2009 Kia Borrego: Spring Break Part 2
The 2009 Kia Borrego definitely had a big leg up in the technology department over my aging 2004 Sedona. Our spring break tester came with a navigation system and both USB and auxiliary input jacks for MP3 players. Given that I’m a true iPod nut, this was great news.
We’ll start with iPod connectivity: On the center divider, there’s a covered area with the two connections. I hooked up my 160GB iPod Classic to it, but even after five minutes, nothing was working. We tried again with my son’s older, smaller 30GB iPod and had better results. After we connected it using the USB slot, we were able to play songs randomly easily enough. What was odd, though, was that the readout shows folders and file names, not artist and song names. There’s an “Info” touch-screen button if you want to see that information, but what user is more interested in folders and technical file names than they are the name of the song they’re listening to? After returning to Cars.com headquarters, the editors there mentioned that Hyundai and Kia have custom iPod cables that deliver true connectivity with proper titles, etc.
On the plus side, the USB jack charged my son’s iPod easily, though it wouldn’t play or charge my other son’s far newer 8GB iPod Nano, but that’s pretty common among cars with USB ports.
The navigation system worked OK, no better or worse than competitors’. One area for user concern, though: When you enter in a street number in an address, you’re offered the chance to identify the street’s direction — for example, N. Main Street. If you do that, though, you’re likely to find that the system can’t find your address. The way to make it work correctly is to enter the street number, type in Main Street in the next prompt, and then select N. Main Street from the list of streets. It always worked when I took that approach, and it never worked the other way around. I don’t know what the idea is behind that user experience, but I suspect they’ll fix it over time.
In Part 1, I talked a little about how some of the features in the Borrego seemed out-of-date, and my daughter discovered another: She needed a household outlet in the car to charge the battery for her camera. Unlike many other three-row SUVs, the Borrego has no such outlet, and that discovery left her in a bad mood for the rest of the day. Thanks a lot, Kia.
2009|Kia|Borrego
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It's too bad this Borrego doesn't come with a toilet for your convince...what's next, built in oven.