2016 BMW 7 Series review: BMW’s luxury limo is rammed with tech

After years of languishing in the technological backwaters, the motoring industry is slowly but surely awakening. Autonomous driving and parking, big screens and virtual dashboards that reflect the modern world of tablets and smartphones, connectivity to rival a well-appointed laptop – cars, like the rest of the world, are being infiltrated and improved by technology, and no car released in the past year epitomises this more than the new BMW 7 Series.

First announced in June 2015, the new BMW 7 Series heralds a number of major milestones. The big engineering advance is its carbon-fibre core, designed to trim weight and improve strength, rigidity and efficiency. But the German automaker also made a big push to incorporate as much technology as it could into its new flagship. This was to be BMW’s most advanced model yet, and boy did it go all out.

This is the latest in our series of car reviews, focusing on in-car technology, which we’re carrying out in association with our sister website Carbuyer.

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Apps and connectivity: 5/5

This big step into the future isn’t immediately apparent from the outside, but as soon as you step into the cockpit or the rear seats, you’ll be immediately struck by the sheer number of screens dotted around.

At the front there’s the enormous 10.25in “Control Display” touchscreen in the middle, a big heads-up display (HUD) above the dashboard and a display between the dials. At the rear there are two 10in displays mounted to the back of the front seats, and an armrest-mounted 7in tablet used to control the heating, seat positions and infotainment. And there’s even one on your car key: a 2.2in touchscreen you can use to see remaining range, park the car remotely and (of course) lock and unlock the car.

Everywhere you look there’s a display, but that’s not to say its brash and over the top. Far from it. The 7 Series’ cabin is, in fact, a calm place to be. As you’d expect from a car in its class, soft, pampering leather abounds, there’s loads of legroom for passengers, and the seats can be heated or cooled and can even massage away the aches and strains of the day.

From the driver’s perspective, however, much of the overall sense of calm is down to the superb BMW iDrive system that remains at the heart of the car’s driver-centric controls.

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This is a system overflowing with features, and connectivity – for starters – is mightily impressive. You can hook up and control your iPhone or Android handset via one of the car’s three USB ports; there’s Bluetooth connectivity; and there’s a built-in wireless hotspot so those with tablets and laptops can hook up to the internet as needed. You get internal storage so you can store your own music in the car, plus there’s HDMI and MHL compatibility, and for rear passengers, there’s also a Blu-ray drive and a dedicated phone, although in the smartphone age the latter does feel like a bit of a throwback.

As for apps, there’s plenty here to play with, too, although BMW’s scattergun approach is initially confusing. First, you have your BMW-branded apps, which include a remote-control app and a lap timer, then you have your “BMW-compatible” apps, which are piped from your smartphone through the BMW Connected app to the screen of the car.

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There’s a decent selection to choose from here. Alongside a selection of further BMW-branded apps, there’s support for AUPEO, Stitcher, TuneIn, Audible, Amazon Music and Spotify, plus the core social network apps Twitter and Facebook, and a handful of others.

What the 7 Series lacks – and this holds true across the range – is support for either Android Auto or Apple CarPlay. This seems to be a trend with high-end carmakers right now, with neither Mercedes nor BMW offering the third-party systems as options in their top-end models, and I can’t say I’m not disappointed. It would be nice to have the option – after all, the car can do pretty much everything else.

Display and UI: 4.5/5

I’ve already touched upon the screens and iDrive system in the 7 Series, but they do bear revisiting and examining in closer detail. The star of this particular show is the 10.25in “Control Display” touchscreen.

In terms of outright quality and readability, there’s nothing on the market to touch BMW’s top-end offerings right now. The black level is unsurpassed, contrast superb and brightness (when it needs to be) beyond reproach. It’s mounted at the top of the dashboard so you don’t have to tear your eyes too far from the road when you look at it, and it’s treated with a matte finish and transflexive, so it’s readable at all times no matter what the conditions.

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And although there’s now multitouch support on the Control Display for the first time in a BMW, it’s largely redundant. The five-way rotary iDrive dial, which sits next to the gear stick on the centre console, remains the most efficient way of navigating around the car’s music and entertainment, communications, navigation and settings menus. The touchscreen adds a handy alternative for typing in text that’s quicker and less fiddly than selecting words letter by letter using the dial, and a more intuitive method of browsing maps, but for the most part I found myself sticking with the dial and steering-wheel controls.

The touchscreen isn’t the only new method of interaction BMW has added to the 7 Series, however – there’s also gesture control via a sensor mounted in the car’s dashboard below the main screen, which allows you to perform various tasks with a wave of a finger.

This sounds amazing, and it works well, but it’s not quite as exciting as it initially sounds. Essentially, the system gives you a selection of gestures, both global and context-sensitive, which allow you to perform basic actions without having to reach over and physically touch the screen or press a button. Mostly, you’ll be using it to skip back and forth through tracks when listening to music (split your fingers and flick left or right) and adjusting the volume by pointing a finger at the screen and twirling clockwise or anticlockwise.

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It’s also possible to mute the volume by flicking two fingers down, reject a call with a dismissive wave of the hand and answer it with a pinch. The trouble is, while all this looks impressive, there’s usually a more convenient, quicker method closer to hand – a button on the steering wheel or a knob on the centre console.

And before BMW even considers building gesture control more deeply into the fabric of its in-car control systems, I’d like to see an effort to simplify the rest of the car’s systems a touch. Although on the whole everything works smoothly, quickly and without lag – more so than with in-car systems from many other manufacturers I’ve used – it can be overwhelming in the number of options it presents at times. Notwithstanding its excellence, iDrive is in need of a bit of rationalisation.

Driving assistance and parking: 4.5/5

More impressive than the slightly frivolous gesture system, however, is the range and quality of BMW’s driver-assistance technologies. These cover the full gamut of what’s currently available, including blind-spot monitoring, lane departure warnings, adaptive cruise control, auto-high beam control and autonomous emergency braking (AEB).

There’s also a decent helping of semi-autonomous and fully autonomous driving and parking features, enabled by a selection of five radar sensors and a front-facing stereo camera. And although the 7 Series can’t quite compete with the Tesla Model S’ Autopilot offering, it’s darned good all the same.

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BMW gives this series of technologies a number of different names. Traffic Jam Assistant, Active Cruise Control with Stop & Go, Steering and lane-control assistant, Active Protection, and Driving Assistant to name but a few – but what these essentially boil down to is that the BMW 7 Series is a car designed almost to think for itself.

My personal favourite, being a London resident and thoroughly fed up with driving in walking-pace traffic, is the traffic-jam assistant. This will take control of the vehicle in slow-moving or “monotonous” traffic conditions to help keep you safe. It works at speeds of up to 130mph and will steer, accelerate and brake for you, even to the point of coming to a complete standstill, then restart for you, all the while keeping a safe distance between you and the car in front.

It’s so impressive you could kick back, go hands-free and take your feet off the pedals entirely if it wasn’t for the 7 Series’ insistent warning to put them back, and (of course) the legal requirement of keeping your hands on the wheel at all times.

I’m also a fan of the road-sign recognition facility. With this enabled, the BMW 7 Series recognises speed limits as you pass them on the road and displays them on the dashboard. Better still, if you have adaptive cruise control switched on, the car will then reduce its speed automatically to match the legal limit. If that isn’t brilliant, I don’t know what is.

But wait, it doesn’t stop there. The car is able to use its selection of radar sensors to detect if you’re about to be hit from the side, while the Night Vision mode provides a visual alert – both on the HUD and on the dash between the dials – if it spots people or large animals on the road up to 300 metres away.  

This being 2016 and the 7 Series being a flagship car, there’s also a broad range of automatic and semi-automatic parking facilities. If you prefer to park manually, a series of cameras provides a helpful top-down surround view so you don’t clip the car in the bay next to you.

For those with a little more patience, the 7 Series will park entirely automatically, detecting the type of bay, and operating the brake, throttle and steering. All you have to do is hold the park button down – the 7 Series does it all – although activating parking mode via the iDrive menu system is a little more fiddly than it needs to be.

Its James Bond-style party piece, however, is that you can step out and use the car’s touchscreen-enabled key to park while you watch from a safe distance. Handy if you don’t fancy squeezing out of the doors while parking in a particularly narrow space. 

Satnav and audio: 4.5/5 

Behind the headlines, the car’s core systems are all up to scratch. The satnav system is second to none, delivering its audio and visual instructions with clarity and in good time before junctions, and through a huge variety of display methods. There’s a 3D map on the centre screen; lane assistance, junction display and a speedometer on the excellent HUD; and next-turn instructions on the dashboard between the dials as well.

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It offers plenty of address-input methods, whether through the car’s highly effective voice recognition system, the touchpad on top of the iDrive dial (although this right-handed journalist found it tricky scrawling characters left-handed), and the touchscreen. You can even send the destination to the satnav from your phone if you want.

And, once your route is entered, route planning is equally strong. In our quickfire tests, the system didn’t put a foot wrong, matching Google Maps blow for blow on our cross-London route, London to Sheffield route and cross-border London to Grenoble itinerary.

As for audio quality, the model we tested was fitted with the premium Bowers & Wilkins Diamond surround audio system, which sounds as if it ought to be brilliant, but for once, I found myself slightly disappointed.

I put it through my usual set of tests, playing back a selection of different types of music and audio test files, and found sound quality oddly patchy. For the most part I was absolutely fine. Music was packed with detail and body, and there was plenty of power, as you’d expect.

Some tracks, however, including my audiobook and jazz track tests exposed a slightly unpleasant harshness as well as a slight boominess. I didn’t have the chance to test the standard audio system, but my experience with the B&W system suggests it might be worth having a careful listen before you spend the enormous upgrade price on it. On our test vehicle, it was the most expensive option of the lot, adding a huge £4,765 to the price.

Verdict

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BMW’s 7 Series is a tour de force in technological terms. From its James Bond-style key fob parking system to its phalanx of driving-assistance tools, and its avalanche of screens, sensors and cameras, it’s truly a car for the connected age. Next to the Volvo XC90 and the Tesla Model S, it’s among the most advanced cars on the road, and a good deal more modern than its main rival, the Mercedes S Class.

However, there’s still some work to be done here. BMW’s iDrive system is so jammed with features and options that it’s a little overwhelming at times, while the lack of Android Auto and Apple CarPlay in a car this expensive grates a little. Even if I’m not going to use a feature, it doesn’t mean I don’t want it as an option. The car does pretty much everything bar make your breakfast, so what’s the harm in throwing in the options so the driver can choose?

And, since all this technology is squeezed into BMW’s flagship, it certainly doesn’t come cheap. The starting price for the 703Ld saloon we tested is £67,700, and with all the various technology packs and audio upgrades, that price soon rises to something closer to £90,000. Admittedly, they’re different types of vehicle, but if you’re interested in getting a taste of the future, the Tesla Model S complete with Autopilot can be had for considerably less, as can a fully tricked-out Volvo XC90.

Still, there’s something genuinely impressive about what BMW has achieved with the 7 Series. I only hope that the technology trickles down to more affordable cars soon, because this is what every car ought to look like in 2020.