2010 Scion XB SUV Review

2010 Scion xB Review Scion xB is one of those, like the Honda element they either get it or you scrunch up your face every time you see one. But with the market, this car’s aimed at it better have a good tech message. Let’s go find out. The xB is not as a distinctive as it used to be. Back if you’ve said for the entire Scion brand frankly. But the xB is I stall it cheap and it’s got a pretty cavernous cargo bay to gets flat and real useable in a hurry but the cabin is where this car has to speak to its audience. Now Scion never a look like anything else when you’re in one and you don’t know you're in one it’s because you’re drunk. This is the sort of four round gauges, Mercury Comet Caliente retro look there. The real star of the show is this head unit which happens to be the top of the line, the highest upgrade you can get. It’s an alpine branded unit. Notice how it seats in there looking after market. It doesn’t even really match the interior but it’s a factory piece. Touch screen though it’s a small touch screen—what is that? Four inches or so that maybe the smallest left in the industry in terms of factory and stub. If it was small you can able to utilize these onscreen buttons but they’re just big enough and hittable enough but that’s okay and the touch response is quite good. Now where the real estate really kill you or not is in navigation. That was dedicated button right here. All right it’s tight, I tell you that but I get you some credit. I have seen much more expensive units and much more expensive cars. They didn’t look that well rendered but boy that’s not a lot of space to get your eyes wrap around the world outside. And while the touch response is pretty crisp the rendering and redrawing kind of isn’t. This system is not hard-drive based neither for the Nav nor for music storage, so nothing that fancy going on here. Again it’s a low cost option which we’ll talk about later. So I’m not knocking if we have too many points for what features it doesn’t have. Destination entry is really straightforward. This is a strip down simple interface. Predictive text as you can see it works pretty well, not a lot of options on this system. You're not going to find a lot of elaborate way point settings. You’re not going to find live traffic on here, again though cheap option. Your audio input sources are fairly good. Here on FM, you see I’ve got an HD button right there so you can turn HD radio on and off. As HD radio that in itself puts it ahead of many cars that cost a lot more. AM/FM satellite radio is going to be XM. And this button here for iPod USB talks to the aux jack down here. You can put the USB thumb drive in here or you can connect your iPod to it via the ubiquitous white cable and get logic control of your iPod right here on the screen. Our USB thumb drive is in there now and as you can see the response is a little slow and I change tracks. It reads the file name and some other mumbo jumbo and then it will resolve things like the text. Now you can get this head unit with or without navigation by the way and the audio specs are the same, 200 Watts of power, 6-speaker with your door speakers, no subs. Instead to make it very clear they have RCA outputs to go the subs through your amp. So this car comes from the factory even with the upgraded unit saying, “Okay, you're going to customize me further right because you bought a Scion, because that’s a kind of consumer you are.” Audio settings are pretty common on this thing a whole lot of bass, treble, fader, balance stuff. But then you get to this screen where they have the SS key Scion sound profiles or something. And you can bounce through some feel good named profiles that are already built for you, neutral, here and feel. The bottom line is this is going to sound real good. Do you install some button in? So buy your new car and then take it home and put an amp with subs because these things got no balls without it. And of course we’ve got a CD player in this guy, single slot right there. That’s it, straightforward, no 6-disk changer. Ala carte you can go for Bluetooth hands free, an expensive option on this car. That Bluetooth hands free system is an add volt. These are three-button controller down low on the dash, a mic stuck up in front of the gauges and no feedback shows up anywhere on the LCD or the instrument panel. You access and use it largely by a series of button presses, holds and confirmatory beeps. It’s a little too much like an iPod shuffle. Now aside from looking ridiculous I wouldn’t mind riding on the back of one these because you do have the option for a pretty straightforward but functional Duo, a headrest entertainment system. These are basically after market units again Scion branded and invented. You’ve got slot in each one. You took the screen forward to load it up, push that back and then it’s going to play locally. That’s it. These two aren’t connected to each other and they aren’t connected to the head unit up in the front. It’s just the same thing you can install yourself but the Scion folks will do it for you and they put their own little bad joints. A 2.4 liter inline four engine lives under the study hood, coupled to a five-speed manual or an optional and rather antique four-speed automatic. We had the auto and it drove me nuts hunting between top and third gear all of the time. That’s $950.00 I will keep in my pocket. That’s it. There is manual shifting gate on the slash box to more sanely send your 158 horsepower and 162 foot pound of torque to the front wheels. MPG is 22/26 with either gearbox. Let’s price our xB about $17,000.00 base add a thousand for automatic transmission, $450.00 for the alpine sound, $1200.00 for alpine wind navigation. Told you it was cheap, backseat, headrest, the dual DVDs, 1600 more. You just can’t spend a lot of this guy.