Rotary knobs or buttons - which do you prefer?

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Seriously, what car is that from (I'm assuming BMW)?

That is awful.
 
This is the ideal solution (Couldnt find a picture of the F10's part, though, which is even better). It isnt the rotary knob thats the issue, it's the combination of naff printed dials you use to select temperature and a rotary knob. A rotary knob used in conjunction with a display is far better, as in this example below:

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It would seem that in his old age wicksta is simply getting confused as to exactly what his friends opinion was. It's clear that BMW took a step backwards in the E60 with the exclusion of the clear and modern concept of having a screen on which to display things like dual zone climate settings - they've obviously seen the error of their ways, though, as such an implementation is back in newer cars such as the E90, F01, F07 and F10/11.
 
Seriously, what car is that from (I'm assuming BMW)?

That is awful.

It's from an E39, though he's taken care to find the most awful picture ever, I think that contains 10% plastic and 90% dashboard shine :p

This photo has less shine:

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This thread has come about from the fact I cited the stupid plastic rotary buttons with no display as being just one of the plethora of reasons why I just can't take the E60 seriously as a replacement car. I called the omission of such a display as a backwards step and I still think that. It should have had a display with a more modern font than that in the E39 (A car which, remember, came out in 1996), not printed text on a twiddly knob and nothing else.

Nobody but a voice inside wickstas had has claimed that the exact implementation used in the E39, utterly unchanged, looks more modern than that in an E60 as it quite obviously doesn't - more that the E60 should have had a different, better system. Which it didn't.

Something like... I dunno, the system in the E90. Or indeed any new BMW except the Z4..
 
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james.miller said:
rotary controls are a double edged sword on head units. my HU has two rotary knobs and a total of 4 buttons..well, not really 4 of you count that both knobs click and one can be pushed in 4 directions... it makes some things very easy and others frustratingly more difficult then they should be imo.

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That's one I have, I'd say same about that too, some things really easy others are a pain in the ...

The buttons it does have are multi functional, so depending on how long there pressed depends what they do, for some reason they buried the EQ deep in the setup menu too so no real chance of adjusting it while driving.
 
not all climate control systems are equal though. on the S4 it was fantastic. logically laid out, the only downside being 0.5* temperature increments. like youd ever be able to detect 0.5*?!!

on the golf the climate control setup is awful, you have to do a double take sometimes just to figure out where the button is you want to press. very annoying
 
As an E60 driver – I wholehearted agree with Fox. Especially as I don't have dual-zone climate. :(

The crappy dials without an LCD display are useless.
 
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