We review and discuss the amazing and frustrating new Mercedes-Benz S Class S580. This flagship executive sedan involves the best people and technology the company has. We look at what works and what falls short.
Mercedes-Benz S-Class | The Best and Worst of Cars
Bar-elevating 2022 Mercedes-Benz S-Class is a technological wonder, but that isn’t always a good thing.
For many years, the Mercedes-Benz S-Class has stood for the ultimate in luxurious transportation, a car that coddles you with comfort in a whisper-quiet cabin loaded with thoughtful touches. That tradition continues with the revised 2022 Mercedes-Benz S-Class, which is packed with more technology than ever before, as one might expect. However, not everyone is a fan of losing physical controls – including YouTuber Savage Geese, or Mark as he’s otherwise known – and that may be the new S-Class’ biggest downfall in spite of its continued excellence.
“The center screen is your command center,” Mark says, “and it is all touch dependent. With the right light, with enough fingerprints, you can’t see a [expletive] thing on it when you’re using it. You start to nail down and go down into about 150 different submenus of things to learn how to use this and in fact, this is probably the first car I’ve ever been in that you could probably use a week-long class on how all of this stuff works.”
Thus, as Mark notes, the problem here is that the 2022 Mercedes-Benz S-Class is a bit too complicated for its own good. However, as he soon points out, this is really the worst thing about the newest version of MB’s flagship sedan. One of the coolest individual components that makes it so good is the seats, which have their very own menu that allows one to adjust them in virtually any way possible, get a massage, activate heating or cooling, utilize kinetics for an anti-fatigue treatment, or even turn on an air freshener complete with relaxing movement and a picture of the ocean on the screen.
Even the excellent Burmester audio system is capable of vibrating the seats to the music, which complements the incredible OLED center screen and 3D digital gauge cluster with augmented reality. “The technology is incredible in here,” said Mark. “It’s just the way they’ve put it all together.”
Unfortunately, all of that complicated stuff also means that you’re “constantly distracted” when trying to use it. The other problem with all of this tech is that it inevitably leads to poor resale values as it tends to break, cost a fortune to replace, and make the car dated after just a few years on the market.
Regardless, at the end of the day, plenty of people simply lease cars like the new S-Class, so these sorts of things aren’t as important to them. Those folks want the ultimate in luxury transportation with cutting-edge technology, and in that regard, this car delivers. “When you drive it or experience it, you’ll be blown away,” said Mark. “But they need to figure out how to use restraint in technology – the best tech solutions are those that seamlessly blend into the background.”
