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.