JCG
Full Member
- Joined
- Oct 13, 2013
- Messages
- 38
- Reaction score
- 1
- Points
- 0
- Location
- Los Angeles
- Buick Ownership
- 2013 Buick Regal Turbo (Premium III)
I wanted to love my Intellilink when I bought my new Regal, but it drives me absolutely crazy. It's my greatest bone to pick with the whole car. I had a 2011 Regal RL6 with nav and 40 GB hard drive and it was an amazing sound system; aside from the fact it wasn't very tactile lacking the touchscreen interface, I LOVED IT. But Intellilink? No thanks. Positively hate it. It's loaded with glitches and bugs and everything else to make a person insane.
Can anyone else speak to these? Is it a problem? Drives you crazy, too? Especially if you went up from a 2011 model to a 2012 or 2013?
1) No hard drive (2011 had a great one)
2) No pause and play (which I loved in my 2011)
3) Lots of lag and delays (nothing is instantaneous and it takes a while for everything, even the nav, to load up)
4) Not very user friendly as it inexplicably indexes music in the strangest of ways, i.e., if I was playing a track from my iPod and wanted to skip two or three songs ahead, I could look at my menu and it would start me out with the current track I was on in the list. NOW when I want to skip forward or behind, instead of taking me to the current track in the list, I have to go back to the very beginning of every menu in a long list of tracks and manually scroll through my lists to get to the tracks I want. NOT COOL AT ALL. Wastes my time!
5) Double indexes tracks-- insanity!
6) Follows a weird and illogical sequence when moving to different screens. In my 2011 I could move to different screens by hitting different buttons, and that doesn't sound like a bad thing until you want to switch from Nav to Radio and when you hit "Radio" instead of switching to the screen, you switch to a different band altogether. I hate the "Home" button....takes me to a sea of icons with further choices to make that takes my eyes off the road. The "Back" button takes me literally to the last screen I was on, which my 2011 did not do (and I appreciated), and it cycles over and over through some of the same screens. Again, this makes me crazy.
7) Doesn't play nice with Apple products (like iPhone or iPod). Can't stream bluetooth audio from my iPhone--it refuses to do it--I thought Intellilink was going to be great for this...dead wrong!
8) Pandora and Stitcher? Sure, they're great if you don't have a limited data plan and/or you can afford to use the apps. Otherwise it's useless to even have.
9) Bluetooth is a nightmare in general. Sometimes I have to shut off the car, open the door, wait 15 seconds, then close the door and restart to get my bluetooth to work with Intellilink.
10) Can't make phone calls unless you turn the radio on first (wasn't like that with the 2011 model)
11) Can't use Onstar Nav unless you turn the radio on first (also wasn't an issue on the 2011 model)
12) The nav screen, the maps, the voice, everything about it is complete crap compared to the 2011 system which had awesome maps, clear voices, audible prompts in addition to the voice telling you where and when to make turns. The maps and voice guidance, in my opinion, are embarrassing in comparison to other brands, and to what the 2011 Regal had.
13) Have to shut off the nav completely if I happen to be on a phone call while trying navigate in unfamiliar areas--totally embarrassing when you're on a professional phone call and everyone in the background hear's the incredibly poor sounds of the sick cow of a woman whose voice is screaming incoherently to turn in 500 feet. Again, wasn't a problem on the 2011 since the nav muted itself when a phone call was in progress. If I'm in an unfamiliar area and MUST take a phone call and I don't know how to navigate myself out of the area, I reluctantly pull over (sometimes for hours at a time) to conduct business before returning to the nav system to get me out of wherever I'm at. Talk about a design that doesn't allow it to navigate and chew gum at the same time!
14) Now the screen is occasionally freezing up and I have to shut off the car and restart it. It's a nightmare.
I think Intellilink, as it was conceived, was a nice idea, but so very poorly executed. I WISH GM would bring back the previous system. I'm finding Intellilink very difficult to live with to the extent that I am no no longer even turning on my radio (I'd rather sit in silence than wait for the screen to take it's time loading up, or shuffle slowly through a plethora of screens to find music), nor am I using bluetooth anymore for phone calls (and I'd actually rather risk getting a ticket than go through hell to get my iPhone to coordinate with Intellilink).
A world of commiseration won't fix this, but perhaps if enough people voice an opinion the folks at GM will be mindful of all of this in the future; perhaps offer a software update for frustrated consumers that addresses these problems?
I'm honestly contemplating trading in the car because I simply can't stand the Intellilink! And I do NOT want to contact their hotline (again)-- I've already done that. Their advice just confirms what I already know--Intellilink stinks, or at least it does in comparison to the pre 2012 systems.
Can anyone else speak to these? Is it a problem? Drives you crazy, too? Especially if you went up from a 2011 model to a 2012 or 2013?
1) No hard drive (2011 had a great one)
2) No pause and play (which I loved in my 2011)
3) Lots of lag and delays (nothing is instantaneous and it takes a while for everything, even the nav, to load up)
4) Not very user friendly as it inexplicably indexes music in the strangest of ways, i.e., if I was playing a track from my iPod and wanted to skip two or three songs ahead, I could look at my menu and it would start me out with the current track I was on in the list. NOW when I want to skip forward or behind, instead of taking me to the current track in the list, I have to go back to the very beginning of every menu in a long list of tracks and manually scroll through my lists to get to the tracks I want. NOT COOL AT ALL. Wastes my time!
5) Double indexes tracks-- insanity!
6) Follows a weird and illogical sequence when moving to different screens. In my 2011 I could move to different screens by hitting different buttons, and that doesn't sound like a bad thing until you want to switch from Nav to Radio and when you hit "Radio" instead of switching to the screen, you switch to a different band altogether. I hate the "Home" button....takes me to a sea of icons with further choices to make that takes my eyes off the road. The "Back" button takes me literally to the last screen I was on, which my 2011 did not do (and I appreciated), and it cycles over and over through some of the same screens. Again, this makes me crazy.
7) Doesn't play nice with Apple products (like iPhone or iPod). Can't stream bluetooth audio from my iPhone--it refuses to do it--I thought Intellilink was going to be great for this...dead wrong!
8) Pandora and Stitcher? Sure, they're great if you don't have a limited data plan and/or you can afford to use the apps. Otherwise it's useless to even have.
9) Bluetooth is a nightmare in general. Sometimes I have to shut off the car, open the door, wait 15 seconds, then close the door and restart to get my bluetooth to work with Intellilink.
10) Can't make phone calls unless you turn the radio on first (wasn't like that with the 2011 model)
11) Can't use Onstar Nav unless you turn the radio on first (also wasn't an issue on the 2011 model)
12) The nav screen, the maps, the voice, everything about it is complete crap compared to the 2011 system which had awesome maps, clear voices, audible prompts in addition to the voice telling you where and when to make turns. The maps and voice guidance, in my opinion, are embarrassing in comparison to other brands, and to what the 2011 Regal had.
13) Have to shut off the nav completely if I happen to be on a phone call while trying navigate in unfamiliar areas--totally embarrassing when you're on a professional phone call and everyone in the background hear's the incredibly poor sounds of the sick cow of a woman whose voice is screaming incoherently to turn in 500 feet. Again, wasn't a problem on the 2011 since the nav muted itself when a phone call was in progress. If I'm in an unfamiliar area and MUST take a phone call and I don't know how to navigate myself out of the area, I reluctantly pull over (sometimes for hours at a time) to conduct business before returning to the nav system to get me out of wherever I'm at. Talk about a design that doesn't allow it to navigate and chew gum at the same time!
14) Now the screen is occasionally freezing up and I have to shut off the car and restart it. It's a nightmare.
I think Intellilink, as it was conceived, was a nice idea, but so very poorly executed. I WISH GM would bring back the previous system. I'm finding Intellilink very difficult to live with to the extent that I am no no longer even turning on my radio (I'd rather sit in silence than wait for the screen to take it's time loading up, or shuffle slowly through a plethora of screens to find music), nor am I using bluetooth anymore for phone calls (and I'd actually rather risk getting a ticket than go through hell to get my iPhone to coordinate with Intellilink).
A world of commiseration won't fix this, but perhaps if enough people voice an opinion the folks at GM will be mindful of all of this in the future; perhaps offer a software update for frustrated consumers that addresses these problems?
I'm honestly contemplating trading in the car because I simply can't stand the Intellilink! And I do NOT want to contact their hotline (again)-- I've already done that. Their advice just confirms what I already know--Intellilink stinks, or at least it does in comparison to the pre 2012 systems.
