[jzy]

Cheers to all to start off as this is my first post on this side of the forums.

My wife is considering a new M50 and she really likes pretty much everything about it so far.

Just wanted to get some takes from current owners on things they dislike since taking ownership of the vehicle?

[RobM2]

Originally Posted by jzy

Cheers to all to start off as this is my first post on this side of the forums.

My wife is considering a new M50 and she really likes pretty much everything about it so far.

Just wanted to get some takes from current owners on things they dislike since taking ownership of the vehicle?

Aspects of the interior are infuriating cheap (as noted here and everywhere) but otherwise it is an incredible car.

[FSociety]

Anyone with kids under 2 fitting the car seat ok in the rear?

[undauntednyc]

I almost started a similar thread last night! I've had my car for a little over a month. It's a smooth buttery powerful ride and a significant upgrade to my 2018 320xi. Despite a few flaws, I love this car. The pluses far far far outweigh the niggling things. Interior quality complaints are unnoticeable to me because I'm focused on enjoying the driving experience. I've made up excuses just to get in it and drive. Some things that are annoying/niggling:

- Glove box on passenger side is comically small. Right now, it can hold a sunglass case, the car manual and some pieces of mail. I used to hide tons of junk in there in my last car. Can't do that anymore.

- The iDrive knob is fine spinning around but the travel to click down is too short. Pressing down needs to be perfectly centered. Any off-center presses almost always doesn't register as a click.

- Lift gate randomly stopped half way while closing this week. Not sure why. I went back and re-started it. Maybe I walked away too quickly?

- Lock door light blinks randomly. This one is really annoying as I can see it flashing sometimes while driving from the corner of my eye. I'm hoping the dealer or BMW will let me know whether this is a problem that needs fixing or expected behavior based on a feature I haven't been able to figure out.

- Hit the child lock too easily. When I close my door, I don't grab the door lock handle. I grab the space meant for your hand to grab the door to close. Issue is I end up pressing the child lock button with my palm as I'm closing the door and that's annoying.

- You will need to spend some time configuring your settings and getting it just right to your liking. It helps avoid trying to make any changes during your trips. This is where I can see why people get annoyed with the lack of buttons. But once you set it, honestly, you can forget it.

- I primarily used Sirius in my old car. It was simple and easy to use. Now, I need to click through a bunch of menus just to see a list of the channels. I miss using the knob and browsing to my favorite channels as a list. I also find the red selector position on the screen not intuitive to my eyes.

- I turn off auto-hold at the car wash. I think I read somewhere you need to. It's one more thing you have to remember though. And I noticed the workers always latch the driver's seatbelt too at the car wash. I love all these safety features, but at times, it does feel like I need to take extra steps to avoid the car from going postal for mundane things like the car wash.

- Finally, as with any re-design of a car, choices are thin for accessories. Wanted to buy Thule racks and a third party all weather mats but they likely won't release something for our cars until later this year and I'm too impatient to wait. Went with BMW branded ones instead.

- Editing to add one more niggling. The first few seconds of voice prompts gets cut off from Google Maps through CarPlay from my iPhone. This never was a problem on my older car.

[arunr55]

Originally Posted by FSociety

Anyone with kids under 2 fitting the car seat ok in the rear?

Yes.

[JohnBMW]

I miss the small storage compartment next to the steering wheel. The ambient lighting should continue into the rear. No sill protectors so I added the OEM M Performance ones (expensive). That’s it.

I’m delighted with the car.

Truth is every car I’ve ever bought has a few ommisions from previous vehicles. Such is life.

[jzy]

Originally Posted by undauntednyc

I almost started a similar thread last night! I've had my car for a little over a month. It's a smooth buttery powerful ride and a significant upgrade to my 2018 320xi. Despite a few flaws, I love this car. The pluses far far far outweigh the niggling things. Interior quality complaints are unnoticeable to me because I'm focused on enjoying the driving experience. I've made up excuses just to get in it and drive. Some things that are annoying/niggling:

Thank you for taking the time to provide your feedback. You definitely have some valid points of view.

[jzy]

Originally Posted by JohnBMW

I miss the small storage compartment next to the steering wheel. The ambient lighting should continue into the rear. No sill protectors so I added the OEM M Performance ones (expensive). That’s it.

I’m delighted with the car.

Truth is every car I’ve ever bought has a few omissions from previous vehicles. Such is life.

Such is life indeed. Thank you for your feedback.

[redhot47fla]

Still learning my way around, but two things come to mind:
1. See the thread I started about the apparent inability to reshuffle the Favorites (presets) in your radio station list.
2. Click the "Privacy" domino and consider each option carefully. There are a few dicey data-mining features in there that can be declined.
Aside from those, two Powerful. Smooth. Quiet. And filled with features. iDrive 9 already makes 8.0 and 8.5 look a little primitive.

[crackerjack15]

No major complaints. Car drives fantastic. It's so smooth and quick. The screens are incredibly bright and super high resolution.

Things I would change...

I don't like how the idrive dial moves as compared to our X7 dial. You can't adjust the seat and steering wheel heat settings when the surround cameras are on. That's a pain because, I could have adjusted them as I back out of the garage. Even when you stop and start to go forward it takes time for the camera screen to turn off. Yes, I can press the camera button and turn off the cameras, but that another step. That's the problem with no buttons. Lots of extra steps for simple stuff. And I don't want to talk to the car.

Why did they change the xm radio list that idrive 8.5 defaults to? Now I have to press multiple choices to get to the simple list.

The alarm is too sensitive. My wife parks in a parking lot at work near a busy street. It goes off several times a day. You can only disable it once after each shutdown.

And as others have said, the interior feels cheap for a $70k+ car. Lots of loud scratchy plastic. Why not cover it with soft touch synthetic material. It couldn't have added that much cost.

My only regret is getting it with the all season tires. It limits top speed to 130. And it gets there real quick. 155 would have been better.

[JoeyO]

Originally Posted by crackerjack15

My only regret is getting it with the all season tires. It limits top speed to 130. And it gets there real quick. 155 would have been better.

Really? You’re doing 130-155 MPH in West Virginia?

[crackerjack15]

Originally Posted by JoeyO

Really? You’re doing 130-155 MPH in West Virginia?

WV state motto is "wild and wonderful".

I'm a Holly roller. As Elwood said in the blues brothers, "our lady of blessed acceleration don't fail me now!". Lol.

Of course you shouldn't speed. It's not safe and against the law. Just don't ride with me in my over 1200hp mustang.

[mramella]

This question might've already been asked... But is there a way to completely turn off all the strobe lighting effects going on (like on the doors and also where the cup holds are)? I'm not a huge fan of all that. I would prefer a nice satin finish or something like that...

[Locotiki]

I’ve had mine for about a month and just got through the break-in period. So far I absolutely love the way it drives. While I love how powerful it is, the aspect I like the most is just how the power makes low-key driving effortless. For example, being able to pull out into traffic easily without hearing the engine really working. I came out of a 6-year-old Honda Pilot and while that wasn’t under powered, you absolutely felt like you were working it when you needed to pull into traffic, etc.
As much as I love it so far, nothing is perfect, so I have some gripes. The first being, as most people said, feeling like it should have some higher end materials for a car costing what it does. With that said, I feel like the materials could be better for the price, I’m not saying they are cheap feeling though. For example, the interior door handle that everyone complains about, yes it’s flat black plastic, but it’s solid and doesn’t feel cheap when you grab it.
The other things I wish were different are:
• I would like the ability to set a geo-location for the automatic lock/unlock feature. I had to turn off the auto-unlock because it would constantly, lock and unlock each time I walked into our garage because I had my phone or wearing my smart watch.
• I wish it had more interior storage. Coming out of a large SUV I had to cut back 99% of what I use to carry with me all the time.
• Driver assist – it’s very quick to yell at you to put your hands on the wheel if you take them off. My Honda did the same thing, but it allowed for much more time before yelling at you. The M50 doesn’t even give me enough time to switch from my glasses to sunglasses for example.
• Accuracy of the parking assist – It works really well 90% of the time but sometimes it won’t recognize a pre-set/recorded path, or it randomly decides it can’t navigate past a pole in our garage.
• I’m not sure I’m going to explain this clearly, but when starting the car and pulling out of my garage, it brings up the rear camera (which is fine) but the camera function stays on until I’m out of my neighborhood unless I manually turn it off. This wouldn’t be an issue, but you don’t have access to the startup warning message you have to click past until the parking mode is off. Because of this, you can’t turn on your heated seats or steering wheel as it’s blocked until clicking on the “Ok” button.
• I’m only ok with the quality of the sound system. I know others have mentioned being impressed with it, but I can tell you that the audio systems that came in my Pilot and in my wife’s RDX blow the HK in the BMW away.
• Not an issue, but I really wish you could set it to start in any of the available modes and not limited to the few choices they give you. This makes no sense to me but it’s not a huge deal.

[PGHBMW1]

As far a space it's considered a SAV(Sport activity vehicle ) not a SUV. Although my new CRV has more rear seat room. If you have a bunch of kids and haul all there stuff around the X5 or 7 is your choice. I have also noticed when pulling into the my garage if the car goes backwards ever so slightly while still in drive the rear camera goes on. I sense a software glitch and hopefully BMW can push it out instead of visiting the dreaded dealer.

[ryno75]

It drives great, and is comfortable. It's quiet and feels solid.

The drivers aids can be annoying at times, I had to turn off the lane correction because I found it was fighting me when I was driving aggressively. It almost caused me to crash once.

As noted elsewhere, not enough interior storage.

The touchpad for iDrive is awful. It sticks. The dealer says it is working within normal parameters. I find it borderline unusable.

Too many features and functions and buried multiple menus deep within iDrive. Just bring back some more hard buttons.

The door luck button doesn't always work immediately after starting the car. If I'm in a dodgy neighborhood, I like to lock the doors straight away. Sometimes I push and push and push, to no avail.

The default climate control setting is not to sync the driver and passenger, in fact, you have to turn on sync every time you start the car. This is so annoying for someone who is the only person in the car 90% of the time.

The touch sensitive vent openings are unnecessarily complicated. Just go back to the old school analog ones.

I find it to be an overly fussy vehicle that I sometimes regret purchasing. I miss my Lexus in my day to day commute. It is only in the rate occasion that I'm able to really push it that I remember why I bought it.

[Mcssls]

I’m not a fan of ID9. Preferred 8 and 8.5

[undauntednyc]

Originally Posted by mramella

This question might've already been asked... But is there a way to completely turn off all the strobe lighting effects going on (like on the doors and also where the cup holds are)? I'm not a huge fan of all that. I would prefer a nice satin finish or something like that...

I don't think so but I bet you can dim it down. During the day, the start-up light is without color (don't know if you can change that). It's not noticeable at all in sunlight. I've never been bothered by it at night. By the time you get in your car and press start, the light show has ended.

[Mr812toU]

Originally Posted by FSociety

Anyone with kids under 2 fitting the car seat ok in the rear?

My car seat fits just fine with plenty of leg room for her.

[Mr812toU]

My only complaint is the touch pad where drive mode and parking camera button is. It doesn’t always work when pressed like it’s stuck. So have to fiddle around pressing top left by media button etc many times to get it unstuck

[puckhead85]

Don't know how it is in the 50 but my 30 with the start/stop is annoying when pulling into a parking space. If I pull in and stop but when the sensors get triggered I pull in more and it's very jerky when pressing the gas.

The other stuff is drive related. ie why no XM preview with artist/song in the list.

[Ravenous666]

Got my M50 this week.

I was also not happy about the material choice on the doorpanel at first when I visited the dealer back on October. But now as I drive the car I don't realy notice it at all. I stored my seat setting once and linked it to my driver profile. Same accounts for the side view mirrors. So that leaves the door handle and the door latch. Both is totally fine for me after getting used to it. Sure a nice metal door latch would be a plus, but doesn't bother me anymore.

The rest of the interior is actually very good. no rattle or any other unwanted noises. I like the clean look of the cockpit.

The large display screen is absolutely great in any aspect. Resolution and visibilty is great. Center console has everything I need with direct buttons for navigation, telephone, media, drive modes and home screen. The only thing I miss on the otherwise nice iDrive controller is the touch surface to write on when searching music in my quite large USB stick album collection.

Besides the touch controller I don't miss the hardbuttons. Climate contro is directly available on the touch screen and heated seats and steering wheel settings where taken over from my previous G01 profile so I don't need to set it again. But if you want to it's easy to find and well placed on the touch screen.

Driving assistance features of the DA Pro is absolutely next level and a huge step ahead of other car manufacturers and a bit better than the G01s features.

Driving with the M50 is realy nice compared to my former G01. Seats (merino leather) are more comfortable than the G01s sport seats. Adaptive M suspension is great with a nice large spread between comfort mode and sports mode. Engine power and torque is great and swithcing the sports mode turns the car into something elase. Throttle response, adaptive M suspension and steering change significatly.

I get used to the iDrive 9 day by day now and have created shortcuts to my most used features. Some settings are harder to find, but when you adapt to the App based philosophy of iDrive 9, its quite ok.

BMW genius told me that the speech comands will get improved over the next 2 updates and should be at the same level of iDrive 7 in summer. Currently some commands I where used to from the G01 LCI do not work or need more details because the voice recognition engine can not differentiate between driver and passanger seating position.