall I like it though

 

Thanks. I have to find a vehicle to mess around with so I can form my opinion. But honestly, I never bought a vehicle, (and I buy every 2 years) that the entertainment system was "buggy". I usually buy the upgraded stereo in all my cars and have never encountered a problem. This is a make or break feature for me before purchasing.

I'm on the firmware that shipped with the car. The last time I went into the dealer, they didn't have the 2nd firmware available yet (early December, since it gets physically shipped out when it's released). They're on a 3rd firmware now and more to come. I'll say that it's not bad enough to make time to get it fixed at the dealer urgently.

The stereotype is that the Japanese systems are super-cutting edge/feature rich but can contain bugs while the European stereotype is the opposite with domestics all over the map. This car conforms with the stereotype to some degree-- it does LOTS of stuff, and compared to comps in its class, it's great. Mazda made a lot of good design decisions that lead it to be competitive with Europeans and premium Asian cars feature-wise, when looking at more expensive cars... however the reliability is *good* but not quite there.

I've owned the car for 3 months, and the system has spontaneously rebooted 4 times total. I've suffered the bug where the clock stops auto-updating during a drive as well, but only once. The latter is supposed to be fully fixed and most folks report much greater stability with the new system firmware.

I also had one occurrence where the HUD didn't deploy, but I don't know what provoked that (it's possible for it to validly go into a "reset" mode if you turn it off and on quickly.) In all cases, the problems resolved themselves or resolved themselves after turning the car on and off.

There's also a bug with MP3 play with the 1st firmware. If you restart the car while in MP3 mode, it restarts from the beginning of the disk. If you start playing MP3s, then switch inputs, THEN restart the car, the next time you go back to MP3 it remembers where it was.

I'm used to a system that had nearly opposite design goals-- it was very limited in feature set and there were a lot of things it couldn't do, but what it did, it did with nearly 100% reliability.

 

Great points, OvrSteer. I pretty immediately picked up on the annoyance that the volume button mute push should be a mute/pause, as appropriate.

I agree too about how nice the highway mode is. I put mine through a five hour drive the day after purchase and was pretty quickly satisfied with the highway features. I particularly love how, when approaching splits in the highway, the HUD will show you which lanes you need to be in.

And yes, some of the touchscreen lockout is deeply annoying. Particularly because as far as passengers are concerned, the touchscreen is much easier and more intuitive to use than the control knob, and I have to tell people to stop pushing on the screen in motion because it's not gonna work.

 

I have good news and bad news.
The infotainment systems has different functions so it'll all depend on what you are looking at.

Radio - Actually good. The sound is nice but HD Radio is excellent. There is a feature that creates a surround sound feel but it'll only work with HD radio

GPS - Sucks. It reminds me of something that's not complete as in Mazda suddenly changing their mind in mid game. The only good news is that it's software,. so there is still hope that it will get better. If the GPS is really important do you buying a car then you'll be disappointed mainly because you have to tether your smartphone in order for it to calculate traffic when planning your route.

Communication - Excellent. I have placed calls using the infotainment and the people I was talking to said that they could hear me clearly and it didn't sound as if I was talking in a car over the speakers. This is great considering that Mazda isn't a quiet ride.

The Mazda 3 is a great ride which is why I'm not too upset about the infotainment. I currently use my portable GPS (TomTom) that I used to used in my old car Mazda can Fix their software and GPS issues.

 

I have yet to have to get somewhere relying on the GPS. But I like it running to calculate time of arrival. I don't like the fact that I can't shut off the turn by turn voice, and even muted it interrupts music in a certain speaker. The speed limit flashing up on the screen is pretty awesome too. I find myself double checking it all the time (obviously my first GPS/NAV that wasn't an android smartphone so I'm easily amused LOL)


I've have a few issues with USB. It just quit working for a span of time and then suddenly works fine again. Issue has not repeated itself in a few hundred miles since.


I love the commander knob button thing. Love it.


The rear view camera is awesome. I scoffed at it never having one, and always said "I've never needed one before". But the blind spots in this car are ridiculous. Camera helps big time.

Despite a few bugs I've run into, I'm very glad I went with the infotainment. If it stays as is I'll be ok with it. If it improves with further updates, awesome.

 

I don't like the fact that I can't shut off the turn by turn voice, and even muted it interrupts music in a certain speaker.

There's a setting that you can use to set the turn by turn voice volume to zero and it won't interrupt the music. Or at least it didn't when I first got my car, I don't know now after the updates. The problem I originally had was that the turn by turn voice volume was too low and I couldn't hear it over the music.

 

My biggest issue is the USB audio option is pure crap... I can't connect my iPhone 5S and play spotify.. just won't work. Usually what I have to do is get an actual apple downloaded song or podcast to start playing first, which usually takes a couple pause/play attempts before it will start. Then go into Spotify and select a song then do the same hit play, wait 5 seconds for it to stop, hit play again.. repeat about 5 times then it will start playing. This is so annoying. I would just stick with Bluetooth, but it doesn't stream perfectly and makes a scratching type noise every 20 seconds or so I really hope they fix the usb and bluetooth support in the next update.. its completely unusable at this point!

GPS is pretty good, except for the fact it gets HD Radio Traffic, but it doesn't incorporate it into the NAV system.. it forces you to use a wifi hotspot to get traffic, which I am sure 99% of mazda owners won't have.

 

I got blue screen of death the other day.:ninja 1:

I wasn't even doing anything. One moment it was fine, the next thing I know, the screen was blue.

After turning the car off and on, everything was fine. Weird.