I’m a big fan of BMW, so when they finally rolled the new 5 Series onto their show floor in Detroit this week, I was super stoked to check it out. Of course, I had to stay behind the velvet rope until after their press conference and all of that, but once that was done, Bimmer lifted the ropes and let your boy in to check out all of the finer details of its new 5 Series Sedan. While the cabin was spacious and the tablets for rear seat passengers were cool, what really interested me was the navigation system up front.

Most stock navigation systems are pretty much the same these days, and maybe other models have the same functions, but BMW’s was insanely fast and responsive and was actually able to work under the metal roof and beams of the Cobo Center in Detroit. The initial display is pretty basic – it’s your normal birds-eye view of the area with a little blip showing your exact location, but zooming in gives you a mildly 3D representation of the area around you. Zooming in even further gives you a street-level view of sorts that shows all of the buildings in their exact locations and with relative height.

Naturally, I didn’t get to see the navigation in action outside of viewing my location and playing with the view, but if the responsiveness and quickness of the system are any indication, this system should make navigating unfamiliar territory a breeze. And, for the record, the rest of the system was fast and responsive as well, including phone pairing, XM radio station selection, onboard music storage loading and browsing, and navigating the various menus and settings as a whole. Maybe the systems from brands like Mercedes and Audi as just as good, but I was pretty impressed with what BMW brought to the table with the system in the 5 Series. It beats the standard google navigation system I’ve been so accustomed to for so long; that’s for sure.

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