This car is a major leap ahead, revolutionary in some ways. The instrument gauge cluster and the LCD display are world-leading, superior technology. They are bright, sharp, and have excellent contrast. I don’t think any other car in the world has anything this excellent, even much more expensive cars. The LCD display in particular, in the center console, is large and beautifully designed, although the touch-sensitivity is poor and requires a lot of experience to use reliably – the duration of your touch in milliseconds and the degree of force in your touch appear to be critical, and I am still finding that it often takes multiple tries to get it right. The response time of the display to user inputs is also too slow; the processor seems overwhelmed at times. I find the user interface logic to be un-intuitive. You need a lot of time with it to get to use it easily, even with a manual. Ford engineers should have done a better job making this interface intuitive. I have a master’s degree in engineering and it just shouldn’t be that difficult for me to learn this interface. And you shouldn’t need a manual to do it, that’s what intuitive means. Also it makes heavy use of color coding. I am red-green color blind and the color coding is a major challenge for me. Ford should make the colors user-controllable to accommodate drivers with my handicap, perhaps offering different color schemes. This is especially problematic in the Navigation mode, with green and red being richly used. I sent a query to ford a few weeks ago asking how they might accommodate my visual handicap and have not received a reply.
Since the driver continuously glances down at the LCD display and up again at the road, the design of the car should minimize the angular distance between the two. This means that the display should be as high up on the dash as possible. But Ford put the air conditioner vents above the display, instead of below it or to the side of it where they belong. The display should have been on top, like it is in the Acura MD-X and Toyota Sienna..
The six-speed automatic transmission does not function smoothly at lower speeds. In various acceleration scenarios beginning from a full stop, the transmission is felt to lag and surge, jerking the passengers no matter how adeptly the drive uses the accelerator pedal. You would think that after half a century of designing automatic transmissions, Ford would know how to make a smoothly performing automatic transmission. This is a big disappointment.
As with every other GPS I have used, the Navigation system occasionally tells me to do crazy things, but generally it works well. And while you are able to reposition the map view by dragging your finger on it, after you are done you can't restore the icon representing your car to the correct central location, that is, to reset it, and you have to experiment quite a lot to discover that issuing the voice command "Show Map" will do this. In general, although many functional areas in the various LCD screens have "slider" type controls, inviting you to put your finger on the slide icon and drag it along its axis, I have never once been able to make this work for me. You have to tap each end of the axis to move the slider, and you mjust get your finger tip exactly right or it makes other things happen that you didn't want.
It is wonderful to be able to connect my iPod Touch toe the car's USB port and control it via the LCD screen and the steering wheel controls. My music sounds absolutely amazing over the car's sound system, which is top notch even to a highly critical audiophile like myself (although the high frequencies are a little weak). But Ford does not provide any documentation on how to operate this kind of device over the USB, and you have to learn it yourself. On shortcoming is that when you are playing a song from your iPod, there is no function (that I have been able to discover) allowing you to move the play point later or earlier in the song; it just keeps going. But it does remember where you were if you disconnect the iPod from the car and later reconnect it, very convenient.
The voice recognition system is very helpful and improves safety by reducing distractions while driving but it is not completely reliable. It understands many spoken commands but has trouble too often. There is no comprehensive listing of all possible voice commands in one place, in any of the documentation. You should be able to go to a master index to find the appropriate voice command in any context.
The Ambient Lighting is a brilliant feature and huge attraction for this car. You can control the color and even the intensity of the light, and it makes it vastly more exciting to be in this car at night. This is one of the things that puts the 2011 Ford Edge in a class by itself (I understand the Flex and maybe other Ford models also have Ambient Lighting).
The interior of the car is exceptionally quiet, something that was an absolute requirement for me in making a car choice, and caused me to eliminate many other cars such as the Honda's. At highway speeds this is still the case, although some road noise is heard but it’s not intrusive, it’s still relatively very quiet. All the effort and technology the Ford put into making the Edge quiet has paid off beautifully.
The seats are extremely comfortable. The adjustable lumbar support in the driver's seat works nicely and is much welcome by this driver. The rear seats are fairly spacious, but it would be an exaggeration to claim that three adults could sit comfortably side by side in the rear.
The ride is very smooth, also critical for me. Large bumps in the road are felt and heard but not annoyingly. Mostly the passengers are well insulated from road conditions. The brakes in this car are phenomenal, the best I’ve experienced. They’re almost like thrust reversers in a jet.
One area that I don’t like very much is the power steering. There is simply not enough power assist. The steering feels heavy, particularly at lower speeds. I was hoping that Ford would have made it much easier to steer this car. I feel like I have to tug hard on the steering wheel instead of easily turning it. This limits the merging of driver and vehicle into one organism, making you feel like you have to battle the steering wheel instead of it becoming an appendage of your body. They seem to equate heavy steering with good road feel. Also, at a dead stop or at very low speeds, if you turn the steering wheel abruptly and sharply, it takes a few moments for the power assist to kick in. For those moments, there is essentially no power steering. Also strange. Ford should have made the power assist much quicker and more responsive. They should also consider making the degree of power assist for the steering driver controllable. Besides this, the steering is sufficiently precise. Cornering is very flat and overall the ride is exceptionally stable even on challenging terrain, although I am a comfort driver and not a sports-type driver -- I want comfort rather than excitement. The wide, fat tires help with handling and stability.
I’m not crazy about the high belt line of this car. While it might make for a sleeker appearance, it also reduces visibility 360 degrees around. Also the driver is not able to see the front edge of the car, even at the maximum height setting for the driver’s seat, making it a challenge to parallel park safely or pull into a perpendicular parking space. The excellent rear backup camera and console display helps a lot with backing up though.
The biggest problem with my car is that the MyFord Touch system spontaneously cuts off and reboots, saying it's doing "scheduled maintenance" or something to that effect, several times a day. You can't do virtually anything with the car without it - navigation, rear backup, playing of the radio or the Sirius receiver or an iPod, or most anything else. In addition, although I successfully paired my cell phone with the car, it has never successfully linked to the phone and enabled hands-free use of the cell phone. Ford is working on a fix, but has not let me know when this will be available. It is extremely frustrating and annoying.
Fit and finish are generally excellent. Only one minor thing has gone wrong -- the plastic covering of a fuse panel near the driver's left foot fell off with just a touch when I was respositioning my left leg, and I had to get out of the car and crouch down and figure out how to reattach it.
The headlights have nice wide beams but I think they are too weak. I didn't get the High Intensity ones because of cost considerations, but I shouldn't have to.
The intelligent access key fob and remote start function work beautifully, as does the remote open/close for the rear hatch. There is plenty of room inside the cargo area, though it comes across as slightly shallow due to the need to allow room for the spare tire.
The rocker-type switches on the steering wheel, which control the cruise control, entertainment and the phone system, are nice, but they are too small and too tight. After using it for a while my thumb joint hurts. These switches should be larger and looser.
The door handle and door opening lever on each of the front doors are too close to the hinges, reducing your leverage and making you exert more force than you should have to. The handles should have been farther back.
I really like the storage compartment in the center console between the front seats; it's nice and deep, and has that beautiful Ambient Lighting inside.
Knowing what I know now, I would still buy this car. It is beautiful, comfortable, quiet, interesting, great performing, and has amazing technology. Its imperfections mar what would otherwise be a major automotive breakthrough. Although I'm sure Ford will implement improvements in future releases of the Edge, this won't help ME.