[G4BR13L]

Today I drove, on the Belgian roads and for about 1.5 hours, the BMW 330i in Portimao Blue with the M Sport Pack and I was not really impressed but then again I am biased as I have the M4 as daily driver. The car is a beauty: I love the design of the car with the M Sport Pack. Portimao blue is much nicer in real person in comparison to the pictures I saw online. The interior is a bit ‘meh’ but then I am not talking about the used materials because those were of high quality, the interior was just a bit boring.

My biggest complaints are the 4 cilinder engine and the lack of sound and character/spirit for a BMW especially considering the price range the car is being sold for. Fuel consumption was higher than expected, I drove about 10 miles on some bumpy country roads where the speed limit was changing between 30 and 50 km/h and the fuel consumption was over 10 l/100KM in Eco mode.

The HUD is nice and the screen landscape, if I can call it like that, is much bigger than in my M4. It was too cluttered with information but this is configurable.

Traffic Sign Recognition works like a charm and you can configure the speed limit info in such a way that it alerts you when you are driving a configurable amount of kilometers per hour faster than allowed.

The ‘Intelligent’ Personal Assistant is absolutely not impressive in comparison to what I was able to try in the Mercedes A-class. Most of the time all I got was “I did not understand what you mean” or “try again”. For example “Hey BMW set the ambiant lightning to blue” and the response is “I have set the ambiant lightning to 20” (whatever that means).

The Live Cockpit is too cluttered and too distracting and I don’t like it. Makes me appreciate the instrument cluster in my F82 even more. I truly hope that analog gauged will still be a possibility in the next M3/M4 or my current M4 will be my last M.

There were some issues with the new ‘operating system’. The car’s language was set to Dutch but here and there were translations missing and some text was in French. Because why not as everyone serms to think that in Belgium everybody speaks French. The system was very responsive but there are too many menus and submenus.

I was able to drive the driver assistant systems. The reversing assistant worked like a charm but is a costly gimmick imho. The parking assistant is not flawless and I don’t see myself using it a lot, parking the car with this system just takes too long and in most cases a parking spot was not detected correctly even after trying several times. The lane departure system did not work at first but after playing with the settings and setting it to “early” it worked but only when I had my hands on the steering wheel.

We were test driving the car for my wife and she said that everything was made too complex and I agree. There are just too many options and things to do while you are driving that are just too distracting for here.

Basically it is a very nice car but I would not pay for all the driving assistant features because those are imho still gimmicks, cost too much and will not really be used in our case by my wife. I would also choose the 320i or the 320d over the 330i considering the 4000 to 5000 euro price difference (in Belgium). If I had to choose between all the driving assistant features I would only choose the Parking Assistant Pack Plus with 360° view. The M Sport Pack and brakes offcourse. Considering the bad conditions of the roads in Belgium probably also the adaptive suspension. Not sure yet about the HUD but I would probably choose it. The fact that you MUST choose between the Live Cockpit Plus or Professional is a showstopper. I already miss the days of a simple instrument cluster. This would also be a reason why I would not buy the new M3 or M4.