edit to note: this was short notice request and my phone is broken, these were taken with a tablet, forgive the quality
Posted these for another user in another thread, thought I'd make a post here in the pictures forum... here is text from that post:
Regarding the extended cluster, I've looked at a 228 without it and my m235 has it, so I can speak to it a bit:
-MPG gauge- makes it a digital screen, wherein there is no longer a marker pointing out your MPG, but instead a gauge and a bar that fills in as you go higher or lower. As well, it shows when you hit the brakes or coast in sport+, sport, or comfort mode that it's charging the battery so should you choose to go in comfort or eco-pro mode and let it do auto start/stop, it will be charged. When you're in eco-pro, it changes the look of the mpg gauge entirely and has a grey to blue bar. If you're in the grey, it starts showing warnings of what to change to get back into blue, such as slow down, take your lead foot off the accelerator, etc. At the upper end where it charges, it has a marker that shows the sweet spot for maximum MPG. You want to be as close to this as possible when driving around and for the gas-mileage minded folks like myself, it's helpful in learning how to maximize your MPG when you want to. Personally, the more mileage I get out of eco-pro, the more time I can spend in sport mode before I have to refuel, so I don't mind driving in eco-pro and this gauge helps.
-Some cool stuff I found-
-When listening to music where the stereo has a list of all the artists/albums/etc., you can use the scroll wheel (on the right side of the steering wheel) to scroll through songs and it will show in the middle between the rpm/mph gauges about 5 songs and will go up down as you scroll either way, so you can look there should you choose to, instead of at the idrive screen.
-When using navigation, one of the mode options (the ones you can click the left side of your bright light selector to scroll through) is a navigation option in between the rpm/mph gauges, where it will show you a big arrow of where to go, so same as above if you choose to look at that instead of the nav screen, it's an option to do so. I generally find it helpful in busy situations where I don't want to keep looking over at the big screen, as it can be distracting.
-Eco-pro will show the miles you've added to your "miles til refuel" in blue letters. This really is just a matter of your miles til refuel going up because your MPG went up, so you could drive easier in sport mode and get the same effect (albeit without any increase in the blue numbers), but I see it as a gentle nudge to drive in eco-pro when you can and save yourself some money and it's a tangible way to see that you did so.
I'll take some pictures of the above and show you guys.
OH, since you asked about the tech package, one thing that I found yesterday that's cool is using the side panel of the idrive screen you can have various options that just sit there all day while your main screen is still available. One is the bmw online widgets, so I have mine set to show me the time and the weather. It's nothing big, but it just adds to the coolness factor of the screen, in my opinion. I'll include a picture of that as well.
Album:
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