How the hell did Mazda not add in the ability to just mute the ridiculous voice on the GPS? For me so far the GPS navigation has been pretty good, it's just the voice that is killing me.

I can't listen to music without having it feel like one speaker is broken while the voice is coming out of the other one. It seems like such an easy thing to implement too..I want to just watch the GPS and listen to music, not have my music cut out every 2 seconds.

Is there even a possibility that Mazda can somehow implement this feature in an update? Or am I screwed?

This is really my only legit gripe with the car.

 

Dude. Don't even get me started on the whole infotainment thing. This car's infotainment system is garbage. Navigation guidance voice out of ONE speaker? Who does this?! What crap. Like the muffled sound quality of the voice isn't sh*t enough to begin with? Take the sock outta yer mouth, lady. :/ The left-front speaker "ticks"/pops 90% of the time, just before the GPS voice guidance interrupts, too. The whole thing just feels VERY unpolished.

Tested with three different phones, it appears Bluetooth audio is full of millisecond drop-outs, skips, and pops, and generally sounds pretty "meh" -- there appears to be some distortion/static in the highs, which drives me NUTS. Bose piece of sh*t. Album art frequently fails to update when using Pandora (even though the album art is displayed in Pandora on my phone). If you change the audio source and back again or skip forward a song, it sometimes refreshes and displays the album art. These are just a few little things, though -- I could go on and on and on about all the stupid design and quality flaws with this system. At some point, I'll probably start to document all of them, but I don't have the time to these days.

In my opinion, the whole infotainment system was a marketing afterthought, and I totally got suckered.

As for the rest of the car: Having lived with it for 6 weeks, I've formed the opinion that the quality isn't there. The rear seat bottoms aren't secured properly, my rear window is fogged up some mornings before I even get into the car (though the hatch is shut and all of the other glass is clear). Also, the doors sound *very* cheap and hollow when closing them, and when I close the driver's door, there's a low-pitched buzz/vibration coming from...somewhere. The car has recently developed a slight knock in the front end, something that sounds like a bad strut, when going over speed bumps at 5 - 10 mph, and I want to intentionally wreck the car every time I say, "Call home" from the "Communication" screen and the infotainment system takes me back to the "home" screen. (AHHHHH!!!! !#@%$&^)

I've very, very unhappy with my 2014 Mazda3. I bought into the reviews, and while the car handles and rides beautifully, the rest is just...not "there" all ALL for me. At a minimum, had I tried the navigation and infotainment systems more thoroughly before buying it, I would have opted for something else. Totally my fault, and I'm kicking myself, because I've NEVER made such an impulsive purchase. :/

I'm trading this thing in ASAP.