2021 Mercedes-Benz S 450 L Review – CarBuyer.com.sg
1. Introduction / Appearance
2. Interior / Features / Technology
3. Space / Practicality / Even More Tech
4. Driving Experience / Competition / Conclusion

2: Interior, Features and Technology

The fun of the S-Class is always the inside, and like every S-Class before it, this car is at the jugular of bleeding edge tech. Now, there’s a tremendous amount to get through (and we’ll still not cover it all) here, so bear with us. 

The starship metaphor has always been useful when it comes to luxury limos, and the new S 450 L really takes the glass cockpit idea to the stratosphere. While the previous dual 12.3-inch display setup has gone, leaving only the 12.3-inch driver’s active instrument panel, you really can’t miss what’s replaced the centre screen:  A 15.8-inch OLED unit taking centre stage, which has murdered 27 buttons in the process, Mercedes proudly says. 

VW’s Touareg has rocked a 15-inch screen before this, but it isn’t as bright nor as sharp, nor as easy to use as this one is. Slick animations and razor-sharp visuals certainly raise the tone here, and the new system is backed by serious hardware. It’s claimed to be 50 percent faster than before, with 16GB of RAM and a 320GB SSD onboard.

Mercedes even says it packs a GPU (graphics processing unit) capable of 691 gigaflops of computation, which is supposedly twice as much raw processing power as an Xbox 360. 

Along that line, the 3D models/animations in the navigation system are so smooth and lag-free that you could probably play Doom – the modern remake, not the original – on this. 

CarBuyer tends to frown at touchscreens, since the ‘look and tap’ action adds to driver load, unlike a rotary controller, but with a big screen like this it’s a little less difficult. 

But while the 15.8-inch screen isn’t hard to use, it still isn’t perfect as we still had the occasional mis-press and other ‘touchy’ bits of the cabin are, and here is where Mercedes went a bit too far in button-killing. 

As with the preceding model, there’s also a touch-sensitive pad on the steering wheel – the left side controls the infotainment screen, and the right diddles the 12.3-inch instrument display. A similar capacitive touch button controls volume, in a strip below the 15.8-incher. 

And like before, these touch controls are nice to look at, but difficult to use at times. They can be imprecise, or sometimes not respond at all, and we ended up playing volume ping-pong on occasion.

Tesla was one of the first to do the Giant Screen In Car thing – read our review of the Tesla Model 3 here

At least your eyes will have a fine time of it, as there’s enough interior lighting here to start your own disco – 250 LEDs in strips around the cabin with customisable, dynamic colour schemes. In other words, yes, RGB has come to cars. 

There are two major strips bisecting the cockpit horizontally, and there’s also more surrounding the door controls, and ambient footwell lighting. With all sorts of colour morphing effects, it really sets the tone of the cabin as a techno-wonder, and it also has a practical use too: It reflects things like your voice amplitude when talking to the MBUX, changing climate control, and even warnings from the active safety systems (more on that later). 

But the minor ergo-quibbles aside, the cabin is a fine example of what leading-class motoring looks and feels like in 2021. While the previous-gen model was nice enough, we can’t see anything that looks to have been carried over to this one, and all of the switches and knobs – at least those that remain feel premium, aside from the disappointingly-clacky indicator stalk.

No other cabin we’ve tested has managed to blend technology with luxury in such a convincing way – for example, the grand sweep of the dash as in blends into the doors isn’t just done with matching wood veneer, but also the eye-catching LED strips. 

Page 3: Space, practicality – and how does that tech work in real life?

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