Like a number of much more expensive, luxury brands, Suzuki has run with a touchscreen tacked onto the dashboard. This can come across as a bit lazy compared to some of the neatly integrated screens out there.

 

The screen is bordered in black and finished in a glossy looking plastic, but glare isn't an issue, and it doesn't accumulate fingerprints nearly as readily as some of the other screens we've encountered. We had no issue with brightness on a sunny day, and the screen dims appropriately when the lights switch on. Lots of car manufacturers give their software an exciting catchy name – think MMI, iDrive or COMAND – but Suzuki hasn't bothered. It would seem the designers were too busy perfecting the software, because it's actually very good.

 

Your home screen is broken up into four different sections for audio, navigation, phone and CarPlay. There is a haptic home button to the right-hand side of the screen, and a volume slider to the left, but most of the dirty work takes place on the 7-inch slab in the middle of the dashboard. One of the great criticisms of touchscreen-interfaces in cars is the lack of physical feedback. Buttons don't move around, and they provide a positive click when you press them. Menus on a screen do move, so drivers are often forced to take their eyes off the road to work out what they need to press, and then more time again to confirm they've actually prodded the right thing.

 

Suzuki gets around this issue by making its menus logical, and making the things you touch regularly nice and big. That way, even if you hit a bump in the road, a wavering finger won't lead you down the wrong path. This is no substitute for a cleverly designed secondary physical controller like the rotary iDrive clicker you get in BMWs, or even better, a heads-up display. The latter are still largely the domain of the luxury car market, but they are trickling into other segments – Mazda does one in its compact cars –and having crucial information at eye-level makes a huge difference when you're trying to focus on the road. Still, there's a cost attached to any wishlist, and the Suzuki system does a solid job at a price.