The 3 month Australian M4 review...

[chromedome]

So I’ve had the M4 for around 3 months now – having clocked a little over 4000km of mixed driving that has included the daily commute, a couple of ‘spirited’ country drives, freeway driving and a long distance drive with the family.

I’m under the rash assumption that you may get some value out of my experience and viewpoint – I’m not looking to start the next Jihad here. If you think I’m full of shit – well its just my experience, some subjective views and observations, not the end of the world.

I fully expect some of you to think “you soft bastard” on some of my points, but I see the M4 as more luxury sports car than pure sports car – it’s the main reason I switched from the 911. So I think using that context my points are relevant. But yes I can be a soft-cock at times.

I realise there’s a million user reviews on here, but I wanted to give an Australian perspective on things. I’m not that interested in the newest snow tyres or how my M4 goes in the latest Snowmageddon calamity to strike our American brothers.

I came out of a 2010 911 C2S PDK, also my daily drive, so I occasionally use that as the basis for my comparison – forgive me if this is not particularly relevant. So here goes, in no particular order….

The BMW is definitely the most comfortable car I’ve owned – the quality of the ‘Merino’ leather on the seats, dash and doors is really very good. Far better than the Porsche even and totally craps over anything I’ve owned from Volkswagen, Land Rover and especially the Japanese cars – Toyota and Mazda. Its surprising that even ‘high-end’ cars use cheap, crappy leather that seems no better than vinyl.

Whilst the leather is really nice, I (perhaps without justification) worry that it’s a little too soft for a daily driver – time will tell I suppose. I’ve applied a leather treatment and I’ll see how the wear and tear goes.

The power – a bit of a double edged sword. For a turbocharged car, I (subjectively) don’t see to notice any significant turbo lag. The power delivery is not as linear as the NA Porsche was – but that’s to be expected in a Turbocharged car.

Top end power is a little insane but not “I’m going to kill you” like an old Lambo or TVR – for the most part you can remain as in control as your right foot allows.

I do find though, and I am surprised I am saying this – there are times when there’s is just too much power. I think it’s more to do with the “whole package” delivery of power. Whilst I love a burnout as much as the next bloke – I don’t want to be breaking traction on a windy country road when I exit a corner. Its about getting used to it I suppose. I don’t think the handling is anywhere near as sharp and “confidence inspiring” as the 911 – but it’s a different car I guess. High tyre pressures and hot days are worst.

The concept behind the M1 & M2 buttons are great – being able to have a ‘Macro’ button for a set of discrete settings. The downside being of course that every time you start the car the car gets put back into settings that BMW think are best.

The Sat-Nav is excellent – probably the best built in one I’ve used. I still get annoyed that we don’t have the ability to do simple things like speed and red-light camera POI uploads. God forbid BMW do anything to encourage spirited driving in their sports sedans.

The parking camera system is really good – probably the best feature in terms of “driver aids”. For around two weeks I had my 10-year-old convinced the little shark-fin antenna on the roof was actually a drone that popped up whenever we were parking.

Parking is far more difficult than it should be, it just seems to me to be more difficult to get into city carpark spaces than a lot of vehicles I’ve had. I’m not sure what this is – maybe there’s something to the urban legend of shitty parking by BMW drivers.

The Park Assist thing – total crap. It only works on parallel parks – which in most Australian cities are pretty hard to come by and if you do there’s normally some fucktard in a courier van right up your arse, so parallel parking by computer is risky at best. It does not work in perpendicular parks – that is those in parking stations. You could argue “who buys and M car and needs auto parking” – well I guess nobody, but it came with the car, so it should actually work as advertised.

The LED headlights are pretty fantastic. I’m a big fan of having shit-loads of forward lighting (potentially to the annoyance of other drivers, but hey…) – having done some country driving at night, I found it impossible to over-run my lights. The adaptive high beam thing – well the jury is out on that. It works great on country roads but I think I was just pissing other drivers off on the M1 the other night as it went on, off, on for ages – I think it gets confused by all the reflective signs.

For a two door car, its extraordinarily practical – I can fit the two kids (one in a booster) in the back and they have tons of room. My mother-in-law finds getting in difficult, but hey – that’s actually a plus. The two doors make it risky when parking, they are very long – longer than the 911. So you end up finding parks that are easier to get in an out of without risk to door scrapes.

The boot is huge, the Porsche was always an exercise in optimised packing – in the BWM I can leave shopping bags and the other day to day crap in the car and still have plenty of room for bags when I need it.

The only reliability issue I have had was (apparently) fixed by a software update – this was that the instrument panel just kept “rebooting” for about 5-6 cycles then was OK – this happened 3-4 times before the 2000km service.

Fuel economy – sure nobody buys an M4 and really worries – but I thought it would be better I am typically getting in the mid-teens per 100km. The NA 3.8 6 cyl Porsche was pretty consistent with 9-11l/100km – its not a major concern but I expected better. Also, dunno if it’s just me but is the fuel tank smaller than average – I seem to be filling up more often – again a subjective thing, not a major issue.

The driver aids – lane keeping, collision mitigation etc. If I am honest these are just fucking annoying – the collision alert goes off all the time when you’re on a bend with oncoming traffic. The lane keeping thing is just annoying – as a BMW driver I thought that indicators were optional anyway ;-). I wish we had speed limit indicators though – maybe through the GPS map data rather than trying to read the array of Australian signs.

On the wish list for Driver Aids is radar cruise – the family wagon has this and it works great – in city traffic it’s like an autonomous car. Again, I’m certain that the M “purists” will scoff at this but if anyone here has ever driven the M1 between Brisbane and the Gold Coast will understand just what a chaotic 4 lane highway is. If anyone has seen the latest Mad Max – it’s basically a documentary of one bloke and four good looking chicks driving down to the Gold Coast after work on a Friday afternoon.

Its situations like driving the M1 where radar cruise comes into it’s own. When the fucktard in the 1980’s Corolla cuts in doing 80 and you’re hitting 120 with an angry young man in a barely legal Subaru is up your arse, close enough to read the Standards sticker on your rear glass – it works really well and makes driving the M1 so much more tolerable. People from Brisbane will know what I am talking about, but Sydney guys, think the M5 but wider and faster with less aggregate driving talent.

The DCT takes bit of getting used to – its more of a usability issue for me as it’s different to how Mercedes (the family car), Porsche (previous car) and Toyota (occasional work car) work. The lack of an actual “Park” is a pain as it means that systems that expect the car to be in “Park” require me to shut down the car – see below.

The Bluetooth system is pretty good, certainly the clearest and easiest to use I’ve had to date.

Now my biggest gripe ….My background is Software Development and IT Architecture and the quest is for the end user experience to be intuitive and productive. I’m not sure what drugs some of the guys in Munich are on but it’s clear that this was not the overriding principle when it came to the infotainment and some control systems. I’m certain that the guys in Germany spend a shit load of time extracting as much power, handling etc. out of the drivetrain and creating the balanced experience that we get straight off the showroom floor.

So my biggest gripe is the overall usability of controls – I’d go so far that at times I’ve been so distracted by something either not working or that it’s so difficult to work out how it should work that I’ve given up in frustration.

The ‘Automatic’ wipers – they’re not automatic if every time I start the car when it’s raining I need to press a button to enable “Automatic” – that’s just a fancy “INT” setting. I realise that in snowbound Europe and the US you don’t want wipers starting up automatically – make it an option in the iDrive. That’s exactly what Porsche does.
The “Automatic High-beam” same as above – why do I have to enable the automatic function every time I restart.

The powertrain and chassis settings – throttle, steering, shift speed, dampers etc. Why do they reset every time I restart? If I want Eco mode, I’ll put it in Eco mode FFS.

Connected Drive – total shit. I’ve said before it’s virtually useless. The 1 in 20 times it actually works because I’ve cradled the phone whilst in park with the handbrake on with the app in the foreground and gone to the menu to enable the connection before doing anything…its hopeless. The only useful thing being the Calendar, which is occasionally handy to look at when I am on a call in traffic – of course, like all the apps does not work unless I am in Park with the Handbrake on – which in the M cars requires switching off the engine.

Thank Christ I did not pay extra for this piece of shit feature. I cannot believe that BMW can make a great drivers car on one hand yet fail so badly in another. Its like the car was designed by committee.

The media player is more difficult than it should be. It does not randomise the iPod songs well.

Yes, yes these are all minor – but still annoying.

Final gripe – BMW parts pricing (Performance Parts) – WTF? Over $2000 for some carbon fibre\plastic cosmetic bits? Owning a Porsche, you expect to be arse-raped on accessories but the BMW is less than half the price of the Porsche, but accessories are more expensive. Crazy pricing….

Overall, I’m enjoying the car. If I just put aside the issues outlined above – it’s pretty OK. I’d probably get another one, maybe an M3 next time for practicality or X5M.

Hopefully my ranting has helped someone with their decision.

[ndau]

May I suggest something like this:
http://www.dvdinmotion.com/bmw

I ended up coding it out of my e92 m3 myself. Haven't kept up with the process for F80 though. But it seems like this would solve some of your problems.

[Hazey82]

Good review, Can you expand more regarding "I don’t want to be breaking traction on a windy country road when I exit a corner. Its about getting used to it I suppose"

Do you find that you have to be so careful and light on the throttle application that it takes away from the playfulness and satisfied feeling of getting power out of a turn? Do you find it can only be done on the track. How do you find MDM mode, does this give you the confidence and allow you to be playful or is the braking traction feeling not fun because its scary or you want to be discrete. (Is this is MDM mode)

I'm still waiting on my F80 and with the recent reviews of the M2 being very playful and liner power delivery it seems you can explore it more than you can the M3. This was my fear because I wanted all the bespoke items of the M3 but knew I may be sacrificing how much I could extract from it without looking like a Chris Harris before I hit a ditch
Cheers

[slowie]

I found out how unpredictable MDM is when I was punting onto the freeway on ramp, squeezed the throttle and ended up facing backwards via hitting the armco railing.

Result was an $60K repair bill and 5 months wait to get it back.

Learnings from this is give it some respect 😊

I love it and its a fantastic drive....!!

[chromedome]

Originally Posted by ndau

May I suggest something like this:
http://www.dvdinmotion.com/bmw

I ended up coding it out of my e92 m3 myself. Haven't kept up with the process for F80 though. But it seems like this would solve some of your problems.

Yep I am on to it...they are currently in development for the 2016 model.

[chromedome]

Originally Posted by Hazey82

Good review, Can you expand more regarding "I don’t want to be breaking traction on a windy country road when I exit a corner. ...... M3 but knew I may be sacrificing how much I could extract from it without looking like a Chris Harris before I hit a ditch
Cheers

Look, I think it's exactly what I said about getting used to it. There are fundamental differences between the previous car (911) and the current M4. Especially in how power comes on and when.

I'm trying some experimentation with tyre pressures and various settings to see what works best when - this is all fun.

I'm heading out to the track soon, so that'll give me some more room to make mistakes and work things out.

For me I think it's all about practice - the M4 is a very powerful car for something you just buy of the showroom floor. It demands a little respect and takes time to get used to. Don't expect to leave the showroom driveway in a cloud of smoke.

[Hazey82]

Originally Posted by slowie

I found out how unpredictable MDM is when I was punting onto the freeway on ramp, squeezed the throttle and ended up facing backwards via hitting the armco railing.

Result was an $60K repair bill and 5 months wait to get it back.

Learnings from this is give it some respect 😊

I love it and its a fantastic drive....!!

Damm Slowie I didn't know you were in MDM. I thought it still had a safety net but I suppose it cannot defeat physics.

I was hoping you could lean a bit more on it with safety of MDM but it seems this isn't the case. I just don't want this weapon of a car but afraid to use it and have to tip toe around the power.
But consensus seems to be respect the power and don't use the pedal as an on/off switch.

I've been invited to the BMW track day where the M2 and M3/M4 are on the menu so will be good learning experience to see how they behave.

[Mike_SSV]

Originally Posted by chromedome

I fully expect some of you to think “you soft bastard” on some of my points, but I see the M4 as more luxury sports car than pure sports car – it’s the main reason I switched from the 911. So I think using that context my points are relevant. But yes I can be a soft-cock at times.


Parking is far more difficult than it should be, it just seems to me to be more difficult to get into city carpark spaces than a lot of vehicles I’ve had. I’m not sure what this is – maybe there’s something to the urban legend of shitty parking by BMW drivers.

I enjoyed the review chromedome. Glad you are enjoying the car.

I found it interesting your comments re luxury sports car. I concluded the M3 and M4 as a sports / luxury car, whereas the C63 as a luxury / sports car. Basically emphasising a different priority in terms of comfort and experience. I suppose it does depend on perspectives, I'm coming from a lowly SSV and not a 911!

On the parking, just be thankful you don't have anything Commodore sized. The SSV is a total pain for Sydney CBD car parks. Thankfully my car park is one of the rare wide ones, with a wall on one side, so I have a metre spare.
In my wife's car park, the SSV barely fits up and down the ramps!

Originally Posted by Hazey82

Damm Slowie I didn't know you were in MDM. I thought it still had a safety net but I suppose it cannot defeat physics.

I was hoping you could lean a bit more on it with safety of MDM but it seems this isn't the case. I just don't want this weapon of a car but afraid to use it and have to tip toe around the power.
But consensus seems to be respect the power and don't use the pedal as an on/off switch.

MDM actually has enough leeway to allow a spin.
I think they code it differently for Americans however...

[elisiX]

I also quite liked the write up.

[slowie]

In my case with the MDM I am almost 100% certain there was something else on the road. A lot of quarry trucks use that corner and there fuel fillers are on the right hand side??

Since having the car back I have experimented with MDM and on a number of occasions it cuts in fairly hard slowing things up.

[Ghosn]

Originally Posted by slowie

In my case with the MDM I am almost 100% certain there was something else on the road. A lot of quarry trucks use that corner and there fuel fillers are on the right hand side??

Since having the car back I have experimented with MDM and on a number of occasions it cuts in fairly hard slowing things up.

Slowie, how were the weather conditions at the time of the spin? Wet/dry/greasy?

That would have been soul crushing after that spin. Pride and joy totalled.

Glad everything got sorted in the end, albeit expensive.

[elisiX]

When I was taking delivery of my X5M he asked me if I wanted to use MDM.

I just played it safe and kept every traction aid switched on. Far too much power to mess about with that I think.

Also, not sure how it would behave being X-Drive.

[Hazey82]

Ah you got it, Congrats. I just saw your thread now, Great colour combo What a beast.

[slowie]

Originally Posted by Ghosn

Slowie, how were the weather conditions at the time of the spin? Wet/dry/greasy?

That would have been soul crushing after that spin. Pride and joy totalled.

Glad everything got sorted in the end, albeit expensive.

Its was dry, early morning and around 15 degrees. I had already been driving for 30 minutes.

To be honest I was just glad knowone got hurt.

The hardest part was I was on my way to a final exam..... I still managed to pass ☺

[Boronia]

Test drove an M3 yesterday, the sales guy went into the mdm mode and adjusted it to give limited wheel spin, so even in mdm mode there is adjustment.
I imagine there must be instruction for this some where in the manual.
Tight Lines

Will never forget the sound, even though it's repeated through the stereo.
First drove with the windows down, car sound was louder with windows up.

[elisiX]

Originally Posted by Hazey82

Ah you got it, Congrats. I just saw your thread now, Great colour combo What a beast.

Gotta catch up mate Hazey82

Keen to see your ride.

[slowie]

Originally Posted by Boronia

Test drove an M3 yesterday, the sales guy went into the mdm mode and adjusted it to give limited wheel spin, so even in mdm mode there is adjustment.
I imagine there must be instruction for this some where in the manual.
Tight Lines

Will never forget the sound, even though it's repeated through the stereo.
First drove with the windows down, car sound was louder with windows up.

No adjustment on MDM?

[Boronia]

Thanks for that slowie,
What mode would he have adjusted to minimize wheel spin.

[slowie]

Originally Posted by Boronia

Thanks for that slowie,
What mode would he have adjusted to minimize wheel spin.

He would have put it in MDM which allows a small amount of traction loss, but there's no adjustment on it as far as the amount of traction.

[Sherweeeny]

Good writeup ChromeDome!

Hazey I have the same worries as you about the reviews ive read about the unpredictability of its chassis, but I havent committed to anything so will possibly wait to see what they do next.

[A100]

Great review. Hilarious commentary re M1...totally get it particularly bogans I their clapped out corollas and subarus Criss crossing the lanes.

Originally Posted by chromedome

So I’ve had the M4 for around 3 months now – having clocked a little over 4000km of mixed driving that has included the daily commute, a couple of ‘spirited’ country drives, freeway driving and a long distance drive with the family.

I’m under the rash assumption that you may get some value out of my experience and viewpoint – I’m not looking to start the next Jihad here. If you think I’m full of shit – well its just my experience, some subjective views and observations, not the end of the world.

I fully expect some of you to think “you soft bastard” on some of my points, but I see the M4 as more luxury sports car than pure sports car – it’s the main reason I switched from the 911. So I think using that context my points are relevant. But yes I can be a soft-cock at times.

I realise there’s a million user reviews on here, but I wanted to give an Australian perspective on things. I’m not that interested in the newest snow tyres or how my M4 goes in the latest Snowmageddon calamity to strike our American brothers.

I came out of a 2010 911 C2S PDK, also my daily drive, so I occasionally use that as the basis for my comparison – forgive me if this is not particularly relevant. So here goes, in no particular order….

The BMW is definitely the most comfortable car I’ve owned – the quality of the ‘Merino’ leather on the seats, dash and doors is really very good. Far better than the Porsche even and totally craps over anything I’ve owned from Volkswagen, Land Rover and especially the Japanese cars – Toyota and Mazda. Its surprising that even ‘high-end’ cars use cheap, crappy leather that seems no better than vinyl.

Whilst the leather is really nice, I (perhaps without justification) worry that it’s a little too soft for a daily driver – time will tell I suppose. I’ve applied a leather treatment and I’ll see how the wear and tear goes.

The power – a bit of a double edged sword. For a turbocharged car, I (subjectively) don’t see to notice any significant turbo lag. The power delivery is not as linear as the NA Porsche was – but that’s to be expected in a Turbocharged car.

Top end power is a little insane but not “I’m going to kill you” like an old Lambo or TVR – for the most part you can remain as in control as your right foot allows.

I do find though, and I am surprised I am saying this – there are times when there’s is just too much power. I think it’s more to do with the “whole package” delivery of power. Whilst I love a burnout as much as the next bloke – I don’t want to be breaking traction on a windy country road when I exit a corner. Its about getting used to it I suppose. I don’t think the handling is anywhere near as sharp and “confidence inspiring” as the 911 – but it’s a different car I guess. High tyre pressures and hot days are worst.

The concept behind the M1 & M2 buttons are great – being able to have a ‘Macro’ button for a set of discrete settings. The downside being of course that every time you start the car the car gets put back into settings that BMW think are best.

The Sat-Nav is excellent – probably the best built in one I’ve used. I still get annoyed that we don’t have the ability to do simple things like speed and red-light camera POI uploads. God forbid BMW do anything to encourage spirited driving in their sports sedans.

The parking camera system is really good – probably the best feature in terms of “driver aids”. For around two weeks I had my 10-year-old convinced the little shark-fin antenna on the roof was actually a drone that popped up whenever we were parking.

Parking is far more difficult than it should be, it just seems to me to be more difficult to get into city carpark spaces than a lot of vehicles I’ve had. I’m not sure what this is – maybe there’s something to the urban legend of shitty parking by BMW drivers.

The Park Assist thing – total crap. It only works on parallel parks – which in most Australian cities are pretty hard to come by and if you do there’s normally some fucktard in a courier van right up your arse, so parallel parking by computer is risky at best. It does not work in perpendicular parks – that is those in parking stations. You could argue “who buys and M car and needs auto parking” – well I guess nobody, but it came with the car, so it should actually work as advertised.

The LED headlights are pretty fantastic. I’m a big fan of having shit-loads of forward lighting (potentially to the annoyance of other drivers, but hey…) – having done some country driving at night, I found it impossible to over-run my lights. The adaptive high beam thing – well the jury is out on that. It works great on country roads but I think I was just pissing other drivers off on the M1 the other night as it went on, off, on for ages – I think it gets confused by all the reflective signs.

For a two door car, its extraordinarily practical – I can fit the two kids (one in a booster) in the back and they have tons of room. My mother-in-law finds getting in difficult, but hey – that’s actually a plus. The two doors make it risky when parking, they are very long – longer than the 911. So you end up finding parks that are easier to get in an out of without risk to door scrapes.

The boot is huge, the Porsche was always an exercise in optimised packing – in the BWM I can leave shopping bags and the other day to day crap in the car and still have plenty of room for bags when I need it.

The only reliability issue I have had was (apparently) fixed by a software update – this was that the instrument panel just kept “rebooting” for about 5-6 cycles then was OK – this happened 3-4 times before the 2000km service.

Fuel economy – sure nobody buys an M4 and really worries – but I thought it would be better I am typically getting in the mid-teens per 100km. The NA 3.8 6 cyl Porsche was pretty consistent with 9-11l/100km – its not a major concern but I expected better. Also, dunno if it’s just me but is the fuel tank smaller than average – I seem to be filling up more often – again a subjective thing, not a major issue.

The driver aids – lane keeping, collision mitigation etc. If I am honest these are just fucking annoying – the collision alert goes off all the time when you’re on a bend with oncoming traffic. The lane keeping thing is just annoying – as a BMW driver I thought that indicators were optional anyway ;-). I wish we had speed limit indicators though – maybe through the GPS map data rather than trying to read the array of Australian signs.

On the wish list for Driver Aids is radar cruise – the family wagon has this and it works great – in city traffic it’s like an autonomous car. Again, I’m certain that the M “purists” will scoff at this but if anyone here has ever driven the M1 between Brisbane and the Gold Coast will understand just what a chaotic 4 lane highway is. If anyone has seen the latest Mad Max – it’s basically a documentary of one bloke and four good looking chicks driving down to the Gold Coast after work on a Friday afternoon.

Its situations like driving the M1 where radar cruise comes into it’s own. When the fucktard in the 1980’s Corolla cuts in doing 80 and you’re hitting 120 with an angry young man in a barely legal Subaru is up your arse, close enough to read the Standards sticker on your rear glass – it works really well and makes driving the M1 so much more tolerable. People from Brisbane will know what I am talking about, but Sydney guys, think the M5 but wider and faster with less aggregate driving talent.

The DCT takes bit of getting used to – its more of a usability issue for me as it’s different to how Mercedes (the family car), Porsche (previous car) and Toyota (occasional work car) work. The lack of an actual “Park” is a pain as it means that systems that expect the car to be in “Park” require me to shut down the car – see below.

The Bluetooth system is pretty good, certainly the clearest and easiest to use I’ve had to date.

Now my biggest gripe ….My background is Software Development and IT Architecture and the quest is for the end user experience to be intuitive and productive. I’m not sure what drugs some of the guys in Munich are on but it’s clear that this was not the overriding principle when it came to the infotainment and some control systems. I’m certain that the guys in Germany spend a shit load of time extracting as much power, handling etc. out of the drivetrain and creating the balanced experience that we get straight off the showroom floor.

So my biggest gripe is the overall usability of controls – I’d go so far that at times I’ve been so distracted by something either not working or that it’s so difficult to work out how it should work that I’ve given up in frustration.

The ‘Automatic’ wipers – they’re not automatic if every time I start the car when it’s raining I need to press a button to enable “Automatic” – that’s just a fancy “INT” setting. I realise that in snowbound Europe and the US you don’t want wipers starting up automatically – make it an option in the iDrive. That’s exactly what Porsche does.
The “Automatic High-beam” same as above – why do I have to enable the automatic function every time I restart.

The powertrain and chassis settings – throttle, steering, shift speed, dampers etc. Why do they reset every time I restart? If I want Eco mode, I’ll put it in Eco mode FFS.

Connected Drive – total shit. I’ve said before it’s virtually useless. The 1 in 20 times it actually works because I’ve cradled the phone whilst in park with the handbrake on with the app in the foreground and gone to the menu to enable the connection before doing anything…its hopeless. The only useful thing being the Calendar, which is occasionally handy to look at when I am on a call in traffic – of course, like all the apps does not work unless I am in Park with the Handbrake on – which in the M cars requires switching off the engine.

Thank Christ I did not pay extra for this piece of shit feature. I cannot believe that BMW can make a great drivers car on one hand yet fail so badly in another. Its like the car was designed by committee.

The media player is more difficult than it should be. It does not randomise the iPod songs well.

Yes, yes these are all minor – but still annoying.

Final gripe – BMW parts pricing (Performance Parts) – WTF? Over $2000 for some carbon fibre\plastic cosmetic bits? Owning a Porsche, you expect to be arse-raped on accessories but the BMW is less than half the price of the Porsche, but accessories are more expensive. Crazy pricing….

Overall, I’m enjoying the car. If I just put aside the issues outlined above – it’s pretty OK. I’d probably get another one, maybe an M3 next time for practicality or X5M.

Hopefully my ranting has helped someone with their decision.