The screen is fast to use and it’s easy to shuffle the pages around into the space you want, and the Home shortcut button means you can always start over if you get lost. You can see that there are three screens that you can customise to hold the various oft-used functions you require. Turn the car on and, if it’s fitted with InControl Touch Pro, this is what you’ll see. Indeed, that’s one of the cool elements of the InControl Touch Pro system is that it can display in picture screens that allow you to access other functions, like music, without losing, say, your navigation screen.

And approach mode will show, when you’re 200 metres from your destination, a 360-degree street-level view of your destination in a smaller screen alongside the main navigation display. The system will also tell you if you’ve got enough fuel in the tank to complete the planned journey with petrol stations highlighted along your route if you don’t have enough fuel if you want to add one as a waypoint, which won’t mess up your destination route, you simply tap the petrol station you want to deviate to.Īnd, as long as your car is connected to the internet, the Commute Mode will learn your daily drive and use both real-time data and historical information to suggest alternative routes if there’s congestion. Supposedly the system uses dead-reckoning functionality, which is where you use a previously determined location to calculate your current position. As advanced as these systems are, especially, when connected to the internet, it’s a shame there’s no workaround, but then Apple and Google want car makers to use their systems specifically rather than creating a way for an Apple or Android device to sync completely with, say, Jaguar’s connectivity technology, but I digress.Īccording to Jaguar, the system’s sat-nav can keep navigating you even when the GPS signal is lost, which is cool but probably won’t get much use given unless you’re in an underground carpark or a lead-lined garage you’re unlikely to lose the GPS signal for so long that you’ll end up getting lost. And one of the things I really like, and the Jaguar system isn’t alone in this, is that the home screen can be customised to show the functions you most use, meaning you don’t have to scroll through screens to find them.Ĭonnecting your phone either via Bluetooth or USB cable is easy but, unlike, say, with Apple Car Play connectivity, if you don’t have the InControl app on your phone you’ll need to manually input your travel destination for it to show up on the sat-nav. The menu is pretty easy to understand and relatively straightforward with all of the shortcut buttons across the bottom of the screen. The touch functionality is good in that you have to actually touch the screen with a reasonable amount of pressure for it to respond rather than just brushing a finger across the surface of the thing and having it react and head off in a direction you didn’t want it to go in. And I didn’t download the InControl app, although I should have.įirst impressions, though, are that the system is clean and clear with the fonts the right size to be read and understood quickly. Like all things you can’t just slip behind the wheel and tap away at the screen and expect to know all of the ins and outs and even after a week with the Jaguar XE I’m positive I still didn’t plumb the absolute depths or total capabilities of the system. Whether some sort of external controller would mean you’re eyes are on the road more when using the system is debatable, but we have heard that argument being made. But it’s much quicker to simply reach across than try and scroll via the steering controls. Unlike some competitors which offers control units down by gear levers, as well as capacitive functionality, the InControl Touchscreen Pro system only works via touch, or the steering controls. And anyone who owns an older model Jaguar or Land Rover will tell you just how clumsy the old units were. So, in this brave new world has Jaguar been able to produce a better infotainment and communication system? Well, even without turning the car on you’d have to say, yes.

And now, the touchscreen units we have in even the cheapest of cars are able to connect with you phone and while all will stream the music on it, many, depending on the connectivity, will even be able to display the maps and more from your phone, read out text messages and even allow you to dictate a response. And no sooner does one car maker reveal its latest tablet-esque system than another has released its system that’s either bigger or faster.īut it wasn’t so long ago that we never needed our infotainment systems to do much more than change the radio station from either AM to FM, or use a safe-cracker’s touch to finely tune a radio station.Īnd then along came sat-nav units and map book publishers began going broke.

IN-CAR INFOTAINMENT AND communication systems are in a constant state of flux.

Land rover incontrol touch pro review