The verdict: There’s a powerhouse luxury sedan under there somewhere, but the latest S-Class redesign has cloaked it below enough layers of technology and irritating interfaces to confound even the young.
Versus the competition: The S580 nails some of the basics, but it struggles more than competitors to make its luxury-compulsory features accessible to users, and its backseat and trunk space feel curiously more in line with its tight turning circle than its considerable external size.
The key fob feels heavy and needlessly large. As you approach the stately Mercedes-Benz S580 sedan, the door handles — which spend most of their time retreated, flush with the door skins for the sake of aerodynamics — motor outward and present themselves. If it’s dark outside, Mercedes’ familiar three-pointed star projects crisply on the ground beside it. You tug the door open and take a seat, enveloped in the embrace and aroma of rich, quilted leather. With anticipation, you step on the brake pedal, press the Start/Stop button and say … WTF?!
Mark down 2021 as the year Mercedes-Benz went too far. I understand the compulsion to innovate in an attempt to top oneself and make a flagship sedan — arguably a flagship model — a technological groundbreaker. In the past, we’ve praised Mercedes for doing so skillfully, even naming a previous generation of the S-Class our Luxury Car of the Year — more than once. But this redesign is so complicated, so cloaked in touch-sensitive controls and interface complexity, even reviewers in their 30s, much less their 50s, consider it a technological misfire. How is an older driver, the sedan’s most likely buyer, going to deal with this?
Truly, we sympathize. What we see here is a furtherance of the core intentions that kept previous S-Class generations in the lead. But this redesigned S-Class reminds me of countless other products — from apps to movie sequels — whose producers got so caught up trying to outdo their earlier successes that they lost touch with the end user: the customer. If the hero fought off 10 attackers with nothing but a spork in the first movie sequel, in the third installment, she’ll have to fend off 100 attackers with a bow and arrow while riding a motorcycle. And because the studio has already invested in the latest CGI technology, the film must employ it, meaning the attackers will have to be space aliens. Also, let’s make the motorcycle electric because everyone’s into electric right now. What’s overlooked in all of this, of course, is what alien invaders and electric two-wheelers have to do with the plot — or how the viewer will receive it.
If you think it sounds overwhelming to fight 100 aliens with a bow and arrow while riding a motorcycle, you’re on your way to understanding what it’s like to operate a new S-Class. I’ll dig into that momentarily, but first I’ll give this devil its due, because beneath the clutter the S-Class is a great car, and some of its innovations are indeed worthwhile.
What Mercedes Got Right
Without question, the S580 we tested was a serenely quiet and comfortable car with mostly excellent ride quality. That said, a couple of our editors said harsh impacts from larger bumps found their way into the cabin’s otherwise floaty demeanor (and I use “floaty” as a positive in this era when practically every new vehicle rides firmly). It’s possible this characteristic was tied to our car’s 20-inch Hankook all-season tires, but it’s unlikely the 19-inch wheels would make a huge difference. Twenty-one-inch wheels are also available.
Introduced more than 20 years ago, Mercedes’ Active Body Control was one of the first active suspension systems to go beyond merely varying shock absorber firmness (though the S-Class does that, too). The company’s experience with the system shows in the S580’s ability to prevent its weight from shifting, disrupting handling. As an added bonus, the new E-Active Body Control system uses radar to sense an impending side collision and can raise the body up to 3 inches in a fraction of a second to improve crash protection.
The new generation improves handling even further with active rear steering, which can turn the rear wheels up to a remarkable 10 degrees in the opposite direction from the front wheels when traveling below 37 mph, for tighter cornering. It also makes for parking-lot maneuverability that’s remarkable given the sedan’s size, reducing the turning circle by 7 feet, Mercedes says. At higher speeds, all four wheels turn in the same direction for more stable lane changing. This technology isn’t new, but it’s finally finding a home here and in a couple of other current vehicles.
Turbocharged and Electrically Boosted
We can’t argue with the S580’s powertrain: a dual-turbocharged 4.0-liter V-8 engine teamed with a nine-speed automatic transmission and 4Matic all-wheel drive. It generates 496 horsepower and 516 pounds-feet of torque. The car exhibits minimal accelerator lag, perhaps thanks to a 48-volt mild-hybrid system with an integrated starter-generator, which Mercedes says adds EQ Boost — 21 hp and 184 pounds-feet of torque. The S580 does 0-60 mph in just 4.4 seconds, Mercedes says. Even from the isolation of a hushed cabin, it’s hard to doubt this estimate. We didn’t drive the S500, but I don’t think we’d find any arguments with its 3.0-liter inline-six-cylinder engine, 429 hp and 384 pounds-feet of torque, either. All other aspects of the powertrain, including the hybridization and EQ Boost, are the same. Mercedes estimates its 0-60 mph time at 4.8 seconds.
Mercedes was also early with augmented reality, and it’s very effective here in the S-Class, where blue arrows appear on the windshield’s head-up display, in the driver’s field of view, to indicate when and where to turn when navigation routing is active. It can also appear over a real-time video image on the central touchscreen. It’s so compelling, I didn’t rely on Android Auto, my go-to navigation option, which is standard along with Apple CarPlay, but neither supports AR functionality. The HUD itself is quite large, and one can imagine future Benzes will put these prompts anywhere on the windshield, but this system for now is among the best — if you can bear the control interface that initiates it.
Audio You Feel, or Don’t
The Burmester premium audio system, which sounds very good indeed, has a neat trick called 4D Sound that incorporates a transducer (the part of a speaker that makes it move) into each seat, vibrating them just like a good deep-bass subwoofer would vibrate the whole car. The result is quite effective, and adjustable. I found it pretty strong at its lowest levels, but the higher levels are probably useful compensating for bulky winter outerwear. What’s the point of this feature? It gives a visceral kick one “listener” might want without afflicting other occupants. I believe a good full-range audio system is felt as well as heard — I even once had a transducer attached to my couch for home theater use — so I’m on board with this could-be gimmick.
We had some issues with features enabled by the driver-facing camera. The camera has several purposes, including drowsiness detection and even facial recognition, but one novel use is that the camera can detect when you’re looking left or right, so you don’t have to press a Left or Right button before adjusting either side mirror; the car knows which one you’re looking at. Pressing a button isn’t a lot of work, and I can’t tell you why I think facial recognition in a car is pointless and this add-on feature is clever, but I do.
The car’s many camera views are both dazzling and useful. A view of a vehicle from the perspective of an observer standing several feet away (or slowly circling it, as we’ve seen for a few years now from Lexus and other brands) was once a mind-melting bit of digital trickery, and now it’s even higher-quality — and more legitimately valuable when it’s trying to protect the S-Class from obstacles.
However, the graphics superimposed on the image to indicate both the proximity of barriers and the line the wheels will follow when turned (all four, remember) occasionally hindered my attempts to protect vulnerable rims from curbs. I’m confident there’s a way to turn these lines off, but in this car, doing even something you know is possible can be so frustrating, you may not even try it. (We’ll get to the problems in a moment.) One puzzling camera perspective is the forward-facing Traffic Light View, which shows the intersection well when waiting at a red light — but the traffic lights themselves are so tiny you can barely see when they turn green … unless you look out the window.
Where Mercedes Went Wrong
There’s a difference between complex and complicated: A luxury vehicle must be complex in order to compete, but it needn’t be complicated. To be clear — and fair — we realize that a steep learning curve is not the same thing as frustrating day-to-day usability. Intuitive operation is optimal but not strictly necessary. Once you learn the ropes, even a complex system can be painless to operate, and we’re always willing to don the climbing gear and scale a steep learning curve before drawing conclusions. Unfortunately, after summiting Mount S-Class Learning Curve, we found aggravating usability at the top.
The bottom of the car’s 12.8-inch central touchscreen is occupied by a relatively stable set of ventilation controls, but above them is a smattering of icons with no hierarchy or logic. Once you tap and delve deeper, some of the menus start making more sense and do a decent job of reflecting the current settings without making you tap even further. Finding your way back to these feature settings the next time you need them, however, always seems a challenge. The MBUX system, as it’s called, also includes voice control, but I’ve never let that serve as an excuse for poor execution of a car’s primary usability doorway — and I didn’t find the “Hey, Mercedes” experience to be any more intuitive or efficient overall here than it is in other vehicles.
Touchscreen menu design is always difficult; button design needn’t be, and this is where the S-Class disappoints the most. Off-screen, it relies too much on touch-sensitive panels in lieu of conventional mechanical buttons, which both personal experience and studies show owners don’t care for. It’s a technology that seldom works as well as the tried-and-true button, and it’s particularly susceptible to changes in humidity and glove use. In the S-Class, there are touch-sensitive components below the touchscreen, on the armrest and door-panel controls, and even in the form of a gutter in the overhead console through which you’re meant to run your finger to open the moonroof. Perhaps most frustrating are the touch-sensitive segments on the steering-wheel spokes, which provide directional and press-to-enter control over both the 12.3-inch instrument panel display and the central touchscreen — whether you intend them to or not.
Believe me when I tell you a simpler car that’s irritating to control, like the Volkswagen ID.4, is bad enough. A car that can do as much as this one — some of which it will do without your asking and you’ll want to stop — and is also irritating to control is exponentially worse.
Yet another casualty of the touch-sensitive controls (no, I’m not finished yet) is that they wipe out one of the ways brands like Mercedes used to impart luxury: through the look and feel of high-quality knobs and buttons. Now, the exclusive knurled-metal finish and fine snick-snick-snick of a precision dial or thumbwheel is replaced by the same smudge and fingerprint gallery you’ll find on a growing number of entry-level vehicles. Every increase in piano-black and touchscreen real estate — impressive though it be at a glance — comes at the expense of some other opportunity, be it a brand-exclusive material, a control or another touchpoint.
The Tyranny of the Six Dots
I didn’t include among the car’s pluses its large, color instrument panel display for two reasons: One, I saw its three-dimensional effect first in a $28,400 Kia K5 in 2020, and two, it similarly collapsed to two dimensions because my preferred position for the seat and tilt steering wheel blocked the driver-facing camera. Unfortunately, even though I didn’t care about the 3D, the car didn’t like not being able to see my eyes and kept posting warnings on the instrument panel telling me to adjust the seat or wheel until I could see six sequential dots on the display, which looked like landing lights.
Large Outside, Less So Inside
Comfortable though the S-Class is, complete with neck pillows that drew disproportionate praise, it’s not as roomy as some competitors. It now offers some of the same features I enthused about in a video on the 2017 BMW 7 Series — at the time our Luxury Car of the Year — such as an integrated, removable touchscreen tablet that serves as a remote control for the backseat, as well as a motorized ottoman for the curbside passenger back there. The difference is that I, at 6 feet tall, didn’t have room to stretch out on it like I did in the 7 Series and the current Lexus LS 500 sedan, which both have a similar feature. For what it’s worth, those models are about 2 inches shorter, bumper to bumper, than the S-Class. So did the extra space go to the trunk?
Unfortunately, no; the S580’s trunk isn’t very large, either. Based on manufacturer specifications, it has 12.9 cubic feet, which is roughly 4 to 5 cubic feet less than the other models mentioned with the roomier backseats. Because we’re dubious of manufacturer-supplied specifications, Cars.com performs its own cargo measurements. Though our trunk-measuring methodology always yields higher numbers, we also found the S580’s trunk to be small in context. We haven’t measured any of the S-Class’ direct competitors yet, but a 2021 BMW 540i mid-size sedan’s trunk had 17.9 cubic feet, better than the 17.4 cubic feet we measured in the full-size S580.
It’s possible the space is lost to the S-Class’ available and exclusive backseat frontal airbags, which deploy from the front seatbacks. Those also explain why the ottoman emerges from down low rather than dropping down as in the 7 Series.
The Luxury Factor
This is the point where we usually ask, and attempt to answer, if you should buy the subject of the review. If the S-Class weren’t a luxury car, I think it’s less likely shoppers would buy it, but luxury throws a giant variable into the mix. People assign value to some brands over others, and that varies from person to person. There are those who will always buy a Mercedes just because it’s a Mercedes, and even accept what they dislike about it — or repress it — because they believe the brand represents something.
Touchscreens are probably the best option for managing the amazing adjustability of modern vehicles (and we can hope automakers use their newly deployed over-the-air update functionality to improve how they operate). But we reject the notion that touch-sensitive buttons are a necessity, much less an inevitability. For what it’s worth, Mercedes officials have made it clear they won’t be backing down on their use of touch-sensitive controls. They believe it’s the future, or at least their brand’s future. I believe it’s an enormous mistake. The technology isn’t inherently young or futuristic as some will attempt to convince you; it’s just inferior.
As always, I recommend shoppers think for themselves. The 2022 S500 starts at $112,150 and the S580 at $118,750 (prices include a $1,050 destination charge). If you don’t like the redesigned S-Class’ interface, or anything else about the car, you probably ought to trust your gut. If you shell out this kind of money assuming you’ll get used to the S-Class’ tricky operation because the people at Mercedes-Benz must be smarter than you, well, they probably are.
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Keyword: 2021-22 Mercedes-Benz S-Class Review: A Maestro Shrouded by Tech