Comments by "Perhaps" (@NoEgg4u) on "Car Confections"
channel.
-
The Altima is a great car, but has one non-adjustable setting that is a major red flag (at least for me).
From a stopped position, it is a pig off of the line.
For normal, typical, day-to-day driving, it is not a problem. In fact, for many folks, it will help control the car; prevent wheel spin.
The problem is that when you do want to accelerate, quickly, from a stop, you cannot.
For example, if you are at a light, in the left lane, and you realize that you need to make a right at the next light, you can forget about getting ahead the car to your right when the light turns green.
Once rolling, the acceleration is very good. But Nissan has de-tuned the engine, perhaps for better gas mileage or bad drivers. If you do not mind having low power from a stop, then this is a very good car for the price.
3
-
3
-
@13:45
"Honestly, sound quality is not real good."
I agree. Honda put in charge of their stereo department someone that either has never heard a very good stereo or Honda just decided to cut corners with the stereo (or both).
I own the Sport model, and I own a 2003 Nissan Sentra.
The stock stereo in the 17 year old Sentra sounds better than the stereo in the new Accord.
Honda has the resources to do a better job. They could have, should have, but did not.
The problem with the stereo is that the Accord never lets you forget that you are listening to a mechanical device.
On a better stereo, the music is a wall of sound. On the Accord, you hear individual speakers. It is not terrible. But it is nothing close to special.
On a better stereo, you get a very good soundstage and very good imaging. You get depth of instruments and voices (if it is in the recording).
On a better stereo, the speakers disappear. Your ears cannot locate the position of the speakers.
The Accord's stereo falls short on all of the above. And it is a shame, that this otherwise amazing car, with all of its performance, looks, reliability, fuel efficiency, quality paint job, etc, is bundled with a so-so stereo.
To get the best sound quality out of the stereo, you should purchase .flac files (never .mp3 files), copy them to a flash drive, and plug the flash drive into the USB port.
Note that not all .flac files sound the same. The exact same song is often available on the original release, greatest hits, best of, anthology, compilations, and endless re-masters (re-masters usually sound worse, due to over-processing by knuckleheads at the recording company). Sites like us.7digital.com offer demos that are a good indication of how the purchased files will sound. If you choose carefully, using speakers that are decent, you can pick out the ones that sound best, and end up with a much better sounding music collection. This will help wherever you play music, including in the Accord.
Cheers!
3
-
@06:43
Steering wheels:
Honda offers a heated steering wheel. It just does not come equipped with one, in the base package.
@07:48
The host put: "Accord: 10 speaker Premium audio" along the bottom of the screen.
Note that there is nothing "Premium" about the Accord's stereo.
Honda can call the stereo the "Ultimate" or "Spectacular" or "Awesome", etc stereo. It is just a label.
The stereo is good, but nothing special.
@07:57
I have not heard the Sonata's "Bose Premium" stereo. But I would be embarrassed to ever brag about owning any Bose equipment. They are like the McDonalds of the audio world.
@08:16
"...the Sonata has the edge in sound quality"
It would have been helpful if the host offered some rational for his conclusion.
For all we know, it could be because he likes boomy bass, and maybe that is what the Bose Premium stereo is delivering?
Or, maybe the Sonata has boosted highs, and the host likes that.
Which car's stereo has better imaging, soundstaging, realism, etc, is what counts (at least to me).
On a very good stereo, the speakers "disappear". If you close your eyes, you cannot point to them (not that you get stupid and forget where they are -- but your ears cannot detect their location).
But we have no idea how the host concluded that the Sonata's stereo is better. There are so many subjective factors where people will disagree.
And he is playing youtube audio (hardly the place to find quality sounding source material to conduct a listening test).
Can the Sonata play files stored on a flash drive? The Accord can play .flac and .mp3 files (and maybe other formats) from a flash drive. That can be important to some folks.
15:22
"...we will have to apply value points, of a ½ point per thousand dollars of difference."
Folks, ignore what the host calls "value points".
You should never pay anything close to MSRP.
So it is not clear what each car will actually sell for. And that price will differ from buyer to buyer. Yes, the Sonata will be less overall. But the host is scoring based on MSRP, and that is not what you will be paying.
Your purchasing decision should be based on how the car drives, all of its features, reliability, gas mileage, maintenance costs, etc. You can decide whether or not you are prepared to purchase the car, knowing its price (pay near the minimum noted on kellybluebook.com -- and do not yield to anything that the sales personnel tell you, no matter how sincere they appear to be -- it is all an act to separate you from your $$). They pull "it's the law", when adding a separate "prep fee" to the price. So if your offer is $28,000, and the prep fee is $800, then your offer should be 27,200 and let them add their prep fee to that. Yes, it is the law that they must separate the prep fee. But the law does not require them to have that fee. If is pure profit.
If you put a high value on the Accord having much better acceleration, then that will factor in a higher value for you, and could justify the Accord's higher price. Or knowing that Honda makes very reliable cars, and have a higher resale value, and owners love them, etc. All of that could justify its higher price.
So you give value points based on your needs.
If you go by the host's system, then when you hit the lottery, you will never buy a Ferrari.
2
-
@11:57 (stereo)
"The overall sound quality is quite good"
True, if the only other stock car stereo you ever listened to was a 1976 Monte Carlo.
Honda's stereos are not good. Also, they are not bad. They are neither here nor there.
Honda's car stereos never let you forget that you are listening to a mechanical device. The stereos make themselves a part of the performance.
A quality sound system gets out of the way, and displays a wall of music (a soundstage).
A quality sound system makes the speakers disappear (when you close your eyes, you cannot identify the location of the speakers).
A quality sound system presents each singer, and each instrument, in their own space (when the recording was done right).
A quality sound system does not get fatiguing. You can listen to it for hours at a time, and enjoy it the entire time.
Honda's stereo does none of the above (or, at best, has only a sense of the above).
By the way, Nissan's Altima and Toyota's Camry are of similar quality. It is like the three companies got together and agreed to skimp on the stereos. Either that, or the people heading up their stereo departments never heard a quality stereo.
Note that I am not expecting the sky and the moon from a stock stereo. But these companies once did provide quality stock stereos that did everything right, and had no glaring issues.
Rating this car's stereo as "The overall sound quality is quite good" will encourage these car companies to continue down the "who cares" stereo sound quality road. Or perhaps the host of this video has never heard a quality stereo, and he really thinks that the Accord's stereo is quite good?
Again, it is not bad. But it is also not good. There is a lot of room for improvement (and not on the volume side, but on the realism of the music side).
Cheers!
2
-
1
-
@nomaderic Again you are obsessed with racing.
Nowhere did I ever state, suggest, or recommend racing.
Nowhere did I ever state, suggest, or recommend doing anything unsafe.
Nowhere did I ever state, suggest, or recommend racing ahead of someone, cutting them off, and pressing the brakes.
You made all of that up.
Why does your mind keep going down that path?
Getting ahead of someone to make a turn can be unsafe (they way you are stuck on envisioning it). And I suspect that you drive slow and people cut you off, which is why you see anyone getting ahead of you as always being unsafe.
People get ahead of me all the time.
Most do so safely. Some do not.
I get ahead of people all of the time, and never cut them off.
I get behind people all of the time, too.
This is what is referred to as normal, safe driving -- not racing.
The next light can be 1/2 mile away. There is nothing unsafe about getting ahead of the person next to you (a slow driver like you), to make an exit.
Lots of exists have run-offs (a new lane dedicated for the exit). That is the lane used to slow down for the exit. I suspect that you slow down before getting into the run-off lane and create traffic, and cause others to unexpectedly brake, and risking accidents. Such drivers care zero about the chaos they cause behind them, and mindlessly drive away from the traffic and unsafe conditions that they create.
You wrote:
"I see people do exactly what you described everyday"
You see imaginary conditions that I never described.
You see the worst in every condition.
You see every person that passes you as a maniac.
You see normal, safe driving as speed daemons, because they passed you.
I never proposed speeding.
I never proposed unsafe driving.
I never proposed cutting anyone off.
You fabricated all of that in your mind.
You took a simple aspect of my review, pertaining to the car's acceleration from a stop, and you went off the deep end.
Yes, people race and do unsafe things. But that has zero to do with anything that I wrote, and it has everything to do with your convoluted, paranoid driving state of mind.
1
-
@nomaderic You wrote:
"Im one of, if not the fastest guy on the road."
You wrote the above after giving a dissertation on unsafe driving.
Driving as "the fastest guy on the road" will raise your odds on having an accident.
If it is a serious accident, then your posting, here, will be uncovered by insurance companies, police, and attorneys for your mangled and deceased victims.
Deleting your comment is too late. Once posted, it is forever.
And to be sure that it remains here for all to see, I am copying your post and pasting it below.
I hope you never injure or kill anyone.
I hope it never happens to you.
Amazing how my simple, initial comment about the Altima's acceleration from a stop got twisted by you into an admission of your "Im one of, if not the fastest guy on the road."
1
-
1
-
@3:09
"...they both get up to speed reasonably well"
The Altima is a pig from a stop.
Once it gets going, it has good acceleration. But if you are, for example, waiting at a light in the left lane, and realize that you need to make a right turn at the next light, then you can forget about getting ahead of the car to your right.
@3:41
"...since it simulates gear changes"
If I get a CV transmission, the last thing I would want is simulated gear changes. It defeats the whole purpose of having a CVT.
The beauty of a CVT is that the car just keeps pulling. It feels like it is in its sweet spot, and never leaves its sweet spot. All of that is for naught with artificial and useless knocks from the transmission.
"It has a kick, to make it feel real"
No. That kick makes it feel phony, because that kick is phony.
What makes a proper CVT feel real is the smooth, unending pull of the car.
You do not hear Tesla owners complaining about no gear shifting. And Tesla does not risk mechanical failure by including phony kicks.
1
-
@8:23 "(stereo) sound quality is pretty good for the class"
No, it is not. Honda dropped the ball or chose to save $$ by including a BS stereo system.
I own a 2003 Nissan Sentra and a 2020 Accord Sport 2.0.
The stock stereo in the old Sentra is much better than what comes with any of the Accords.
This is subjective. If you go strictly by volume, then the Accord's stereo gets louder (not by much).
But you get louder junk. Like having a choice between a 50" super sharp TV and a 103" blurry TV. Give me the sharp one.
Consider having a choice between a normal sized portion of a meal prepared by a top chef, vs a huge meal prepared by McDonalds.
The McDonalds meal is larger (gets louder, so to speak). But give me the meal prepared by the top chef, and I will forego the extra sub-par servings from McDonalds.
The old Sentra's stereo is not quite "top chef" caliber. But it is closer to "top chef" and the Accord's stereo is closer to "McDonalds".
What makes the old Sentra's stereo so enjoyable, so engaging, so non-fatiguing, is that it gets out of the way of the music. It presents a wall of music, and separation of singers and separation of instruments. You forget that you are listening to a mechanical device, and, instead, you are treated to a musical presentation.
One way to identify a quality stereo system is to close your eyes and have your ears identify the location of the speakers.
In the old Sentra, you can't do that. The speakers disappear, because they throw a soundstage.
In the Accord, you never forget that you are listening to a car stereo. The speakers do not "disappear".
In the old Sentra, I have gone on long drives, and have played music for 2+ hours, and enjoyed every minute of it. I never get the urge to turn it off. Not so in the Accord.
In the Accord, after several minutes, the music becomes distracting and borderline annoying. I find myself constantly skipping to different songs (because too many songs just do not sound right).
By the way, when I was shopping for the 2020 Accord, I was considering the Nissan Altima (did not relize that Renault now makes them unreliably) and also considering the Toyota Camry.
Both the Altima and the Camry's stereos sound similar to the Accord's stereo. None of them are very good. They are so-so.
And you cannot upgrade the stereo via Honda. They offer no premium stereo (even if they call theirs premium, it is not -- it is just a less bad stereo with then labeling it as premium).
And you cannot upgrade the stereo after-market, without voiding the entire car's warranty.
The reason the warranty will be voided is because the stereo is wired in to the touch screen display, and the touch screen display is wired in to stuff all over the car -- stuff that is unrelated to the stereo. So Honda's position is that if you tinker with the touch screen, you essentially tinkered with the proper functioning of the vehicle, and kiss your warranty goodbye.
You can probably upgrade (after market) the Pioneer speakers that come with the Accord (they are not good speaker -- nothing Pioneer makes is very good), and maintain your warranty.
But you cannot upgrade the Panasonic head unit that is entangled into the touch screen display -- and Panasonic is not terribly good, either.
Cheers!
1