ordering decisions.... MBUX or no MBUX?

Gski

Member
Just a heads up. The speakers are small so the audio experience in the VS30 is a good bit underwhelming for me. This is my first sprinter but the stock Wrangler sound system sounds way better than the 2 (maybe a 3rd in the center dash?) setup this thing has. I will be upgrading...I just don't know if anyone has done it yet or if the MBUX will detect a change in the speakers (apparently newer systems know when a speaker has changed or been replaced).

There are definitely three speakers, but most of the sound is being reflected off the windshield by a automotive-grade dash speaker.

The door speakers look much bigger, but until I find a way to tweak the balance to use them, it is hard to say how they sound.
 

Notfamous

Member
Yeah the door panels look like 5 1\4. There may be tweeters in the corners of the dash. The center speaker is supposed to be for the voice assist to come through over the audio but I feel like everything is dominantly being funneled through that center dash speaker.

Also, I looked under the driver seat. I found my psm wiring and possibly part of the MBUX system. There was a box with "Bluetooth" on it. Possibly may also be the amp. If so, this could make speaker upgrades easy.

Sent from my Pixel 3 XL using Tapatalk
 

Davydd

Well-known member
Advanced RV upgrades the cab speakers in the NC3V vans but they said the MBUX speakers are upgraded already and there is not much benefit to upgrade further. I’m taking their word for it and I don’t think it matters with my degraded hearing range anyway. I quiter cab would help more for me.
 

Notfamous

Member
Guys the vans with the acoustic package are very quiet. Sure going with a full panel conversion will improve it but I was pleasantly surprised what that xm4 did. I will pull a couple liners out and post pics this week.

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Gski

Member
Yeah the door panels look like 5 1\4. There may be tweeters in the corners of the dash. The center speaker is supposed to be for the voice assist to come through over the audio but I feel like everything is dominantly being funneled through that center dash speaker.

...

I did a quick check of mine: the sound is 90% from the dash centre speaker. The audio controls have a left/right balance, but it has little effect as the centre speaker dominates. There are no other audio controls that were immediately obvious.
 

Notfamous

Member
I basically set the bass to +10, dropped the mids to -8 and dropped the highs to -6. This will require you to use a little more volume but it sounds a little better.

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sulkorp

Member
In Canada, Apple CarPlay and Android SuperShare are both pre-licensed with no expiry date.

CarPlay works quite well, except that the audio sounds exactly like a traditional OEM stereo system. You can easily identify the song that’s playing, so the sound quality is better than some. The phone audio quality is good: the other person can clearly hear that you are talking from inside a bare metal box. (And yes, insulating and covering the walls/roof just jumped to the top of the priority list, go figure.)

I love the 360 camera for parking and the ability to get google maps on the big display, so I would still recommend MBUX.

As a new owner, the ability to use MBUX to quickly tweak vehicle settings at a red light is a huge asset. This will probably be less useful after a week of ownership.

For music, my original plan is unchanged: a bluetooth speaker system powered/recharged by usb C, attached to the house battery not the starter battery.
I am in Canada, and I currently do not have Carplay/Android Auto.

You mention yours was activated already? I may have to go into the dealership to see if they can do the same with mine.
 

Gski

Member
I am in Canada, and I currently do not have Carplay/Android Auto.



You mention yours was activated already? I may have to go into the dealership to see if they can do the same with mine.

If you dig around in settings, you will find a licensing page with details for various options like CarPlay.

Carplay wasn’t visible anywhere but the license page until I connected my phone to the right usb port. After a few set up steps, the ‘apps’ page was no longer empty.
 

GLJones

Active member
Ordered the 10.5" MBUX in our passenger van that will be built on July 30. I went with it mostly for the 360 degree camera view when parking at loading docks and Google Maps right on the dash. CarPlay is a great bonus. Since very few 2019s are at dealers, especially ones with MBUX, I have yet to hear the audio system.
 

Notfamous

Member
Ordered the 10.5" MBUX in our passenger van that will be built on July 30. I went with it mostly for the 360 degree camera view when parking at loading docks and Google Maps right on the dash. CarPlay is a great bonus. Since very few 2019s are at dealers, especially ones with MBUX, I have yet to hear the audio system.
It's a little underwhelming....but the 360 and maps are worth it. If only they could get thier MB Pro Connect working right....my dealer is still trying to figure it out and it's been 2 weeks....

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cacaw

Well-known member
Ordered the 10.5" MBUX...
I would have loved the 10.5" display and 360º camera but didn't want to wait so I settled for the 7" display.

Am I stuck with the Mercedes navigation system or can Android or Apple navigation be displayed on the 7" screen?
 

Notfamous

Member
I would have loved the 10.5" display and 360º camera but didn't want to wait so I settled for the 7" display.



Am I stuck with the Mercedes navigation system or can Android or Apple navigation be displayed on the 7" screen?
You can use Android auto or carplay for navigate. Inise MB Nav and Android Auto for everything else.

Sent from my Pixel 3 XL using Tapatalk
 
Purchased a 2019 with the 10" MBUX in it. Largely as I didn't think the backup camera in the rear view mirror was remotely up to the job. I would have probably been happy with the 7" but this one is just substantially easier to see and looks a heck of a lot more classy.

PROS:
Back up camera you can actually see with the sensors to the left of the camera image. This was important to me. Nav is OK. phone is ok.
I have all the buttons on my wheel and I'm using them. The volume control on the van is pretty far away so the volume control on the steering wheel is getting a lot of usage.

When you get the 10" MBUX you also get a little screen in the center between the speedo and rpm guage. More menus here. This is the "minime" screen to me.

Looks great.

CONS:

I can't believe this but there is no button to SKIP to the next song anywhere. REALLY? OK there is one in the media screen but if you are listening to music from an app (say pandora or spotify) and you have the nav running and you want to skip the song. nothing. nothing on the wheel and nothing on the screen. you have to leave the nav screen to skip. Lame.

"hey mercedes" is really "mercedes" so it comes on way more than it should. I'm likely to turn it off pretty quickly.

Apple Car play only works if the phone is plugged into the special port that is the left of the three in the dashboard top cubbie. This has me running a lame cable over the top of my dashboard to make it work. Really? Carplay works on bluetooth, but i'm guessing that might have cost MB more to activate so they cut the corners here. This is super annoying as you have to connect to the one port on top of the dash.

All the other stuff in the MBUX is just stuff. the menus and configurations are super light. Not a ton of options. Nothing of substance.

My van apparently has a wifi hotspot. But I can't figure out how to access it. Its "enabled" in the menu but it doesn't show up in any devices.

MINIME SCREEN PROS
There is one.
It has lots of view you can select from (but none that are any good)


MINIME SCREEN CONS
The minime screen in the center of the gauges is super annoying as it is somehow set to tell me how much oil I have every-time I start the van. I have to make it go away on every start which just annoys me. I have tons of oil. Maybe this is good for fleet vehicles but i wish i could find a way to disable this.

There are tons of different views you can select from but none of the items I want to see are on one screen. There is even some dumb economy game you can play each time you drive to try and drive more "gently" and earn points.

I would love to just see 2 things. The speed and how many miles are remaining in fuel. Surprisingly the remaining fuel is only available on one screen and the other stuff that comes with that view I dont care for.


BOTTOM LINE:
For years people have just "dealt with it" when it comes to the MB nav systems and used their phones. Yep. Still the same, just looks cooler next to your phone.
 

sanomechanic

Well-known member
I believe you will have to get the hot spot activated through AT&T from what I once read. The show oil at start up is actually an option from build. Who ever keyed in the van order selected this. Probably intended for fleet service like you stated. Would ask MB Service Department if this can be turned off through the CAN network.
 
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Gski

Member
...

Apple Car play only works if the phone is plugged into the special port that is the left of the three in the dashboard top cubbie. This has me running a lame cable over the top of my dashboard to make it work. Really? Carplay works on bluetooth, but i'm guessing that might have cost MB more to activate so they cut the corners here. This is super annoying as you have to connect to the one port on top of the dash.
...
Not only do you have to use that one USB port, but if you have the dash storage cover (which came with an option package), you put your phone inside a small, nearly air-sealed, black box on the dash in full sunshine.

As soon as the sun came out today, my phone overheated and carplay announced that the iPhone can’t be used until it cools down. First road trip, first good laugh!

It is also pretty clear that MB was being honest when they said carplay functionality would be late, arriving well after vans started shipping. Hopefully an update will come this summer.

MB makes good cargo vans, some of the best taxis in Europe, but they are not above average in car stereos. I forgot, apparently they make fashionable cars too.
 

sulkorp

Member
CONS:

I can't believe this but there is no button to SKIP to the next song anywhere. REALLY? OK there is one in the media screen but if you are listening to music from an app (say pandora or spotify) and you have the nav running and you want to skip the song. nothing. nothing on the wheel and nothing on the screen. you have to leave the nav screen to skip. Lame.
This was confusing for me as well. I think someone in this thread had mentioned the way to skip.

When you are in the media page, Swipe Right/Left on the touchpad to skip songs.

Not sure if it is in the manual, yet that is how it works.
 
it turns out there is a "hard" button for this in the very bottom right of the mbux area that brings up a song skipping pop up menu over the navigation. so it DOES have a skipping function.

But from the drivers seat this is so far to the right of the dashboard that I can barely get to it when driving the van. The passenger can easily skip songs, the driver can not.

It also seems there are lot of hidden shortcuts i'm supposed to just find.


Now that i'm further in with the van, i could not imagine not having the buttons on the steering wheel in a non mbux van.

I'm super pleased with the distronic cruise control. it works great in traffic. I've owned self driving teslas and the radar cruise on this van works better than the tesla. its pretty smooth in bumper to bumper traffic and seems to soften out the starting and stopping so its not jerky. I recently made LA to SD through rush hour traffic without using the pedals but a couple of times for lane changes.

I would highly recommend you spec this if you are placing an order. worth it.
 

Gski

Member
it turns out there is a "hard" button for this in the very bottom right of the mbux area that brings up a song skipping pop up menu over the navigation. so it DOES have a skipping function.



But from the drivers seat this is so far to the right of the dashboard that I can barely get to it when driving the van. The passenger can easily skip songs, the driver can not.



It also seems there are lot of hidden shortcuts i'm supposed to just find.

Where is this ‘hard’ button? I am not doing well at finding the easter eggs in this video game[emoji6]

I am glad I got the mbux, even if I don’t use it for music much and still haven’t found enough traffic to test the distronic.
 

Louv

New member
This was confusing for me as well. I think someone in this thread had mentioned the way to skip.

When you are in the media page, Swipe Right/Left on the touchpad to skip songs.

Not sure if it is in the manual, yet that is how it works.
"Hey Siri... Next Track"
 

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