Hi I'm Chris Wardlaw for CarGurus and today we're going to talk about the pros
and the cons of the refreshed 2016 Acura MDX without further ado let's get right
to it
starting with three of my favorite things about the MDX earlier this year
my family and I took an Acura MDX up San Francisco for a four day road trip and
it proved to me that this is one of the great road trip machines aside from a
slight bit of road noise this is super comfortable the engines powerful gets
decent gas mileage
we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves now my test car is the updated 2016 MDX it's
the advanced package model with the rear entertainment system and in the advanced
package you get perforated Milano leather seats that have heating and
cooling you get heated outboard second row seats rear seat occupants have their
own air conditioning controls and if you've got the entertainment system with
the advanced package everybody has a wide array of entertainment choices so
you just set the cruise control you pop the integrated dynamics system into
comfort mode and you can pile on the highway miles with no problem there's
plenty of room in the second row seat for two kids you can put three back
there if one of them is not in a car seat but I'll tell you right now the
third row seat is good for kids only and you're only going to want to use it on
occasion because when kids are seated back there they're very close to the
tailgate which kind of put them in the crush zone if somebody hits the back the
SUV while you are stopped now cargo space not that generous if you're using the third row
seat you've only got 15 cubic feet to work with and that's stacked to the
ceiling if you fold the third row seat you've got about 40 cubic feet depending
on
how it's measured Acura provides two different measurements but it's about 40
cubic feet it's plenty of room for a family road trip no problem at all
Now another nice thing about the Acura MDX is that there's clearly been a lot of attention
to detail put into the design and execution of this interior now
everything is relative of course right and last week I was driving a Cadillac
Escalade Platinum which has leather covered everything suede microfiber all
over the cabin but Cadillac didn't pay attention to a lot of the details like
the way that things slide and open in the way the buttons feel in the knobs
and look at the texturing right here on this nob you've got these almost
serrated edges here that help you to grip the knob and then there's a bit of
style associated with it and the material itself feels solid and robust
and that's kind of the impression that I get about everything in the cabin that
it's going to last a good long time and as a result I actually feel like this
MDX which is almost half the price of that Escalade I was driving is actually
the more luxurious vehicles now another great thing about the 2016 MDX is that
it is super safe it gets top crash test ratings from the federal government and
the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and this year Acura has
introduced its new Acura watch suite of high-tech safety features they include
things like blind spot information lane departure warning forward collision
warning with automatic emergency braking and new features including Lane Keeping
Assist and a row departure mitigation system now I think that all of those
technologies work really well but I have to tell you the link Keeping Assist
system when you activated a little eerie watching the steering wheel kind of move
without any input from you as the system attempts to keep the MDX right in the
center of the
mean personally I prefer to keep that one off all the other ones thumbs up now
that we've talked about some of my favorite things about the MDX it's time
to discuss a few of its flaws in a couple of them are fairly significant
now before you go out and get a new MDX there something you need to know and
that is that a redesigned 2016 Honda Pilot just rolled into showrooms now
what's the big deal about a pilot it's based on the same platform uses the same
powertrains and a lot of the same technology that's installed in this
Acura now I personally think that the Acura remains the better looking vehicle
and it does come with some exclusive content that you can't get on the Honda
nevertheless it's pretty clear that the value proposition for buying MDX just
got a lot harder to justify another thing that I'm not crazy about when it
comes to the MDX is this dual screen entertainment setup for some reason I
look at this control panel and I can never remember which screen controls
what and where the controls might be located for me to find what it is that I
want to do so for example I wanted to turn on the ventilated seats when I got
in this car today because it's so hot here in Southern California right now
and I just looked at this and I thought where on earth did they put it these are
the climate controls but I don't see any seat controls here oh I see their kind of
on the screen and then there's a blank seat icon hear I wonder what that does
so I push it opens up a menu and then I can choose heating or cooling then to
turn it on maximum I have to turn it on maximum I have to hit it
three times so there are four touchscreen motions that have to be
taken to turn the ventilated seats on maximum the other problem I have is
an aging in my eyes are going bad and I have bifocal sunglasses and I've got two
screens here one is deeper in the dashboard any other this one's often
showing different graphics then this one the controls for this screen are down here
the controls for this screen all right here on the screen or located just below
or above in a look at this and I just think jumbled mess I can't figure it out
and it's so distracting because I mean I'm not driving right now but if I am
driving I'm double taking i'm looking i'm looking and you saw when I was
messing around with these ventilated seat controls that if I didn't take action fast the screen disappeared
and I look back and I had the radio screen back up so frustrated
Acura please devise some kind of a widescreen split screens single panel for
everything ok give me knobs for tuning and volume and power and make it easy
for me to turn on the ventilated seats, please. Another problem that I have with the 2016 MDX and this
is probably the biggest one
is that they decided to fix something that wasn't broken and by that I mean
they replace the transmission and they replace the transmission shifter little
bit of backstory first EP a is asking every carmaker to increase fuel economy
standards everybody is scrambling to figure out how to make everything more
fuel-efficient doesn't matter if gas is cheap all carmakers have to make more
fuel-efficient vehicles Acura's solution with the MDX this year is to install a
9 speed automatic transmission and get rid of the six-speed automatic from last
year in the process they added a combination of switches and buttons here
on the center console that I mean it's fairly easy to use its not necessarily
intuitive I assume after you've owned the car for a while you get the hang of it
but it doesn't save any space on the console so I don't know why the buttons
will be here in the first place
second of all it's located right next to the cup holders and you know exactly
what's gonna happen to those buttons the first time that somebody spilled a Vanilla Latte
in there as far as the transmission itself is concerned last year with the
six-speed I thought the NDX's powertrain was magnificent powerful transmission
always shifted right when you thought it should exactly as you expected it to
never drew attention to itself this 9 speed seems to lurch a lot it seems to
shift when you don't expect it to it doesn't shift when you wanted to the
paddle shifters I don't find much help given that there are nine different
gears to go through your constantly referencing the display between the
gauges to figure out where you are when you manually shifting the other
thing is that if you get an MDX with the advanced package you're gonna get a new
idle stop the church shuts the engine
when you're sitting at an intersection that's great it does help save fuel but
this particular system is a little bit rough when the engine shuts off there's
a little bit of a shutter in the in the vehicle and then you can easily beat it
even when you're not trying when you shift from the break to the accelerator
pedal so there's a little bit of a delay and then lurched off the line I know
that getting that extra one or two miles per gallon is important Acura but man
does it come costs so what's the verdict when it comes to the 2016 Acura MDX
should you go test drive one right away is this a work in progress or should you
cross it right off your shopping list
here's the thing when an automaker strives to continually improve its products the end
goal should be that people like the product more not less for me personally
the reverse seems to be happening I like the 2016 model less than I like last
year's model and like last year's model less than I liked the previous
generation MDX which had all kinds of personality and was terrific fun to
drive now don't get me wrong this MDX is a great vehicle it's very practical its
roomy it's comfortable it exudes quality except the transmission it's fun to
drive but I would say that it's no longer the clear choice in the segment
and so I would recommend that in addition to test driving the MDX you
check out some of the competitors as well for more information be sure to
read my full review on CarGurus.com and thanks for watching