[330 CSi]

I know there are threads detailing specific complaints, but I would love to hear from owners summarizing their experiences: good, bad & meh. Are the problems an everyday thing? Are they once a week? Is it slow? Does it crash? Does it happen to all units or are specific ones just worse than others?

In short, what is the old head unit like to live with on a day to day basis?

I am in the US if that makes a difference.

[f82fanatic]

Originally Posted by 330 CSi

I know there are threads detailing specific complaints, but I would love to hear from owners summarizing their experiences: good, bad & meh. Are the problems an everyday thing? Are they once a week? Is it slow? Does it crash? Does it happen to all units or are specific ones just worse than others?

In short, what is the old head unit like to live with on a day to day basis?

I am in the US if that makes a difference.

I know that you are trying to convince yourself that it’s not a big deal in order to buy a ‘23, but you’ve already had this answered in a bunch of different threads. If the head unit is a consideration, you’d be nuts to even consider getting a car with an old head unit. You’ve already have all the info you need.

As the owner of a 24 with a new head unit, I didn’t know there were that many differences in processing power until people started answering to you. No way in hell I’d go with an old head unit. Not because of the new features, which seem to be nothing special (I’ve used them). The whole slow system and constant rebooting should be enough of a warning for you to desist. Proceed at your own peril!

[darylp310]

Zero problems with the old head unit in my 2023 iX. I've never had it crash in 7 months of ownership. It does stutter from time to time like an old iPhone, but for something I touch 1-2 times per drive it doesn't matter too much.

In your case, if you are choosing between a 2024 M60 and an 2023 M60 that is $10K cheaper, that's a lot of money to pay for the "latest iPhone!"

[Paladin1]

Nothing - unexpected - in my 2022 iX50 head unit either. Or my 2023 M60 head unit. Both with iD8. Other than - software faults and OTA update glitches. And sometimes unexplained somethings that resolved themselves, for unknown reasons. Which I had with previous 3 Series, 5 Series, and X5s, and iD6, and iD7. And you - or anyone - will have with iD8.5. And iD9. And iD10. It's software. And hardware that runs software. It will fail, and it will not be flawless. The cars - both of them - currently drive perfectly, the OS answers promptly and as expected, is a very useful driving adjunct and is to me orders of magnitude ahead of the previous generation. Next up - water is wet.

[f82fanatic]

Originally Posted by Paladin1

Nothing - unexpected - in my 2022 iX50 head unit either. Or my 2023 M60 head unit. Both with iD8. Other than - software faults and OTA update glitches. And sometimes unexplained somethings that resolved themselves, for unknown reasons. Which I had with previous 3 Series, 5 Series, and X5s, and iD6, and iD7. And you - or anyone - will have with iD8.5. And iD9. And iD10. It's software. And hardware that runs software. It will fail, and it will not be flawless. The cars - both of them - currently drive perfectly, the OS answers promptly and as expected, is a very useful driving adjunct and is to me orders of magnitude ahead of the previous generation. Next up - water is wet.

I guess the question that could help the OP, would you take the risk and buy a 23 with and old head unit or buy a 24 if you were in his shoes today? How big would the discount need to be for an equivalent car for you to go 23?

[mindmachine]

All these ridiculous questions over and over again. It's your wallet, do you want to by the latest most up to date unit that is available or do you want to save money on the last iteration. Its a no brainier if money/cost isn't a problem! If you buy the old technology then be careful how much you pay for the savings. The latest head unit available will save you money on resale value as long as a newer head unit is still unavailable. This Technology is changing fast and trade in value is changing fast with it.

[330 CSi]

As you can see there are a variety of opinions. I am trying to see how serious & prevalent the issues are.

This will be a lease. I expect that if I love the car, I’d keep it in 3 years and not worry about resale or if the residual is. Too high go to a new one. If I don’t love it, low resale is not my problem.

My concern is daily driving experience. What are the headaches? Are they annoying or do the cause the car not to function properly at all? If the unit is slow, how slow? Are the new units free of all flaws?

I know it really bothers some users. It doesn’t bother others. I am trying to get a sense of what percentage of people are ok with things compared tot hose who are annoyed as well as how serious the problems are.

So I am asking people to just weight in.

If there were a poll feature I would use that too.

[darylp310]

Another thing to keep in mind is with the new head unit you'll get Highway Assistant and some other technology updates only available for model year 2024 (Youtube capability, plug and charge, GPS-based door lock/unlock, etc.).

330 CSi since you are in Los Angeles area, I'd recommend you rent one of each model from Turo and try them out for one day each. It's hard to explain in a forum how these behave. You need to live with each car for 24 hours to see how it feels. (iX60's are rare on Turo, but you can drive 2023 vs 2024 iX50's and compare the head units and tech features.) I'd say it's worth a couple hundred dollars to test out the cars to ensure you make the best decision.

Edit: Since we're in the same town, I'm strangely invested in you making the right decision, I'm happy to give you a tour of my 2023 iX50 and you can check out the head unit yourself. DM me if interested!!

[cyber2142]

Originally Posted by 330 CSi

As you can see there are a variety of opinions. I am trying to see how serious & prevalent the issues are.

This will be a lease. I expect that if I love the car, I’d keep it in 3 years and not worry about resale or if the residual is. Too high go to a new one. If I don’t love it, low resale is not my problem.

My concern is daily driving experience. What are the headaches? Are they annoying or do the cause the car not to function properly at all? If the unit is slow, how slow? Are the new units free of all flaws?

I know it really bothers some users. It doesn’t bother others. I am trying to get a sense of what percentage of people are ok with things compared tot hose who are annoyed as well as how serious the problems are.

So I am asking people to just weight in.

If there were a poll feature I would use that too.

There’s a poll feature when creating a thread. Look towards the bottom of the page.

[Paladin1]

Originally Posted by f82fanatic

I guess the question that could help the OP, would you take the risk and buy a 23 with and old head unit or buy a 24 if you were in his shoes today? How big would the discount need to be for an equivalent car for you to go 23?

For the OP, the "old" head unit is still cutting edge technology. It did not go obsolete with the turning of the season. It's not a '57 Chevy. And it's not a risk - HU4 has been out for several years, enough to go through at least a half-dozen updates to software, and has a stable operating system behind it. It works just fine, in both my cars and by report and assumption in the almost half-million-ish EVs sold with iDrive 8 so far. A fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent, BTW, which have been discussed, condemned or praised on this forum and any others, collectively.

The primary differences in the head units are the (slightly) faster operating speed of HU5, and its ability to run BMW's Highway Assistant feature (hands-free driving on selected highways up to 85 mph), and the "new" v8.5 OS. That's essentially it, and if that's your primary "got to have," the choice is made. A car with the "new" head unit may have a higher resale value over time, but it's a newer MY, so it would anyway - and the general depreciation of EVs is a lot higher than a traditional ICE car. But if you're buying a car to make money on selling it, you need to take a course in Investing 101.

The secondary question is whether a particular car, regardless of MY, has or doesn't have physical or mechanical features that you must have. I don't want a car without air suspension or IAS. That's my preference. Regardless of what head unit or OS it has. Choice made. I want a premium sound system. If it doesn't have it, I don't want it. Choice made. You may have different requirements. I also don't need the ability to drive hands-free over 80 mph. Or 70 mph. Or 50 mph. Or 40 mph. Because I'm never going to do it, regardless of the OS. Choice made.

Whether you want to lease, or buy, or what you want on a discount or trade, is entirely your choice and decision, apart from any hard or soft car features. Only you can decide "value."

What I want, or wanted, was to get the car(s) with the features I wanted, for the best price at the time I bought it. Which I did. You should do the same.

[deutsch100]

We are on iX #4, and the "old" pre 2024 head unit has given us zero real problems and I think we have maybe had to re-boot iDrive two times or so.

Spouse and I do not find anything slow, laggy or really buggy. In fact, it is the fastest iDrive version we have ever had.

I am VERY picky, and besides from the original iDrive in the nightmare early 2000s 7 Series, I have never found iDrive to be slow or lag.

Porsche Taycan and Land Rover Defender....molasses!!!!

[marsb007]

I have both a 23 and 24. No issues with the 23. Runs as smooth as the 24 as far as I can tell. So far I haven’t needed to reset/reboot either…

[sor]

Old head unit, I don’t think it’s that big of a deal, it works fine. I think the issues most people report have nothing to do with the hardware, I’ve had bugs in iDrive, need to reboot occasionally, no matter which BMW I had. I’ve owned it 11 months and had to hard reset twice, but really just because CarPlay was acting up, the iDrive itself was fine.

Comes down to whether you’re getting some advantage for taking the older model and how much you care about just knowing you have the absolute latest thing.

[bmwix1]

MGU21 is on x86 architecture with 14nm Intel Atom SoC
MGU22 is on arm architecture with 7nm Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 SoC

UI wise, iDrive 8.5 looks a bit more sleek, but really not much improvement.
ID 8 and 8.5 are on separated code path because of the architecture changes, but they are both dead end.

iDrive 9 is an experimental version of iDrive 8.5 with android core running on MGU22. If it is stable enough on iX1/2, upper MGU22 models might get an OTA upgrade. Maybe the egghead from BMW will have iDrive 9.5 upgrade with more UI tweaks. Like ID 8/8.5, 9.x is dead-end as well.

iDrive 10 is the real deal but it won't land on any of the existing or future models except the ones to be released in 2025 and beyond.

Degree of difficulty to upgrade: Battery > Chasis > Drive Unit > Suspension > Interior Seating/Comfort > MGU. IMHO, you should look for other things first before MGU.

Mercedes owners probably will be disappointed soon since MBUX is switching from Intel (x86) to nVidia (arm) in 2025.

[f82fanatic]

330 CSi I'll have to eat my words based on the comments from people here. It looks like it the head unit it was not as problematic as some people claimed.

For what it's worth, I don't think the hands-free driving at 80 mph, AR map guidance and the parking gimmick with the app are worth it.

If you are confident in the fact that the old head unit will not be slow (this is one of my pet peeves), then you can go with the 23.

I have iDrive 8 on the new head unit and it's great. Not sure how much improvement iDrive 8.5 can bring, but probably not much...

[330 CSi]

Originally Posted by f82fanatic

I guess the question that could help the OP, would you take the risk and buy a 23 with and old head unit or buy a 24 if you were in his shoes today? How big would the discount need to be for an equivalent car for you to go 23?

I would love to hear answers to this one:

How much of a differential would it take for you to take a 23 v a 24?

[330 CSi]

Originally Posted by f82fanatic

330 CSi
If you are confident in the fact that the old head unit will not be slow (this is one of my pet peeves), then you can go with the 23.

I guess that is a big question. How pokey is the old HU?

[f82fanatic]

Originally Posted by 330 CSi

I would love to hear answers to this one:

How much of a differential would it take for you to take a 23 v a 24?

What would I look for? Maybe $100 a month on my lease. which is roughly an additional $3k of discount on top of what I think it is possible to achieve.

An aggressive but replicable deal would be: 10% off pre-incentive + 9.9k BMW rebate + MF of .00111

If it were a 2023, I'd need to get 13% off pre-incentive + 9.9k BMW rebate + MF of .00111


If you value some features from the 2023 like rear-steering or the air suspension, maybe that additional is not that high. I don't particularly care for it.

Note that I would not buy this car, just lease. If you buy/finance you miss out on some of the BMW rebate (EV rebate of $7.5k) and I truly believe that in three years this car will be very outdated in terms of battery tech and system. I am guessing its market price will be lower than the residual.

You might end up in a situation in which you'll need to come up with $53k for a car that is worth, let's say, $47k.

But hey, I have no crystal ball. I might be completely off...

[f82fanatic]

Originally Posted by 330 CSi

I guess that is a big question. How pokey is the old HU?

Probably personal, but from the responses here, it seems like it is not a big deal. You could get a faulty unit with many issues like VirtualGuitars , but I guess that could happen to you on the new head unit as well.

Check out some reviews on youtube to see if you spot any sluggishness when they are poking around the system. Or see how the reviewers respond. Most reviewers have b*tched about the crystals (which I think are fine) ad nauseam. If the UI did not work well, they probably would have mentioned it...

Good luck!

[VirtualGuitars]

Originally Posted by f82fanatic

Probably personal, but from the responses here, it seems like it is not a big deal. You could get a faulty unit with many issues like VirtualGuitars , but I guess that could happen to you on the new head unit as well.

Check out some reviews on youtube to see if you spot any sluggishness when they are poking around the system. Or see how the reviewers respond. Most reviewers have b*tched about the crystals (which I think are fine) ad nauseam. If the UI did not work well, they probably would have mentioned it...

Good luck!

For the record, there are many people on this forum that have had issues with the original head unit being underpowered. Use it for all of its capabilities and it will push it to the breaking point. If you don’t use CarPlay, android Auto, or eSIM, you probably won’t be bothered as much. It’s just simply underpowered to run everything at once which is why BMW replaced the head unit with a second processor in it.

The OP is now armed with a plethora of information, so I’m sure he will make an informed decision based on his needs.

[330 CSi]

Originally Posted by VirtualGuitars

For the record, there are many people on this forum that have had issues with the original head unit being underpowered. Use it for all of its capabilities and it will push it to the breaking point. If you don’t use CarPlay, android Auto, or eSIM, you probably won’t be bothered as much. It’s just simply underpowered to run everything at once which is why BMW replaced the head unit with a second processor in it.

The OP is now armed with a plethora of information, so I’m sure he will make an informed decision based on his needs.

I rely on CarPlay. Do the folks who haven't had problems use it too?
Nothing is more annoying that a gimpy HU. I had issues with one recently, which seemed like a bad unit among a weak group. Is that what you have or is it typical of the 2023s?

[VirtualGuitars]

Originally Posted by 330 CSi

I rely on CarPlay. Do the folks who haven't had problems use it too?
Nothing is more annoying that a gimpy HU. I had issues with one recently, which seemed like a bad unit among a weak group. Is that what you have or is it typical of the 2023s?

They have resolved most of the CarPlay issues at this point, but if you plan on using eSIM too, which uses the same internal wireless network, it can affect both services. I use eSIM every single day, so I have issues quite often.