Featured New safety ratings prioritize touch controls for key driving needs

Percolator! They were big in the 50’s~60’s, and the process gave a distinct taste, different than Melitta drip style, maybe akin to bath-versus-shower. Coarser grind coffee recommended too, no filter involved, which is a plus.

Maybe I’ll score one of those, preferably metal, I do tend to do in our glass carafes about once a decade.

my grannie only ever made tea (that I can recall). She had one of these, which I found fascinating:

 

didn't they once think that aluminum coffee pots led to alzheimers?

i understand that french press are bad for your health

 

There are still Skeptics regarding aluminum cookware, as well as Teflon coating etc. But aluminum? Whoever thought that was a good idea. Remember these ridiculous things from my youth?



Talk about a bad idea & an easy way to scald your hand if you pour a hot beverages in it .... or you give a kid a frosty cold beverage & you simultaneously get cold hands while you quickly warm the beverage up with your own body heat LOL

 

Hey, I still use those. I just chug from them so the liquid doesn't have time to change temperature, and I hold them with just the fingertips. Agree though, bad idea for kids, but hey, we lived through those years just fine.

 

That depends a LOT on the knob/button/switch arrangement. The 2o25 Camry HVAC is a horrible UI. Some of the Indicators are actually pushbuttons and the switch below the indicator may have nothing to do with that indicator!

 

Most rate the 2025 Camry as the very best car you can buy!

JD Power which is notoriously nitpicky gave the Toyota Camry rave reviews especially its infotainment/interior controls

2025 Toyota Camry Review: First Drive
Independent Expert Opinion: Infotainment, Technology, and Safety
"Sliding behind the wheel, you immediately notice the more prominent, horizontal-format infotainment screen. It measured 12.3 inches in the XSE test car; lesser trims get an 8-inch one. Both retain a simple-to-use-on-the-fly analog rotary volume knob but sadly lose the rotary tuning knob. You learn to use the steering-wheel controls and excellent voice control instead.

My co-driver and I easily and quickly paired both of our phones. With equal ease, he connected his wirelessly to Apple CarPlay, and later on, after a driver swap, I grabbed Android Auto wirelessly for my Samsung phone. The standard console-mounted phone charger was handy as my co-driver's phone was low on charge. It's nice not to have the USB cable clutter, allowing me to keep my phone in my pocket.

The test car had an active Drive Connect subscription for the excellent Cloud Navigation (free for the first year on XSE and XLE, extra cost after that), continuously updated Google point-of-interest data, and "Hey, Toyota" destination assist. The latter came in handy for directions when I made a wrong turn later in the day and found the hotel by name only without my knowing the street address or town. It needs an available 4G network, however, to function.

Of course, you can always use the voice assistant, POI search, or maps from Apple or Google for free on your paired phone.

The loaded XSE test car came with the $4,075 Premium Plus package, which, in addition to a lot of safety and convenience content, includes a rich-sounding JBL nine-speaker premium audio system. The JBL system is indeed a good addition.

All 2025 Camrys get upgraded to standard Toyota Safety Sense 3.0 (TSS 3.0) from the prior year's TSS 2.5+. Also, blind-spot warning and rear cross-traffic warning—previously extra-cost on LE and SE—are now standard across the board.

One of the additions with TSS 3.0 is Proactive Driving Assist. Using the Camry's forward-facing radar and a front camera, it can proactively, without driver involvement, slow for curves or slower-moving or stopped traffic ahead even before the driver notices the potential issue. While running down a curvy rural highway, I was surprised by a slow-moving truck moving around a sharp curve. The Camry, however, took action, slowing down before I knew I had to.

The optional Premium Plus package adds eight more safety and driving-assistance features, some of which I feel are must-haves. One is a surround-view camera that provides an overhead view of the Camry and its immediate surroundings. Also good to have are rear cross-traffic braking and rear parking assistance with auto braking, which applied the brakes when I missed the vehicular or human cross-traffic warnings while backing up at the drive event."

No car is perfect - it is impossible to satisfy everyone- but the Toyota Camry probably is one of the few cars that comes closest to accomplishing this impossible task.
Most Camry's have Automatic Climate Control- on our vehicle that has a similar Auto Climate Control I bet it has been 5 years since I made an adjustment - it stays a 72 year around.

 

It's sand-pounding frustration, to hear "well we provided you buttons, but you're still not happy?". All you have to do is distill to the crux: is it easily, reliably possible to leisurely change settings, without nearly going off-road?

A button such as the vent mode button on our '10 Prius, does NOT meet that criteria. If you want to take it off "auto", set it purposefully to Heat/Defog*, you've got to:

1. Look down, find the button (in a row of identical buttons), and get a finger on it.
2. Glance up at the road (because wife is screaming by now, as often as not)
3. Push said button, then glance down, and try to decipher the LCD hieroglyph
4. Glance up at road
5. Repeat as needed, till you spot the Heat/Defog hieroglyph
6. Overshoot, and you can start the process again.

* wouldn't it be nice to have one more regular mode, exclusively directing all air to the windshield...

 

They also removed some useful display indications. In my base 2017 Prius, the fan speed, vent position, etc. showed accurately when in Auto mode. In the Camry, they no longer show this. The fan will be running but you have to guess by sound how fast it is tunning. You fo not know if the AC is running either.

 

in the row above the switches, some are just indicator lights and some are also push buttons. You are expected to know which is which. I have caught my wife trying to use the switch below the seat heater indicator instead of pressing the indicator button. the steering wheel heater has an Auto mode but the seat heaters do not.

 

I have a similar issue, with this style of elevator buttons:



regularly push the number tile, instead of the button to the right. I think I'm not alone, you see a lot of wear on those, and doubt it's from the hordes of blind elevator users.

Had the fun of being stuck in an elevator once, neither me nor the other traveller noticed the almost seamless sub-panel, with a diminutive nub on one side. After about 90 minutes and a few phone calls with my cellphone, I took my myopia-prescription glasses off, inspected the nub closely: it had a diminutive, stylized phone icon.

 

Went to "self-serve demo drive" a Tesla Model Y a few days ago. Spent well over 20 minutes going through the MCU touchscreen in order to be familiar with all the needed control functions.

It was a hot day, cabin temperature was over 110F. Took 5 minutes to find the temperature control. The sunlight was in such a direction that the tiny and faint left right arrows at the bottom of the screen were hard to see.

The biggest challenge was to navigate the touchscreen while driving. With my aged eyes, I need reading glasses to read some of the screen manual. On the other hand, I cannot see the road clearly while wearing a pair of reading glasses.

I know I can use the FSD. But that requires me go through the touchscreen to enter the destination and then activate the FSD, let alone I am not sure if I want to pay the $8000 price tag for the FSD option.

 

As much as I like having a safer, more eco-friendly, more reliable car, I often wish I had an old classic car. The driver interface on modern cars sucks. And the touchscreen is the straw that broke the camel's back.

 

If knobs are a priority for some individuals - why not buy a vehicle with knob controls?
What's the problem?

Top 6 Vehicles with the Best Physical Controls in 2025 & User-Friendly Interiors - Autoblog

9 Cars That Still Have Real Buttons and Knobs (No Giant Screens Here) | FinanceBuzz

Rejoice! Carmakers Are Embracing Physical Buttons Again | WIRED

...... but touch screens and voice controls are also here to stay - many like them and prefer them.

Some innovations like Auto Climate Control, if done right, completely eliminate the need to ever fiddle with controls.

...on our vehicles if you want to switch radio station you can do it with your voice (as well as answer a phone call or make a phone call- without ever taking your hands off the steering wheel or eyes off the road) - no need for any manual intervention to do those simple tasks other than using your voice after hitting the voice icon on the steering wheel.

....do realize a large component of this thread is just grumpy old men yelling at kids walking on the grass and venting... I am in my 70's and I get it but the world is changing and will keep on changing.

 

Ok, I’ll bite. Clicked on your top link, waded through it screen by screen, here’s a semi-legible picture, a Toyota Highlander dash. Yes, there’s buttons, dials:



The usual morass of identical, diminutive buttons, vent mode button requiring multiple pushes and constant visual confirmation.

As compared to lower level, discontinued Honda Fit:

c’mon…

 

That vehicle has Auto Climate Control - no need to fiddle.

Would recommend vehicles without Auto Climate Control for fiddlers.

This for example is the layout of a 2025 Hyundai Santa Fe SE Manual Climate Control which is exactly what you may be looking for - knobs and buttons galore- basically the same layout as our 2020 Santa Fe - intuitive and easy to use.

Much prefer the Auto Climate Control in our other vehicle that you never touch and stays at 72 degrees year around. We are getting near the season where Auto Climate Control really shines - 40 to 50 degree mornings that transition into 85 to 90 degree afternoons and you will never have to touch the climate control once to keep the car at 72 degrees!

 

i'm a fiddler, never use the auto. i find it doesn't hit the sweet spot

 

Our Auto Climate Control stays right on the set point and maintains the cabin wonderfully.
Also has a humidity sensor integrated in the system to eliminate any window fogging (in other words automatically defrost as necessary).
Has a PTC heater so that if you start the car when it is below 45 it supplies heat through a small resistance heater for the very short time it takes the car to warm up.

Car has automated front air louvers in front of the radiator that close based on temperature as well as a radiator water loop that goes through an exhaust system water heat exchanger to heat the water up faster for efficiency and fast cabin heating in cold weather.

The car is nothing fancy and not an expensive vehicle - just well thought out, efficient and reliable.

 

Modern car controls are a nightmare and the Prius has led the way. Your fingers are an analog control implement, these cars have digital controls. The shifter returns to a neutral position, it's not positioned to what is selected, you have to look down to conform what gear you're in then shift, then again look down to see what you shifted into. You can't reach down and feel what gear you're in. Just like items on screen, look at screen, touch to get to the screen you want, look down and touch again, look down again to confirm that your touch actually switched anything.
Same with the nightmare they were having with unintended acceleration. How do you turn the key off in an emergency situation? You press a button, did it do anything? What gear are you in? You are going 100 mph downhill in a residential neighborhood, what gear are you in, do you have time to look down at the dash, and then look down again to confirm the switch with no feedback has done anything?
The only buttons you get are the ones on the steering wheel, with some concentration you can feel them, unless you have thick calluses from doing manual labor. Some of the later gens have gotten a little better having some buttons for AC control, but they still run a digital screen that you have to look at.

 

Here's where I sometimes like to "fiddle":



It's a steady, steep, downhill, and at the bottom you're along the Burrard Inlet. Depending on the dewpoint, and especially with rain, Auto, very suddenly, doesn't cut it: windshield fogs up, and Auto does squat.

In something like the Fit, you reach down, turn the right-side knob to the right extreme, done.

With our 2010, well, see post #16.

Regarding "fiddling", there's another member here, with a similar word: "fussing". Both have baggage?

 

Meant nothing negative by the term fiddle - my wife would tell you I am a fiddler with our home computer settings.