My review of F15 options

plob · 05-08-2014, 07:03 AM

Hi all
Now that I’ve had a little time to drive my new F15, I thought I’d share my thoughts on some of the options that I bought with the car. Please note that these are for a UK specification vehicle so the functionality may not be the same where you are. I’m hoping that this will help people when considering options for their own builds.
Let me know if you need more detail about any of these features

Cheers
P

5A3 night vision package
I also added 552 – Adaptive LED headlights (with 5AC high beam assistant). These are fantastic. I mentioned in another post about how the high beam assistant is able to work out where other cars are on the road and move the headlight position so that they don’t dazzle other drivers. Note that all 4 headlights work (as opposed to just the outer two with Xenon headlights). Each headlight is positioned independently and dynamically. When the low beams are on, the upper parts of each of the 4 headlights are activated. On high beam, both upper and lower parts of the 4 headlights are on. I am told that the high beam assistant is also able to move the Xenon lights in a similar way but, as there are only two of them illuminated, I suspect it won’t work as well as with the LED headlights.
5A3 – Night vision with dynamic light spot (with 6UK night vision with pedestrian recognition). Again, these are fantastic. The fog lights are replaced with high intensity, high definition LED spotlights. These are directed onto a heat source (human or animal) if it is in the road or looks like it might be heading into the road. It works very well – possibly saving the life of a cyclist without lights on an unlit road on my first night out with the car. Pressing a button on the dash puts a night vision view on the 10.2” screen. It is quite bizarre to see pedestrians highlighted in yellow a long time before I am able to see them myself. The infrared camera nestles discreetly in the kidney grills.

ZAS – Active safety package
430 – folding, dimming external mirrors. These seem to work well – although I would prefer it is they would dim a bit quicker
5AG - lane change warning system. There are yellow warning triangles in the inner edge of each of the external mirrors – easily visible from the driver’s position. These seem to work in a couple of ways. Firstly, if the car detects that you are drifting out of your lane (it uses the cameras underneath the external mirrors – more on that later), it flashes the yellow warning triangle on that side and vibrates the steering wheel. Of course, this doesn’t happen if I use the indicators first. Secondly, the outer rear ultrasonic sensors check to see if there are any other cars on your left or right side – in your blind spot. If another car is present, the warning triangle on that side gently lights up to warn you that a car is there. If you then change lanes (with or without indicating first), the warning triangle flashes and the steering wheel vibrates. In this mode, the warning triangle doesn’t just turn on or off – it fades up or down so as not to distract you.
One slight problem with this is that there is a roundabout near me that has a metal railing to stop pedestrians getting onto it. The car detects this as another car on my inner blind spot when I try to exit the roundabout and flashes the triangle/vibrates the steering wheel unnecessarily. This is a bit of a pain if you aren’t expecting it as you then have to have a quick look around in case you truly missed someone on your blind spot.
5AL – Dynamic safety. There are lots of little things that this option does so I won’t list them all. One very useful thing is that it monitors the space in front of you and lets you know if you are about to drive into someone. It does this with warning signs on the dash (and on the Head Up Display). It occasionally gives false alarms for parked cars. This is not normally a problem but if I am using the active cruise control at the time, the car slams on the brakes as it thinks I am about to crash. This is a great feature if I truly wasn’t paying attention but the false alarms can sometimes be a nuisance.
5AT – Driving assistant plus (includes 5AR traffic jam assist). Luckily, I haven’t had chance to use the traffic jam assist yet so I can’t comment on that one. I love the active cruise control though. It takes a bit of faith to stay off the brake pedal and let the car do it all for you but I think I’m used to it now.

ZNS – connected drive
Includes 6AN Information plus and 6AP remote services. I’m looking forward to using the remote activation for the auxiliary heater. I’m not too concerned about the ‘find my car’ feature as I have a tracker fitted. Not much I can report about this option I’m afraid.

248 – Steering wheel heating. I love this – I must be getting old.

322 – Comfort access. This is my 3rd BMW with this feature and I couldn’t do without it. I keep the key in my pocket and can lock the doors by touching the door handle. Alternatively, I can press a button on the inside of the tailgate and walk away whilst the tailgate closes and the car locks itself.

402 – Panoramic sunroof. This makes the car feel much larger inside. In tilt mode, two panes tilt open. In slide mode, the front pane slides back. This pane is so large that it almost feels like driving a convertible with the top down.

481 – Sports seats. These are fine. I’ve had comfort seats before and honestly couldn’t see the advantage. My old car (with comfort seats) also had seat ventilation. This meant having perforated leather which was a nightmare to clean. The sports seats (with Dakota leather) are good enough for me. The only thing I can’t seem to do is adjust the sides of the backrest. I was able to do this on my last couple of cars. Anyone out there with sports seats know how to do this? The manual just points me at a button on the seat that seems to be missing.

536 – Auxiliary heating with remote control. I’ve not tried this yet as (thankfully) it isn’t cold enough at the moment. I can operate this in three ways – by the iDrive to set up timers, by the separate remote control (which I can keep in the house to turn on the heating remotely) or via my smartphone and remote services.

5DL – surround view (requires 3AG reverse assist camera). Surround view seems to give me three extra cameras. One underneath each of the external mirrors and another in the middle of the front of the car – just at the bottom in the middle of the kidney grills. These 4 cameras are used to generate a 360 degree top view of the car for parking (very useful on such a big car) and also for lane change warnings. The front camera can be used to give a 180 degree view from the front of the car. This is useful when pulling out of a side road/driveway so you don’t run over pedestrians or pull out in front of a cyclist. My previous car (650i GC) had cameras in each front wing – these gave an excellent view of the road at each side of the car. The front view camera in the X5 isn’t quite so good. Because it gives a 180 degree view, the view isn’t great unless the car is at 90 degrees to the road ahead. For example, if I am turning left out of a driveway, the car is angled slightly to the left which means my view to the right of the car is reduced. As clever as the single front view camera is – I would have preferred a camera in each front wing.

5DP – Park assist. Fantastic – although it does take a little bit of faith to trust the car to park itself. Just press the button near the iDrive controller, take your feet off the pedals, hands off the wheel, hands off the gear selector, close your eyes and trust the car to do the job. The car selects the gears and accelerates/brakes as required. When done, the car selects Park on the transmission and tells you it is safe to open your eyes again (I was only joking about closing your eyes). To abort the parking, just brake manually or release the park assist button.
I also noticed that Park assist comes on automatically if you are driving along slowly (perhaps because there is traffic on the road) next to parked cars. This means that you don’t have to manually tell the car that you want to park – but you will still need to press the button to get it to start to park the car automatically. This ‘auto on’ feature can be turned off via the iDrive menus.

610 – Head up display. What can I say? For me, this is a ‘must have’. It displays speed, nav instructions, collision alerts, pedestrian alerts, radio station selection, telephone information, current speed limit. It is intelligent enough to not display everything all the time. For example, it will only display phone information for a few seconds if someone calls me or if I am trying to place a call; nav information is only displayed if active. The information displayed can be configured via iDrive.

688 – Harman/Kardon speakers. They seem fine to me – but I have never heard the standard or B+O setups so I don’t know how they compare.

6NS – Enhanced Bluetooth with USB and voice control. I wasn’t going to get this originally as it means including the dreaded phone cradle in the centre console. However, I later found out that, without it, the car won’t be able to read/display my SMS and email messages so I included it in the build.

8TH– Speed limit display. This works very well. Changes in speed limit are detected pretty much as I pass the new speed limit sign. The information can be displayed on the control display if required – although I don’t need that as it is also projected onto the windscreen via the head up display.

Haris · 05-08-2014, 08:53 AM

Excellent write-up. thanks for sharing!

buckeyewalt · 05-08-2014, 09:15 AM

Great write-up

atomic80 · 05-08-2014, 10:43 AM

If we had 5A3 – Night vision with dynamic light spot in the states, I'd have gotten the night vision option for sure but unfortunately we don't.. (you chaps overseas get all the good stuff!).

Thanks for the writeup! I thoroughly enjoyed reading them.

sward · 05-08-2014, 12:24 PM

Great write-up. Thanks

opasha · 05-08-2014, 01:49 PM

Wonderful write-up! I agree with atomic80 - night vision option would have been great to have in the states.

CatFlap · 05-08-2014, 03:30 PM

Thanks for the wonderful review! I'm most excited to see the adaptive LED headlights in action when my X5 arrives in the Summer!

Regarding the sport seat side bolster adjustments (or lack of) you mentioned, I think you have to specify option 488 - "Lumbar support, driver and front pass" @ £ 275.00 This option allows for the variable inflation of the seat back bolsters (in addition to the usual lumbar adjustments) I think the option ref 488 is correct - I noticed it on my order breakdown; it must have been added automatically when I chose the comfort front seats (though it appears that it has to be selected as a cost option on the standard sport seats)

Re. 536 – "Auxiliary heating with remote control" have you heard anything about the reduction in 'wading depth' when this option is fitted?

plob · 05-09-2014, 01:50 AM

Thanks all
Saggo - I went for a long drive last night on unlit roads. It is really impressive watching the headlights dance around other road users - I could be wrong but it appeared there were times that they were dimming (not dipping) so as not to dazzle people.

Regarding the heater question, I just checked the owners manual which quotes the wading depth as 50cm or 19.6". However, page 196 states that with the auxiliary heating this reduces to 25cm or 9.8".

Thanks also for the information about the seats.

Cheers
P

CatFlap · 05-09-2014, 03:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by plob

Thanks all
Saggo - I went for a long drive last night on unlit roads. It is really impressive watching the headlights dance around other road users - I could be wrong but it appeared there were times that they were dimming (not dipping) so as not to dazzle people.

Regarding the heater question, I just checked the owners manual which quotes the wading depth as 50cm or 19.6". However, page 196 states that with the auxiliary heating this reduces to 25cm or 9.8".

Thanks also for the information about the seats.

Cheers
P

P.

Yes the LED's sound very impressive. It's very frustrating for me to have ordered options without ever actually seeing them! i.e. HUD, LED's, comfort front / rear seats etc etc...the demo cars in my local dealer are very sparsely spec'd, at the time I ordered mine they only had a brown 30D SE to look at.

Re the wading depth, it must be the exhaust from the 'boiler' that limits the wading depth allowed. I remember on my 4.8is back on 2008 which had the aux heating, there was often a plume of water vapor coming from the exhaust under the passenger side footwell when the heater first started up.

Bradnyc · 05-10-2014, 08:42 PM

wonderful write-up, thanks

EIGHTLUG · 05-11-2014, 03:01 PM

Can 322: Comfort Access. Can it be ordered a' la carte, separate from the all inclusive Premium Package?

HansRobert · 05-11-2014, 08:31 PM

It took a bit of time for you to do such a detailed write up. I am considering ordering an X5 and all information is appreciated!

05-08-2014, 07:03 AM	#1
plob Private 7 Rep 90 Posts Drives: 650i GC Join Date: Jan 2012 Location: Deepest, darkest Cheshire iTrader: (0)	My review of F15 options Hi all Now that I’ve had a little time to drive my new F15, I thought I’d share my thoughts on some of the options that I bought with the car. Please note that these are for a UK specification vehicle so the functionality may not be the same where you are. I’m hoping that this will help people when considering options for their own builds. Let me know if you need more detail about any of these features Cheers P 5A3 night vision package I also added 552 – Adaptive LED headlights (with 5AC high beam assistant). These are fantastic. I mentioned in another post about how the high beam assistant is able to work out where other cars are on the road and move the headlight position so that they don’t dazzle other drivers. Note that all 4 headlights work (as opposed to just the outer two with Xenon headlights). Each headlight is positioned independently and dynamically. When the low beams are on, the upper parts of each of the 4 headlights are activated. On high beam, both upper and lower parts of the 4 headlights are on. I am told that the high beam assistant is also able to move the Xenon lights in a similar way but, as there are only two of them illuminated, I suspect it won’t work as well as with the LED headlights. 5A3 – Night vision with dynamic light spot (with 6UK night vision with pedestrian recognition). Again, these are fantastic. The fog lights are replaced with high intensity, high definition LED spotlights. These are directed onto a heat source (human or animal) if it is in the road or looks like it might be heading into the road. It works very well – possibly saving the life of a cyclist without lights on an unlit road on my first night out with the car. Pressing a button on the dash puts a night vision view on the 10.2” screen. It is quite bizarre to see pedestrians highlighted in yellow a long time before I am able to see them myself. The infrared camera nestles discreetly in the kidney grills. ZAS – Active safety package 430 – folding, dimming external mirrors. These seem to work well – although I would prefer it is they would dim a bit quicker 5AG - lane change warning system. There are yellow warning triangles in the inner edge of each of the external mirrors – easily visible from the driver’s position. These seem to work in a couple of ways. Firstly, if the car detects that you are drifting out of your lane (it uses the cameras underneath the external mirrors – more on that later), it flashes the yellow warning triangle on that side and vibrates the steering wheel. Of course, this doesn’t happen if I use the indicators first. Secondly, the outer rear ultrasonic sensors check to see if there are any other cars on your left or right side – in your blind spot. If another car is present, the warning triangle on that side gently lights up to warn you that a car is there. If you then change lanes (with or without indicating first), the warning triangle flashes and the steering wheel vibrates. In this mode, the warning triangle doesn’t just turn on or off – it fades up or down so as not to distract you. One slight problem with this is that there is a roundabout near me that has a metal railing to stop pedestrians getting onto it. The car detects this as another car on my inner blind spot when I try to exit the roundabout and flashes the triangle/vibrates the steering wheel unnecessarily. This is a bit of a pain if you aren’t expecting it as you then have to have a quick look around in case you truly missed someone on your blind spot. 5AL – Dynamic safety. There are lots of little things that this option does so I won’t list them all. One very useful thing is that it monitors the space in front of you and lets you know if you are about to drive into someone. It does this with warning signs on the dash (and on the Head Up Display). It occasionally gives false alarms for parked cars. This is not normally a problem but if I am using the active cruise control at the time, the car slams on the brakes as it thinks I am about to crash. This is a great feature if I truly wasn’t paying attention but the false alarms can sometimes be a nuisance. 5AT – Driving assistant plus (includes 5AR traffic jam assist). Luckily, I haven’t had chance to use the traffic jam assist yet so I can’t comment on that one. I love the active cruise control though. It takes a bit of faith to stay off the brake pedal and let the car do it all for you but I think I’m used to it now. ZNS – connected drive Includes 6AN Information plus and 6AP remote services. I’m looking forward to using the remote activation for the auxiliary heater. I’m not too concerned about the ‘find my car’ feature as I have a tracker fitted. Not much I can report about this option I’m afraid. 248 – Steering wheel heating. I love this – I must be getting old. 322 – Comfort access. This is my 3rd BMW with this feature and I couldn’t do without it. I keep the key in my pocket and can lock the doors by touching the door handle. Alternatively, I can press a button on the inside of the tailgate and walk away whilst the tailgate closes and the car locks itself. 402 – Panoramic sunroof. This makes the car feel much larger inside. In tilt mode, two panes tilt open. In slide mode, the front pane slides back. This pane is so large that it almost feels like driving a convertible with the top down. 481 – Sports seats. These are fine. I’ve had comfort seats before and honestly couldn’t see the advantage. My old car (with comfort seats) also had seat ventilation. This meant having perforated leather which was a nightmare to clean. The sports seats (with Dakota leather) are good enough for me. The only thing I can’t seem to do is adjust the sides of the backrest. I was able to do this on my last couple of cars. Anyone out there with sports seats know how to do this? The manual just points me at a button on the seat that seems to be missing. 536 – Auxiliary heating with remote control. I’ve not tried this yet as (thankfully) it isn’t cold enough at the moment. I can operate this in three ways – by the iDrive to set up timers, by the separate remote control (which I can keep in the house to turn on the heating remotely) or via my smartphone and remote services. 5DL – surround view (requires 3AG reverse assist camera). Surround view seems to give me three extra cameras. One underneath each of the external mirrors and another in the middle of the front of the car – just at the bottom in the middle of the kidney grills. These 4 cameras are used to generate a 360 degree top view of the car for parking (very useful on such a big car) and also for lane change warnings. The front camera can be used to give a 180 degree view from the front of the car. This is useful when pulling out of a side road/driveway so you don’t run over pedestrians or pull out in front of a cyclist. My previous car (650i GC) had cameras in each front wing – these gave an excellent view of the road at each side of the car. The front view camera in the X5 isn’t quite so good. Because it gives a 180 degree view, the view isn’t great unless the car is at 90 degrees to the road ahead. For example, if I am turning left out of a driveway, the car is angled slightly to the left which means my view to the right of the car is reduced. As clever as the single front view camera is – I would have preferred a camera in each front wing. 5DP – Park assist. Fantastic – although it does take a little bit of faith to trust the car to park itself. Just press the button near the iDrive controller, take your feet off the pedals, hands off the wheel, hands off the gear selector, close your eyes and trust the car to do the job. The car selects the gears and accelerates/brakes as required. When done, the car selects Park on the transmission and tells you it is safe to open your eyes again (I was only joking about closing your eyes). To abort the parking, just brake manually or release the park assist button. I also noticed that Park assist comes on automatically if you are driving along slowly (perhaps because there is traffic on the road) next to parked cars. This means that you don’t have to manually tell the car that you want to park – but you will still need to press the button to get it to start to park the car automatically. This ‘auto on’ feature can be turned off via the iDrive menus. 610 – Head up display. What can I say? For me, this is a ‘must have’. It displays speed, nav instructions, collision alerts, pedestrian alerts, radio station selection, telephone information, current speed limit. It is intelligent enough to not display everything all the time. For example, it will only display phone information for a few seconds if someone calls me or if I am trying to place a call; nav information is only displayed if active. The information displayed can be configured via iDrive. 688 – Harman/Kardon speakers. They seem fine to me – but I have never heard the standard or B+O setups so I don’t know how they compare. 6NS – Enhanced Bluetooth with USB and voice control. I wasn’t going to get this originally as it means including the dreaded phone cradle in the centre console. However, I later found out that, without it, the car won’t be able to read/display my SMS and email messages so I included it in the build. 8TH– Speed limit display. This works very well. Changes in speed limit are detected pretty much as I pass the new speed limit sign. The information can be displayed on the control display if required – although I don’t need that as it is also projected onto the windscreen via the head up display. Last edited by plob; 05-08-2014 at 08:16 AM..
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05-08-2014, 08:53 AM	#2
Haris Lieutenant 169 Rep 481 Posts Drives: F82 BMW M4 Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: NJ iTrader: (0) Garage List 2012 BMW X5 xDrive50i [0.00]	Excellent write-up. thanks for sharing! __________________ 2021 BMW X7 M50i + 2015 BMW M4 Retired: 2018 Audi Q7 \| 2015 BMW X5 xDrive35i \| 2012 BMW X5 xDrive50i \| 2010 Audi S4 \| 2007 335i Coupe Creator of Leasematic - Lease/Loan Calculator \| iOS App Store \| Android Google Play
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05-08-2014, 09:15 AM	#3
buckeyewalt Lieutenant 61 Rep 423 Posts Drives: 2014 X5 50i Join Date: Feb 2012 Location: West Tennessee iTrader: (0)	Great write-up
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05-08-2014, 10:43 AM	#4
atomic80 Lieutenant 404 Rep 561 Posts Drives: 997TT Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Bellevue, WA iTrader: (0)	If we had 5A3 – Night vision with dynamic light spot in the states, I'd have gotten the night vision option for sure but unfortunately we don't.. (you chaps overseas get all the good stuff!). Thanks for the writeup! I thoroughly enjoyed reading them.
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05-08-2014, 12:24 PM	#5
sward Captain 632 Rep 658 Posts Drives: i7 xDrive60 Join Date: May 2005 Location: Stockholm, Sweden iTrader: (0) Garage List 2023 BMW i7 [0.00]	Great write-up. Thanks __________________ /Fredrik i7 xDrive60 -23 Sold: iX -22, X5MC -20 (F95), X5M50d -19 (G05), X5M50d -17 (F15), X5M50d -14 (F15), 116d -13 (F20), X5 3.0D -10 (E70), M3 -10 (E93), 320DX -10 (E91), 320D -08 (E91), X3 30D -07 (E83), 335 -07 (E92), 325 -05 (E90), 320 -02 (E46), 318 -00 (E46), 320 -93 (E36), 318 -89 (E30)
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My review of F15 options

05-08-2014, 01:49 PM	#6
opasha Brigadier General 1329 Rep 3,990 Posts Drives: 2014 BMW X5 50i Join Date: Apr 2014 Location: Maryland iTrader: (0)	Wonderful write-up! I agree with atomic80 - night vision option would have been great to have in the states.
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05-08-2014, 03:30 PM	#7
CatFlap Lieutenant 21 Rep 424 Posts Drives: ... Join Date: Aug 2012 Location: UK iTrader: (0)	Thanks for the wonderful review! I'm most excited to see the adaptive LED headlights in action when my X5 arrives in the Summer! Regarding the sport seat side bolster adjustments (or lack of) you mentioned, I think you have to specify option 488 - "Lumbar support, driver and front pass" @ £ 275.00 This option allows for the variable inflation of the seat back bolsters (in addition to the usual lumbar adjustments) I think the option ref 488 is correct - I noticed it on my order breakdown; it must have been added automatically when I chose the comfort front seats (though it appears that it has to be selected as a cost option on the standard sport seats) Re. 536 – "Auxiliary heating with remote control" have you heard anything about the reduction in 'wading depth' when this option is fitted? __________________ X5 F15 - gone after 5 months!
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05-09-2014, 01:50 AM	#8
plob Private 7 Rep 90 Posts Drives: 650i GC Join Date: Jan 2012 Location: Deepest, darkest Cheshire iTrader: (0)	Thanks all Saggo - I went for a long drive last night on unlit roads. It is really impressive watching the headlights dance around other road users - I could be wrong but it appeared there were times that they were dimming (not dipping) so as not to dazzle people. Regarding the heater question, I just checked the owners manual which quotes the wading depth as 50cm or 19.6". However, page 196 states that with the auxiliary heating this reduces to 25cm or 9.8". Thanks also for the information about the seats. Cheers P
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05-10-2014, 08:42 PM	#10
Bradnyc Enlisted Member 3 Rep 34 Posts Drives: 2015 x5 space gray Join Date: Mar 2012 Location: NYC iTrader: (0)	wonderful write-up, thanks
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05-11-2014, 03:01 PM	#11
EIGHTLUG Private First Class 32 Rep 113 Posts Drives: 2014 BMW X5d Join Date: May 2014 Location: Denver, CO iTrader: (0)	Can 322: Comfort Access. Can it be ordered a' la carte, separate from the all inclusive Premium Package?
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05-11-2014, 08:31 PM	#12
HansRobert First Lieutenant 71 Rep 315 Posts Drives: 2016 X5 xDrive 40e Join Date: May 2014 Location: South Central PA iTrader: (0)	Thanks for sharing! It took a bit of time for you to do such a detailed write up. I am considering ordering an X5 and all information is appreciated!
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