2012 or 2013 Ford Edge Limited AWD

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oilBabe and I took the family to Atlanta for a long holiday weekend. We rented an Edge from AVIS via Priceline. $200 for 5 days seemed a good price since minivans seemed not less than double that.

Likes:

Comfortable, roomy for four and luggage, Sync and the customization of the instrument cluster, decent fuel economy, good power.

Dislike

Visibility, back up camera not integrated with steering, power port doesn't seem to hold plugs well, cannot pair bluetooth by passenger while driving. Turn signal lever.

I think we got a killer deal on the rental since the list price one would pay off the street was over double what we paid.

We put just under 1200 miles on this ride and averaged 21.8 MPG driving at 75+ MPH often in wind and changing elevation near Chattanooga.

On the way down I paired my android phone to listen to pod casts and streaming audio. Sound quality seemed good and when I played media on my phone I occasionally saw the artist and title displayed. The SYNC unit was not consistent, sometimes simply indicating an audio stream without detail. The media didn't seem to matter. Detection ofthe device was often slow and could be frustrating. Sometimes it would just start up without trouble. Other times necessitated toggling Bluetooth off and on. It did not seem to be any better with oilBabe's iPad.

As mentioned in the dislikes, you cannot pair while on the move which was frustrating since I had a passenger who could do this while I drove.

The drive was very smooth for an SUV and no major issues were observed. It was eager to downshift if I pressed down hard on th go pedal. Otherwise power delivery was smooth and quiet. Very little road noise except when on some textured pavement.

The turn signal lever was very bulky. It did not smoothly go to the turn position. It seemed content remaining in the off or lane change position, and highly resistant to the full on turn position.

Unlike my BIL Audi and MIL Maxima, the back-up camera did not display your likely path as you turned the wheel. That's a very useful feature, especially in an unfamiliar vehicle that you cannot easily see the corners.

I wouldn't buy one as I don't need such a large vehicle save for maybe once or twice year. But I might go for something smaller with SYNC if it was available with the same features.
 
I would be more a Fusion or Focus kinda guy for a DD. I think this was the MyTouch version of SYNC.
 
always thought they were useless as a utility vehicle, overpriced and disappointing value.
 
So you would still see Sync as a good feature? It sounds like it didn't work all that well.

I test drove a Focus the other day with My Ford Touch and could see it potentially being more of a pain than a benefit. Maybe more experience in the car would change that. Didn't sync my phone to try that out though.
 
Oh it worked. Like any new technology, you have to understand it's limitations.

It would be great if you just flipped a switch and it worked, I agree. Not displaying the song and artist on the screen is an annoyance. Not connecting via bluetooth is hard to pin who is to blame. I've seen the same behavior between bluetooth headsets and phones, so do you blame the head unit, or the phone?

Since I've seen the same behavior it's hard to totally give the blame to SYNC MyFordTouch for that.

I like the idea. I think it still has some maturing to do.

Of course, one of the limitations could be addressed by tying the passenger airbag sensor into the unit and allowing operations if there was a passenger. But I can also see why Ford might not be willing to do that as you cannot ensure it's the passenger working the unit.
 
I did like pressing a button on the steering wheel and saying "Climate" waiting for a response, and then "Set temperature 72" and the system would set the temperature inside the vehicle to 72.

Since I didn't want to upload my address book into the vehicle, I didn't try out the features where I called someone by voice command. But I did use the hands free to call home by hand and it seemed to work well. We could hear the other party and he didn't offer any complaints about the quality of our voices.
 
Was there a response lag using sync, onboard computer, etc. (like using an old dell with low memory for example)? How about the Nav, any good?
 
Didn't use the NAV. The car wasn't equipped with NAV, just MyFordTouch. I suspect AVIS wants you to rent their NAV units, so they spec cars without NAV.

Didn't really notice any lag. The complaints about the touch screen are valid. It didn't seem to always notice the pressing. Not tactile feedback like on mobile phones that will vibrate a bit to let you "know" you pressed something. Sometimes I had to press the heated seats buttons on the screen several times to get them to respond. I think that is more the screen technology than it is the speed and power of the unit.

The voice control worked well. Really well when I was the only one in the car. When others were in the car it became confused because of multiple voices. Can't really fault it for that.

From what I've read, it looks like they did a pretty major update of the software Spring 2012, addressing many of the complaints.

Seems there is still some work to do, but it's appears far better than the first iteration based on the lack of issues I had.

I didn't experience any of the lock-ups or other confusion I read about early adopters experiencing.
 
I never even looked at the rated fuel economy. I didn't even come close to the EPA ratings and I usually exceed them.

I can imagine folks are going to be disappointed if they expect 27 and can't even get 22.
 
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