2028 Mercedes-Benz VLE first drive: Your 8K living room on wheels has arrived
As much as I love to drive, the best seats in the VLE are in the second row. From there, you can recline and gaze
As much as I love to drive, the best seats in the VLE are in the second row. From there, you can recline and gaze up through the glass ceiling, or deploy the 31.3-inch ultra-wide screen and whittle away at your YouTube queue. You can also stream Disney+ directly on the display, but sadly those are the only two video streaming partners of note. Neither Chromecast nor AirPlay streaming are supported. There is an HDMI port if you want to BYO content, but running wires across the cabin doesn't feel particularly luxurious to me.
You can also pick from a few basic games to play on the system, and if you have two kids who can never agree on anything, you can split the TV into dual, 15-inch 4K displays. The 32:9 ratio means that after splitting, you're effectively getting a pair of 16:9 displays, which is honestly better for viewing most content anyway. A pair of Bluetooth headsets means a pair of passengers can also get their own dedicated audio. Sitting up front?
There's plenty of pixels there, too. Specifically, three dashboard-spanning units that make up Benz's MBUX Superscreen setup. There's a 10.25-inch gauge cluster on the left, a 14-inch main infotainment screen in the middle and a 14-inch passenger display on the right that can also stream videos and other media. For the broader aural part of the media experience, you have 22 speakers from a Burmester 3D sound system. It handles Dolby Atmos, so you can be fully immersed in both music and more theatrical content.
Interestingly, the system can also dynamically reconfigure itself based on who is sitting in the van and where. Driving solo? The speakers automatically prioritize you. Have a full van? It'll fill it all with sound. And it's very capable of doing that. I cruised through a playlist of Atmos-optimized music, everything from Tay Tay to Axl Rose, and everything sounded fantastic.
The BriefWire