Author: RuiFeng Xiong
“Really worth 5 million?”
In the past few days, the “best family flagship SUV under 5 million” has been trending in my circle of friends.
On June 21st, Ideal, a professional dad expert, officially launched the new large SUV L9, with a price of 459,800 yuan, which surprisingly comes with more than 100 intelligent configurations, especially the 3 3K OLED screens, dual Snapdragon 8155 chips, and new generation HUD system. As a “car infotainment enthusiast”, I couldn’t resist the temptation.
After the press conference, I rushed to Ideal’s offline experiential store to experience this “luxury package” for the first time, to see how this 5 million dollar car infotainment system performs!
It is worth mentioning that the tested car is a test car, so all test scores cannot represent the final mass-produced version.
Foreword
Nowadays, intelligent cockpits have developed to the point where they no longer simply meet functional requirements. Traditional passive interaction (initiated by humans) is moving towards active interaction (machines can initiate interactions based on user needs), and more natural and emotional functions are quietly changing our driving habits.
For this reason, we have launched the “Smart + ICBT-100 Intelligent Cockpit Evaluation Standard”, focusing on three major categories of intelligent hardware, interactive ability, and application ecology. At the same time, in the evaluation, each major category is divided into two dimensions: data and experience, with more than 30 sub-items evaluated, to see how the intelligent car infotainment systems we use daily perform.
Hardware Section
Regarding the car infotainment system setup, the Ideal L9 did not continue the T-shaped four-screen symmetrical layout of the Ideal ONE, but adopted a bold and compelling five-screen linkage setup.
The central control screen, co-pilot entertainment screen and rear cabin entertainment screen of Ideall L9 all adopt three 15.7-inch OLED screens of car-level standard, with unparalleled 3K high-definition resolution and ultimate color reproduction in-car screen, providing passengers with ultimate smooth and HD gaming experience, surpassing audio-visual entertainment experience.
Specifically, Ideall L9’s 15.7-inch central display screen adopts a Samsung AM-OLED screen with a resolution of 3456×2160 (3K), 60hz refresh rate, and PPI of 260. The actual display benefits from the super-high resolution of 3K, and the edge anti-aliasing is very excellent.
In addition, Ideall L9’s official claim for color reproduction of the screen is up to 16 million colors, and in actual measured tests, NTCS color gamut is 94.3% (normal laptop screen color gamut is 72%), with the same excellent performance as the previously tested Ideall One. However, the measured peak brightness is only 389nit, but the lowest brightness is only 0 nit (thanks to OLED), which brings excellent contrast.
At the same time, thanks to the one-piece seamless glass cover panel, the screen’s anti-glare and viewing angle have reached the mainstream level. At the same time, the screen surface also uses carbon fluoride coating to prevent fingerprints. Although it cannot completely isolate fingerprints, it is definitely above average in the current tested models.
For the cabin’s basic hardware, Ideall L9 not only adopts the Qualcomm third-generation Snapdragon 8155 chip scheme (7nm process), but also innovatively equips two 8155 chips, with a single chip calculation power more than 3 times higher than the previous 820A scheme. In addition to the high-performance chips, the memory space of Ideall L9 has reached 24G (note that mainstream smartphones currently only have 8G), and the storage space has also reached 256G.Translate the Chinese text in Markdown below into English Markdown text in a professional way, retaining the HTML tags inside the Markdown, and output only the result.
In addition, the new car also uses dual 5G modules for the first time (just like the familiar dual-card dual-standby feature), supporting smart switching between mobile and China Unicom, so as to ensure that the vehicle has a smoother network experience in real time. It is understood that the dual-network solution of the Ideal L9 is provided by Magna, based on GPS positioning and network connection maps to calculate network strength coverage and other situations in the cloud.
Although the Ideal L9 does not support conventional CarPlay/Hicar and other smart connections, it can achieve direct wired projection with one Type-C interface on the central control screen, front passenger entertainment screen, and rear cabin entertainment screen through Switch, and it can provide 60W charging power.
In addition to Switch, any mobile phone, Pad, or laptop part that uses a Type-C interface can also achieve high-definition projection + charging.
Interaction Section
In the IT industry, there is a saying: “No matter how good the hardware is, it is useless without system optimization”, which reflects the importance of the system. In the smart cabin test, interaction capability accounts for a large part, and in this column, we divide it into three dimensions: system, voice, and other.
The Ideal L9’s UI design style is completely different from its predecessor ONE. The entire interface adopts the most mainstream card-style layout in the current cabin, and is divided into three areas: left/bottom dock bar, top information display bar, and central card function area.
Among them, the card function area defaults to multimedia + vehicle information + map + weather as the core, and supports adjusting the order of different function cards according to personal needs.
The vertically arranged Dock bar displays frequently used functions for quick switching, while the horizontally arranged bar displays vehicle-related settings such as air conditioning and driving modes. The top information display bar shows basic information such as time and network.
In terms of the menu interface, the ideal L9 does not adopt the horizontal tiling mode of ONE, but has a dedicated hovering secondary menu.
From a usability perspective, the convenient card + fixed option greatly reduces the difficulty of getting started with Ideal L9, and the top two menu levels are very easy to operate, making the entire menu page hierarchy clear.
In terms of system smoothness, the logical test time of Ideal L9 is 1 minute 37 seconds 16, which is a significant improvement over the previous Ideal ONE’s 3 minutes.
For the voice system, Ideal L9 is equipped with a self-developed voice interaction system, which supports default wake-up words (“Ideal mate”) or steering wheel buttons for wake-up.
At the same time, Ideal L9 also pioneered the use of six array microphones, allowing for seat-level voice recognition capabilities for the front, second, and third rows, enabling each passenger to easily control vehicle functions (air conditioning, seats, power windows) point-to-point.
In actual multimedia voice testing, Ideal L9 has no problem with simple tasks such as searching for songs, skipping tracks, and pausing; for videos, it can even search for third-party video content via voice and perfectly realize functions such as video fast forward and next episode.
In terms of voice-controlled navigation, perhaps due to the nature of the test vehicle, although Ideal L9 can complete simple single-destination navigation, zoom in/out, and navigation volume adjustment, it seems unable to recognize the understanding of inserting waypoints, indicating the need for further version updates.# Ideal One L9 – Intelligent Voice Assistant
On the comfortable configuration, Ideal One L9 can easily achieve basic functions such as turning on the air conditioning, adjusting the temperature and wind speed, and opening the window. Also, it can recognize semantic understanding, for example, “I am cold/hot”.
In addition to this, the advanced features of the Ideal One L9 currently include support for three items: continuous conversation, semantic interruption, and visible and can say. Continuous conversation can be recognized within 20 seconds without a wake-up word, while semantic interruption allows new instructions to be issued at any time during lengthy broadcasts or without waiting for the current command to finish. Voice will automatically play new commands after they have been issued.
The visible and can say feature on Ideal One L9 can cover almost all vehicle and system settings, and it also performs well on third-party APPs.
However, the downside is that the voice assistant of Ideal One L9 does not support multiple voice tasks at the same time and can only complete one by one. This may be due to the trial installation version.
Regarding the remote function, Ideal One L9 can realize remote unlocking, turning on the air conditioning, intelligent search for a parking space and even call the car in a straight line through the official APP with the function of connecting the vehicle and smartphone.
Moreover, the rear seats of Ideal One L9 are equipped with gesture control, recognizing different gestures through 3D ToF perception components (supplied by Horizon Robotics) and can realize almost all control operations, such as sliding, clicking, playing/pausing and volume control. 3D ToF can also be combined with voice interaction to achieve a more natural interaction form. For example, sitting in the rear seat and pointing to the left window and saying “Open this”, as long as the voice and 3D ToF respond at the same time, the left window will lower. After actual experience, it can be said that this may currently be the strongest gesture control. However, due to limited development time, there is still a certain probability of misidentification of the current version of gesture recognition, which means that there is still significant room for improvement in interaction efficiency.
The Ideal L9 camera system has reached new heights with six 8-megapixel perception cameras, two 2-megapixel perception cameras, four 2-megapixel surround-view cameras, 12 ultrasonic radars, 1 128-line LiDAR, and supports various functions such as 360° panoramic imaging and 3D view, etc. It has been verified to control distortion well, ensuring accurate identification of road information and obstacles in front of the vehicle.
Application Ecosystem
However, looking beyond the surface, we will find that to achieve a truly intelligent cockpit, it is not only relying on the in-car system itself but also adding a richer application ecosystem. After all, without sufficient application ecosystems, the system itself does not have much value, which is similar to the current IT industry.
The Ideal L9 maintains a high degree of openness. In addition to the built-in apps, the app market provides multimedia software such as Bilibili, QQ Music, iQiyi, Tencent Video, Ximalaya, and Migu Video.
At the same time, both QQ Music and NetEase Cloud Music have adapted their UI to the L9’s in-car system. Therefore, there will be no sense of fracture when using it.
However, the entertainment functions of Ideal L9 are ordinary with only apps such as Quanmin K Song, Leishi KTV, Kaishu Tells Stories in the app store, and the current version does not support game category apps.
It is worth mentioning that the Ideal L9 has boldly eliminated the dashboard and replaced it with a 13.35-inch HUD (supplier: FUTURUS Future Black Technology) that displays content on the projected area. The content on the HUD is very rich. In addition to basic information such as gear position, speed, navigation, etc., it can also display visualized information about assisted driving. Moreover, its clarity is also exceptional in strong light.
Conclusion
Don’t rush to criticize the “best under 5 million” announced at the press conference.
Through my brief experience with the ideal L9 test vehicle, I can clearly feel that the intelligent cockpit of the ideal L9 is indeed the best in its class, especially the hardware performance, which comprehensively refreshes the positioning and material of current mass-produced models. The stunning effect brought by the combination of the 3K OLED display and the dual Snapdragon 8155 is unforgettable. The approach of replacing the traditional instrument with a HUD is even more radical, and the actual effect also lives up to its promotion.
Therefore, the ideal L9 test vehicle ultimately achieved a total score of 80.5 in the test, surpassing the long-standing champion XPeng P7 and becoming a top-ranked player on the leaderboard.
It is worth mentioning that the current test score is for the test vehicle. It is believed that with the continuous upgrade of OTA in the later stage, the score will continue to improve.
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This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.