I had a rental Mercedes made in 2023 this January. The whole UI is a terrible mess, especially the music player interface, and the navigation experience is totally useless - nonexistent roads and existing roads not recorded, doesn't know POIs, doesn't understand local addresses, wrong layouts of intersections, highway on/off ramps totally wrong, and the whole system is slow, full of lags and bugs. Had to buy a phone holder at the first gas station.
Otherwise a great car but I'm not going to use Mercedes again if CarPlay is not an option. I had a rental Volkswagen a month before that and the whole experience with CarPlay was smooth - I just wanted to charge the phone so I connected it to the USB-C port and everything has set up itself instantly, it played my Spotify through the car and displayed my running Waze on the main display.
Otherwise a great car but I'm not going to use Mercedes again if CarPlay is not an option. I had a rental Volkswagen a month before that and the whole experience with CarPlay was smooth - I just wanted to charge the phone so I connected it to the USB-C port and everything has set up itself instantly, it played my Spotify through the car and displayed my running Waze on the main display.