Audi A7 Sportback interior

Infotainment

Watch our Audi A7 interior and infotainment video review

The Audi A7 comes with one of the most high-tech infotainment systems of any car on sale. Its three screens vary from 8.6 inches to a whopping 12.3 inches across and look far more futuristic than anything you’ll find in the Mercedes CLS or BMW 6 Series GT.

The 10.1-inch display on the dashboard sits in a brushed aluminium frame that’s designed to mimic the Audi A7’s front grille, while a second 8.6-inch display below replaces the old car’s physical heating and ventilation controls.

Both screens are crisp and reasonably easy to read, but you’ll need more than just a quick glance to choose between their mostly monochrome icons as you drive along. You don’t get any physical shortcut buttons to help you switch between the system’s main functions either – but then it’s the same story in both the BMW and Mercedes.

What the Audi does give you is some feedback that makes pressing the screen feel just like clicking a mouse or unlocking a smartphone. It works reasonably well, but it’s still not as convincing as old-fashioned buttons and you do have to give the screen quite a hard prod before it’ll accept your inputs. It can be slightly slow to respond if you tap rapidly to quickly change the temperature or heated seat settings, too.

Combine this with the rather small touch-sensitive shortcut buttons beside the larger central screen and the Audi’s infotainment system doesn’t feel quite as intuitive to use as BMW’s simpler iDrive.

Thankfully, the standard-fit Virtual Cockpit display helps make up for the other screens’ shortcomings. It looks fantastic and it’s dead easy to switch between screens showing a pair of large dials, detailed media playback information or a widescreen sat-nav display using easy-to-reach buttons on the steering wheel.

Speaking of sat-nav, the A7 comes with a handwriting-recognition feature that lets you write in an address letter by letter directly onto the touchscreen. It’s a neat gimmick to impress your friends with, but you’ll probably end up using the much faster on-screen keyboard instead.

If you don’t like Audi’s own sat-nav, you can always mirror your favourite smartphone navigation apps using Apple CarPlay or Android Auto. These features come as standard across the A7 range and also let you play music from streaming services such as Spotify through the Audi’s stereo. There’s also a neat wireless charging pad and Audi’s Phone Box feature that uses the car’s built-in aerial to boost your phone’s reception.

The A7’s standard 10-speaker stereo is perfectly punchy, but die-hard music fans will want to upgrade to one of two beefier B&O units instead. These come with either 16 or 19 speakers (depending on which option you choose) which help add a healthy dose of extra volume and bass.