Jaguar XE review: Not what you’d expect from an executive saloon

When you think of Jaguar cars, you think of prestige and large, refined saloons – and from the outside at least, the new Jaguar XE continues the trend. Released in September last year, the Jaguar XE offers a classic combination of performance and luxury, but adds modern design like sharp headlights, a grand-looking grill and a powerful diesel engine. But what about the in-car technology and connectivity? To find out how the Jaguar’s new executive saloon compares in the tech stakes, read our Jaguar XE review below:

Jaguar XE 2016 review

Driver assistance and safety 3/5

The Jaguar XE is a fast sports coupe, and the driving position is low and close to the road. It’s a seating position that’s perfect for driving, but it can make manoeuvring the vehicle a little difficult. And that’s where the Jaguar XE’s optional £530 Parking Pack comes into play.

Unlike many other cars in this executive saloon category, the Jaguar we’re testing doesn’t have semi-autonomous parking, but it does come with a couple of helpful aids. Front and rear cameras use a wide-angle lens to help you get a good view of the area immediately around the car, and the Jaguar overlays yellow guidelines on its 8in centre-mounted screen to show you where the car will end up.

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Both of these systems work in conjunction with proximity sensors, so the closer you get to another car, the more frequently they beep. The Jaguar XE also displays guidelines to indicate your closeness to another car: yellow is fine, while red lines and a continuous noise mean you’re getting too close.

If you find the cameras distracting, the Jaguar XE lets you swap them with a top-down, graphic view. Just like before, the Jaguar XE warns of closing objects with yellow lines, with audible indicators and red lines keeping you safe from collisions.

In practice, the system worked well, and the audible warnings along with the visual stimuli made me confident when getting the car in and out of some particularly tight spots.

In addition to parking assistance, the Jaguar XE comes with a range of features to make driving safer. There’s Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) and lane departure warning as standard, and Jaguar’s decision to provide blind-spot detection as standard – via lights in the car’s wing mirrors – is welcome too. 

UI and controls 2/5

The model we used was fitted with Jaguar’s InControl Touch infotainment system, one step below the 10.2in InControl Touch Pro system. The InControl Touch system is fitted as standard on all Jaguar XEs and comes with an 8in screen. From a driver’s point of view, this screen is legible, but get closer and you’ll soon see jagged lines and pixels on curved objects and text. It isn’t the last word in sharpness.

Still, the Jaguar XE’s display is at least bright, and offers punchy colours in the dim light of the Jaguar’s luxurious interior. In the overcast to sunny conditions I tested it in, I found it easy to read and reflections weren’t a problem.

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However, that’s where the positives end. Startup time is surprisingly slow (around eight seconds, typically) and when the Jaguar’s UI eventually hoves into view it isn’t worth the wait. It looks crude compared with what I’ve seen in other cars such as the Volvo XC90 and even the cheaper Golf GTE.

The first screen you see is split into four quarters, providing quick shortcuts to the the system’s core functions – Media, Climate control, Phone and Navigation.

Alas, it isn’t the most responsive of touchscreens, with almost all actions accompanied by a short, irritating delay. While fairly unobtrusive on the XE’s less graphically intense menu screens, the lag is harder to ignore when using the car’s music and navigation systems, but I’ll get to those later.

If you don’t want to use the laggy touchscreen, there are shortcut buttons – the touchscreen has four on each side, giving you quick access to the car’s core functions – which are large and easy to press with an outstretched finger. They feel cheap, however, and lack the sophistication you’d expect from a Jaguar.[gallery:4]

To keep your eyes on the road, Jaguar also places many of the car’s functions on the steering wheel. When combined with other buttons and the car’s paddle shifters, the steering wheel looks daunting and very busy, but I soon became accustomed to using it without looking. 

In the same way, the Jaguar’s voice control system is far from intuitive at first, but useful once you understand it. Unlike the Golf GTE, which highlights the commands you can speak on screen, you have to memorise the commands, but once I’d read through the tutorial and memorised a few of them it worked reasonably well.

Apps and connectivity 3/5

When it comes to connectivity, the Jaguar XE doesn’t excel. The model I tested had no CD player and no SD card slot, but there was Bluetooth, one USB socket and an AUX input for old-school wired connection. Again, while those are sufficient for most eventualities, I’d expect much more from a car at this price, particularly when the Golf GTE includes all those features and more for less than £30,000.

However, the Jaguar XE I’ve tested here does come with a Wi-Fi Hotspot, a £300 option that lets up to eight people connect to the internet. The car gets its connection through a roof-mounted aerial, but it’s limited to 3G, so speeds aren’t great. 

Pairing the Jaguar with my smartphone was an easy process, but browsing music wasn’t as smooth or rich an experience as I’d hoped for. When using an iPhone and Apple Music, album art wasn’t displayed, with the system opting for a generic ‘Bluetooth’ picture. Worse still, crazy lag times made browsing artists and tracks extremely cumbersome.

The Jaguar’s Phone system is much the same. Once paired, the XE’s system gives you the option to browse through your phone’s contacts or your most recent calls, and the Jaguar also provides a large touchscreen keypad for dialling numbers directly. The only catch? The XE’s phone app suffers from the same laggy performance as the rest of the system. Interestingly, Jaguar doesn’t offer a speed dial option, but the system does work with voice control.

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This lag really does seem to creep into every operation, and it’s shame because the XE really has a lot to offer. For one, Jaguar’s InControl Remote app lets you check the status and location of your car, and even pre-condition the cabin temperature before you get in. If you’ve forgotten where you parked, you can also trigger the XE to give a flash and beep.

In addition, Jaguar has developed an entire ecosystem in the form of InControl Apps. Simply put, these apps allow you to connect your smartphone to your car, and although the app itself looks extremely basic, it has a lot of potential. The InControl system lets you access apps such as a podcast aggregator called Stitcher, and Parkopedia, an app that helps you find parking spaces.

Sat nav 2/5

Initial impressions of the Jaguar’s mapping services are good; 3D buildings give you a better idea of where you are, and the Jaguar delivers directions via the main screen and a colour screen between the dials in a timely manner. Speed limit notifications keep you on the right side of the law, while clear, prompt vocal guidelines take the stress out of city driving.

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The XE’s sat nav also supports waypoints and POI searches, and you can tailor your routes to find toll-free routes. As for route planning, it’s pretty strong here, too. On my test routes it delivered similar results to Google Maps, which is good going. 

However, entering a new destination is laborious. Entering a journey requires you to go over every aspect of the address in turn – so you’ll need to enter a country, postcode, town and street manually every time – and the system struggles to sort through your available choices at every hurdle. 

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More problems surface if you decide to go off piste and explore the map by zooming and panning. It’s cripplingly slow and sluggish to respond. In the Vine below, you can see just how long it takes for the system to detect my inputs and load the map.

Audio: 3/5

Although navigating through music wasn’t the most pleasant experience, the Jaguar did re-create it in style. With the equaliser off, the car’s 80W system provided ample amounts of low-end punch and solid-sounding mid-range, and bass-heavy tracks pounded out with authority.

The Jaguar XE’s sound system couldn’t handle the lowest of frequencies, and it also appeared to struggle with very high ones, straying towards harshness instead of the crystal-clear, but cabin quality was excellent. Even at top volume, I was pleased to find very few annoying rattles or buzzing sounds. The only noises came from forward of the steering wheel, and only then at uncomfortably high volumes.

I tested the 80W sound system fitted as standard across the XE range, but for those more interested in audio, Jaguar offers a hi-fi spec 380W Digital Surround Sound System from Meridian, which costs an extra £500. If you’re feeling particularly flush, Jaguar also offers an 825W Digital Surround Sound System with 17 speakers, also from Meridian, but that will set you back £2,000.

Verdict 3/5

The Jaguar XE is a great-looking car with a sumptuous interior, and even things like the gear selector exude a premium feel. But as far as the tech goes, the model we tested is bit of a missed opportunity. The 3G hotspot, lane departure warnings and blind spot indicators are all handy, and the parking system works well (although I’d expect semi-autonomous parking on a car in this price bracket). 

There’s also a good helping of standard safety and driver assistance aids and a good selection of high-tech features such as adaptive speed limiter as standard, but the standard InControl Touch system in the Jaguar we tested was crippled by sluggishness and unresponsiveness.

In fact, lag plagues almost every aspect of the Jaguar’s infotainment system, from music browsing to satnav address entry and map browsing. And whether it’s giving up on picking the song you want, or being unable to find a new route before the traffic lights go green, the Jaguar’s poor performance has a knock-on effect throughout. 

The result? The car is much less enjoyable to drive overall than it would be otherwise. If you’re looking at the Jaguar XE, we strongly suggest upgrading to the superior InControl Touch Pro head unit. Although it costs around £600 to upgrade, depending on the model you buy, it appears to be a far more natural fit for the XE’s premium interior and drive.

If you’re looking at other cars in the same price bracket, I’d recommend factoring in the upgrade cost as a must. In its standard form, the Jaguar’s InControl Touch infotainment system lags well behind.