Whether you want one or not, screens in new cars are inescapable in 2025. A massive touchscreen is the focal point of a car’s interior, housing critical controls like the audio system, HVAC, headlights, drive modes, and even glovebox releases. I love how "the audio system" is the first example of "critical controls" they could think of. And now there’s usually a second screen right in front of you in place of the gauge cluster I don't really mind using a bitmap display for gauges that were otherwise a bunch of expensive-to-assemble separate analog pieces. What I do mind is having the bitmap display, and then adding non-information-carrying visual junk to it just because you can, like the gen 4 blue dotty junk behind the speedometer numbers. The thermostat on my wall is one of the last ones, I think, Honeywell made with a monochrome bitmap touchscreen. It has all the advantages of a bitmap panel (they can show all their values and controls and menus on it without being limited to fixed symbols) and doesn't have any extra visual junk. The next ones they came out with in the same line look physically the same, but have a color panel. They display all the values and controls and menus the same way, but all over a blue-sky background with some clouds and stuff. Because somebody said "hey, we have a color panel now, so we can show some random jpeg there, so we must."
With our gen 3's pale-green, cathode-ray display, on sunny days with wet streets (say after a cloudburst), sun glaring in my eyes, I abandon attempts to discern what the speedo's reading, just try to match those around me.
It's a vacuum-fluorescent. If it were a CRT, the dash would be bulkier. If you had a newer, hipper phone-type screen, how easily you could read it under those conditions would probably be affected by whether they put the numbers on a clean nondistracting contrasting background, or on a bunch of visual junk they added because they could.
You've got a slightly defective display; see all the pixelation. All your whites should be white. Your right screen looks to be in better shape, though I do see some missing pixels as well - may just be the camera or camera angle on the right screen.
It's also surprising how little they understand and know; without pictures to guide them. It's so bad, when I ask them to describe the problem - they need to show me a cell phone video or picture and can't identify the major components of concern.
I don't have a gen 4. I appropriated that pic from another PriusChat thread about somebody's defective gen 4 display. It's good enough to show the blue dotty graphic-design junk. That's not the defect. (At least, it's a defect that happened earlier, in the design stage.) They even thought the MID part on the right needed some of it too.
I don't mind screens in cars, even touch screens. HOWEVER (comma!!!!) When the car is rendered non-drivable because of screen failure? That's a hard pass for me in the dwindling number of years that I still have to choose another vehicle. The audio system is usually where the warning chime comes from..... Not a 'control' per-se but somewhat important.
Yep; mostly overlooked by people swapping out their radios, but they'll cry about steering wheel controls to the radio???? Show you where they're priorities lie...... To the credit of some manufacturers, they've placed a dial-type, back-up mouse for an alternative screen control. Clunky, but at least the car isn't 'dead in the water".
