Cadillac Escalade Infotainment Review
We walkthrough the 2021 Cadillac Escalade's tri-screen infotainment system.
Video Transcript
- Let's take a quick look at the infotainment for the new Cadillac Escalade. So you have three screens here, one 16.9-inch touch screen, one 14.2-inch screen for the instrument cluster, and then one 7.2-inch touch screen on the far left.
Starting with the central infotainment screen, you can see immediately that it's a totally new UI, not like any other GM product out there. A submenu on the left. Then, if you scroll across, you get a bunch of icons that you can customize and put wherever you'd like.
Going down the line, we have music to start. You can see all of your different sources are in a scrollable submenu there. And then you have specific controls at the bottom.
Navigation. You can use voice search here, of course. It works quite well. But you could also search the old-fashioned way, if you want to type in an address or pick from a number of submenus.
The phone is what it is. It's a phone.
And then vehicle information. This is also a new format for GM here. You can scroll across and see a whole host of different informative screens-- temperatures, you can turn your traction control and stability control off from here, some off-road information. Overall, pretty informative area if you have any questions on the vehicle.
The fluidity at which you change through screens and open up new menus is greatly improved over the previous system. It's much quicker. It feels quicker. The screen feels more responsive. Overall, fantastic system that looks beautiful too because it's an OLED display.
The center display is also OLED. And it has a few different views, the gauge view being the most basic and simple one here with your speedo in the center and accompanying information surrounding it. But you can also change that to a map, if you're using navigation, or an AR camera, which is extra trippy, if you want to try out the new Cadillac navigation AR mode where it overlays arrows and pins to help you get to your destination.
You do all the switching with the 7.2-inch screen on the left here, where you can swap new modes, but this is also your trip meter, because it's not housed in the central screen anymore, so you can scroll between your trip 2, trip 1, reset, and also mess with your heads-up display settings over here.
With the Escalade being as big as it is, it's no surprise to see a bunch of different camera angles, 3D overhead stuff from every angle. You can just do normal front, wide, just a whole number of different angles to help you park, get in and out of tight situations. It's been super helpful over my week with the vehicle actually. And there are even trailer cameras. If you have a trailer to back up to, that can help you out there as well.
We should also point out that you can control the infotainment system through this scroll wheel, along with some hard buttons, to go to specific submenus if you don't want to actually use the touchscreen itself.
Our biggest disappointment with the whole experience is likely the Apple CarPlay integration. It just chops off a huge part of your screen on left and right and leaves you with this tiny, little display as opposed to using the gigantic 16.9 inches that are available.
