2023 BMW X7 M60i | A Mixed Bag of Updates

The brand new and updated 2023 BMW X7. Now as a 2020 owner, pre-refresh version of this car, I'm going to be doing an ownership video about my experience with it and I'm going to compare and contrast some of the things about the updates and what they brought to the table and the pros and cons in this video. We're going to start with the exterior and the interior. Now a lot of these updates are because they're trying to bring it in line with the other Starting with the exterior, when you look at it standalone, to me all I see is Hyundai and Kia products with a split headlight design. You could make the argument that it is more modern looking and potentially lowering the headlights and the bumper could help not blind oncoming traffic, but really it just it's a polarizing look and I would say that's you can say that about every single BMW product at this point. People definitely have their opinions about it. I'm kind of mixed on how I feel about it from the outside, namely when you park the pre-refresh version next to it. I think you know people hated the X7 when it came out because the gigantic grill and now it's been more normalized with every brand so it doesn't look as odd, but it still looks more timeless than this design. I don't know it's going to age as well, but again that's depending on who you are and what you like. The interior space has had a bigger update of course and that is because they've had to retrofit all of their tech stuff that they're putting in their newer cars like the ix and basically everything else. They wanted to go to this threaded curved screen which is not really a single screen, it's two screens and a bonded piece of glass and then they've had to do a lot of modification to the dash to hide the fact that they did that. So there's this giant slab of carbon fiber in this car that is just a reflection magnet. I mean basically this update is all about reflectivity in here. They've cleaned it up because they said a lot of customers were kind of overwhelmed with knobs buttons and switches and I think once you use this compared to the previous generation you'll wish for the previous generation back, namely in the HVAC controls. But let's get started here with the pros and the cons. iDrive 8, we'll start with that because the technology is the centerpiece of this car. iDrive 8 is a blessing and a curse. There's more granular control, there's more menus, there's more things you can do in it. However, because it is so complicated, you are lost in this when you're trying to change things. You're like menu swiping, it's literally like being in a laptop OS now that you're having to thread through. And I think some of this is better than the previous generation in terms of speed, graphical interface, namely for the gauge cluster you have customization here. It is better, it's a better piece of software, but the problem is is when you strip away some of the physicality like the previous generation BMW products where you had a bank of memory controls like 1 through 5 or 6 that you could hard or long press the button to save certain functions. So I could just hit 1 to turn off the screen or I could hit 3 to turn on Android Auto or 4 on there to get into the audio system configuration and change EQ based on my musical tastes. Now I don't have those quick shortcuts, I literally have to go into this tile system, I have to menu like surf to do these basic functions and it just is so aggravating. And I think the worst part is is removing the physical HVAC controls. BMW had some of the most clever, simple, and intuitive HVAC controls on the market. Everything was physical, you could do everything with muscle memory, and by eliminating it, it means you're constantly in the or in the voice assistant. If somebody leaves on the HVAC controls in the back, forget trying to turn them off with the display, you have to use the voice assistant to do it. It's just comical how they tried to simplify things but at the cost of making it look cool and cleaner, it's just harder to use all the way around. Now they have kept some of the legacy stuff like the door panel design. When you look at it, it is super, super clean. They left all the physical knobs, buttons, and switches there to control the window shades. You can up the window shades in the second row, the moon roofs are both controlled from there, the shade on this the primary panoramic, and the third row has its own shade as well. The beautiful part about that is you have the controls in the second row as well to control all of that, and you can lock it out from the front if you have kids in the back so they don't play with it. There's a lot of thought to design there including the legacy switch on the door in the back so they can't open the door. A lot of that legacy stuff is still there. Now in terms of luxury features, yes, there's a lot of stuff here, and I would say that BMW does some of the tech features and luxury features. It has a wow factor but it doesn't work all that well. These are some of the worst cooled seat designs you'll ever ever function. You turn them on, they never work. Even in my own car, I always wondered if the seats were broken. The coolers are bad. The cooled and heated cup holders are essentially a gimmick, and if something leaks down there you're going to do some damage. It seems cool until you use it and realize it just doesn't work. It takes so long for you to keep a cup in there to keep it cold or hot. Pointless. The seat massagers. Still a physical control on the door, thank god, and then there's some menu that pops up here to kind of change it, but these are the worst seat massagers in the luxury segment by far. It's just little air bladders that inflate and deflate. You barely feel compared to something like the MDX Type S or some of the upper end Lexus products or the Audi and Porsche products. It's just a gimmick, and I would say that's something to note. The luxury features that are not a gimmick here are like the soft closed doors. If somebody's sleeping in the car, you want to sneak out and let them relax, you can kind of just gently touch the door. That is very nice. The heated armrests in the door and in the center area are great. The wireless charger is not high wattage, but it's in a good place where your phone doesn't slide around and constantly turn off and stop charging. So most of that is good, including the ambient lighting. They do a great job in here lighting up speaker grills, the ambient lighting on the floor, the center panel has been updated. It is cheesier in here because you have that M logo on the dash. It looks less like classic, but the ambient lighting is a good luxury feature, and it does extend on the panoramic roof all the way back with that kind of, if you get the executive package, it does shine up there. So it's all these little touches that are trying to wow you and they do add up to a lot, but you are paying a ton of money for this car. It starts around 80 something grand for the six cylinder. If you go to the M60i, now you're pushing over $90,000. This one is spec'd out almost to the max at $117,000. The only thing it's missing is the trailer hitch in the back, and they don't have the rear seat infotainment anymore like they did on the 2020 version that I had. So it's pretty close in terms of price to the old M50i, and you can still do custom color options, which tack on a lot of money. So there's still customization here that you can do. Getting into the back seats. The second row is a joke. Let's just put it that way. With the captain's chairs, you lose a lot of functionality. They don't fold down, so you lose a lot of cargo space. When you want to get in the third row, it is painfully slow when they adjust forward. Namely, if the two front seats are back, you have to wait for those to move, and then the motorized seats moving, and then they move up so you can get in, and it's the same painful weight getting in the back. The other part is if you're putting a car seat in here in the second row, it is a pain in the balls because the seat anchor is on the floor in the back. And if you're shorter and you have short arms, you literally want to keep the seat in here and never move it. It is just really, really frustrating. The captain's rows do adjust. The captain's chairs do adjust quite well. They do recline, and the nice little headrest does have these butterfly wings on them, and it goes in the front more like an airplane chair. And they do have these padded headrests that you can snap on in the back, and it is very, very comfortable back there. I'm not gonna lie. If it's just like four people and you don't have like a car seat back there, you could probably enjoy it. The third row is very usable as well. You can fold those up. It's all electronic, but the same thing goes. When you're in the back and you want to make adjustments to the third and the second row, it is a pain in the balls. It takes forever. And even today, I struggle with the switches. Like, there's so much delay in them. Like, I don't know what's up or down sometimes. I'm like messing with them, and nothing happens, and I do it, and then it goes the wrong way. Just usability is nothing like the commodity SUVs that have mechanical levers. They have overcomplicated a lot of this just for the sake of like the wow factor of the luxury. I mean, in some cases, it's great. In some cases, it's a mixed bag. Now, some of the biggest pros of this interior are the assistant pro, like driving assistant pro. It's essentially level 2.5 autonomous driving in stop-and-go traffic on highways, and it goes up to... I can't remember the speed, but I'm pretty sure it's like 40 miles an hour before it cuts off. So you can sit here. It does have eye tracking, so you have to pay attention, but you can take your hands off the wheel, and it does a very good job driving, and that feature is not a lot of money. The biggest upgrade of this, much like in the previous gen, it's almost a carryover here. I think there are some slight EQ tweaks, but the Bowers & Wilkins system, despite its gust, is one of the best options you can put in here. It should come standard. It's one of the best audio systems we've tested, and big surprise, almost every Bower setup is amazing. In terms of the graphs, the time domain between the left and the right speakers or left and the right side is almost perfect. They have a huge cabin here to manage bass and frequencies, and when you set this to studio and you set the EQ flat, the sound is very... I mean, it's almost neutral. There is no coloration in terms of treble or bass, and my only complaint is I feel like the stereo separation is not as lifelike. It's just not as lifelike and wide as the Bowers & Wilkins and the XC90. It seems a little bit more compressed in terms of sound. With the Alcantara headliner, the Swedish headliner, all of the matte textures, aside from the front with all the glossy stuff, the matte textures do a good job. There feels like there's a lot of sound absorption in here, and you really do feel comfortable driving this. I will say it is definitely one of the more comfortable SUVs on the road, but we're going to go into the shop and talk about the updates to the 2023 X7. Mark, we are underneath the all-new or refreshed BMW X7. You get new front and rear fascias, a new series of engines, and they've also made some calibration changes to the suspension of this vehicle. This is on the CLAR chassis, which is more than just a stretched BMW X5, but it is a rear-wheel-drive architecture. We are underneath the M60i, which is the V8 variant, but you can still get this with the legendary B58, which I clearly have stock in. Thank you, BMW, for all my private islands. So, suspension-wise, this being the M60i is the more aggressive suspension layout. It also now has the former Dynamic Handling Package as standard, so now when you buy a V8, it comes with rear steer and the 48-volt sway bars. Compared to the last X7 with the M50 engine, this has a greater range of adjustment to the air ride dampers, and when compared to the six-cylinder variant as well, there are some changes structurally to the bushings, to the mounting points of the suspension as well, to deal with the extra power and the fact that this is supposed to be a little bit more aggressive than the six-cylinder variant. If you get this as a six-cylinder, you can also option in some of the sway bars and all that other fun stuff, but they don't come as standard like they do in the V8. So, just to be clear, the X5 and the X7 are not the same thing, although, to your point, they are on the CLAR architecture. This has been stretched out to create a real three-row SAV. The X5 was never designed to be a three-row vehicle, although that was an option. You're not fitting anybody back here. So, stretching this out also meant they had to make some major revisions to suspension and all of that. So, this is more about refinement. It's more about luxury. So, there's more NVH materials. There is more thought to acoustic treatments like laminated glass on the side windows as standard. Now, with the updated M60i, they've had to make some revisions to this. Of course, different transmission, different engines. So, there's some reinforcement. There's harder rubber bushings in the upper control arms. There's other little tweaks that they've made to the way that the AirRide works on the softer end and the more aggressive end for Sport Plus or Sport. The AirRide is supposedly a little bit quieter in terms of the electric compressor. This has an adjustability range in terms of ride height to 80 millimeters. So, when you raise it up and off-road up to 19 miles an hour, you can go essentially 40 millimeters higher up until 19 miles an hour. That's gonna be great for me on the whole thing when I run over some curbs. Yeah, when you're going 19 miles an hour on 23-inch wheels, right? I mean, it's just it's counterintuitive, but you do have that flexibility of raising it up and it's more for getting things in and out of it. Like, if you need to put a car seat in and you're six foot two, you can raise the thing up in the air so you don't hit your head. It's like these practical considerations that AirRide offers not so much for off-road. So, on the counterpoint, this can lower itself by... it has two stages that it lowers 10 and 20 millimeters depending on speed. And after like 80 miles an hour, it's actually still adjusting its AirRide and it's adjusting its dampers continuously to counteract the forces because you have integrated active sway bars, you have all these electromechanical systems that's trying to ride itself. Why do you need it on a boat? That's the point of a luxury vehicle like this. It's trying to bridge the gap much like we talk about in some of the higher-end vehicles that you're not just buying an SUV here when you're dumping over a hundred thousand dollars. You want performance, you want comfort, you want speed, you want handling, you want it all in a big boat. The only way to accomplish that is with electromechanical systems. We talk about it all the time. The fact that you are dealing with an over 5,000 pound vehicle, the only way to get this thing to drive like the customers want is with all of these subsystems. I mean, even the diff, right? Yeah. This has a real clutch pack style diff in the rear and it's helping this car get in and out of corners in a way that traditionally 10-15 years ago an SUV couldn't. You couldn't and even like to your point, like the diff, the rear wheel, the rear steering part of it, like it really does shrink down the size of this vehicle. It makes it more approachable to somebody like if you don't know how to drive and you're a small tiny thing in this car and you're like barely seeing over the steering wheel, it gives you that confidence that you can get this around in a parking lot. It doesn't feel like you're driving a big truck. But I'm going to cover way more technical detail when I do my video on my own X7. I'm going to cover kind of some of the changes to it, like why I bought it and then some of the more mechanical like nerdy stuff with it when we do that. But let's take a look at the engine. We're going to talk about the changes to the six cylinder, the V8 and of course the transmission. Mark, the big change for a real customer of one of these vehicles is the drivetrain setups. So while this is the S68 engine, the old X7 was powered by the N63. It wasn't a true M sport engine. Yeah, and the N series engine has a really long lineage and you could do a 40 minute video about all the technical changes that the 4.4 liter had over the course of its life cycle. So it's like a lot of engine manufacturers, you know, from Chevy with the small block, it was iterative changes. They had what worked, like the two liter in all the Hondas, right? They kept changing it or the J series like V6, right? It's the same derivative. So that's what they were doing with the 4.4 liter. The last one in the 2020 model year change, which was the technical update three that had most every fix that they needed to do for 10 plus years in it. And they had two variations. The M50 was the 2020 and the previous version was like the X50 thing. And that had a lot less power. So everybody really was kind of pissed off when they did the change to the N63, the technical update three, because you've got 523 horsepower. That's the most reliable version of that 4.4 liter. But again, in 2023, we have this change here. And this change was largely dictated by what? Emissions. This is an emissions compliant engine. So when you compare this to the N series that is in this old X7, it's nowhere as loud. It is more efficient from a really a gas particulate or an emissions perspective than the last engine. In character, you have to drive them back to back, but this doesn't sound as loud or as V80 as what was found in the last engine. But this is technically the more sophisticated superior engine. And this is going to be the last V8 that BMW probably built. This S68 is going to be found in basically everything going forward that requires a V8 with different turbochargers, different tuning. Despite this being a 4.4 liter, just like the N series engine, this is a brand new ground up engine. It is still a hot V. Yes, one turbo still feeds one bank and the other turbo feeds the other. But as an oiling system, it has a stronger crank. It has a new oil cooler setup. The turbos are different. They're more efficient than they used to be. And most notably is the mild hybrid setup. Traditionally, the electric motor for the mild hybrid setup is on the engine. But for all X7s, we get the new variation of the ZF eight-speed gearbox. It now has the electric motor in the gearbox itself, which helps deal with stop-start functionality, coast function, and of course, helping all the accessory functions. And the six-cylinder variant, you get a new version of the B58. Not going to get too much into it, but it's primarily built around the fact that it's a mild hybrid as well. Vanoss has also been changed in the new BMW setups. Vanoss in the past, which is their cam system, their variable cam phasers, was hydraulically run off oil pressure. Now it's purely an electromechanical setup. It's run by an electronic solenoid, which tells it to activate, turn on and off. So there's a lot of mechanical changes, clearly, because it's a different engine. And when you get into this, the nuts and bolts, what does it translate to? Well, if you came from like the M50i, the 2020 to 2022, it makes almost identical power. Really, on a spec sheet, they're almost identical. So you might say, why did they do this? Well, you explained a lot of it, but the thing is, is they're going to be able to, this is built to scale up. So on the lower end, this is the minimum if this engine can make. Once they move it up the chain, to your point, all it's going to take is electronics, tuning, turbocharger changes, airflow changes. It's going to make a shitload of power. It can make probably 700 plus horsepower. And with the addition of having this setup for the electronic part of the hybrid system now, you're going to be able to make that electric power in the case of the B58, the six-cylinder version. And that electric motor is used to make significantly more power there. Whereas it's not doing it here because it doesn't need the extra power. You're going to see these improvements in probably all future BMW products. And most importantly for BMW, the reason they made this change is the new Euro emission standards, which are coming in 2025. This is currently compliant for what they have now in 2025, this and the B58 will make the new Euro compliancy standards or emission standards. Jack, updated three-row X7 S68 power mark. I do think it's noticeable there's some overboost function going on when you use launch control because it feels way faster than normal. We talked about it in the shop at Nazium, why they had to do this engine. It is sort of a compliance engine, right? It's going to be in the new XM, that hideous new MSUV that is about to get launched. And it's going to be the V8 that's in the future that's going to get them through emissions and compliance. But what BMW does well is drive trains. We've talked about it for a million billion years. I know we joke around like how they had to do it for compliance reasons, but this is the farthest thing from, this is just basically, they did the absolute basics of what they needed to do. It is probably one of the best V8s on the planet in terms of performance, feel, stability, combined with essentially the best gear-based torque converted automatic transmission programming from any manufacturer. So you're putting that detuned a bit for the X7 and a three-row SUV, luxury SUV. The only thing that even remotely comes close to this is the Porsche products. I mean, is there another SUV that is... You could maybe argue the AMG Mercedes, but as they are in this transitionary period where they're going away from V8s, I think this and the Porsche products are basically all you have. And Porsche doesn't make an SUV that's a three-row. Yeah, and there's not a lot of three-row ultra luxury. Well, because it's weird, there's the Alpina, there's all these other Range Rovers. Yeah, you got that. But I mean, this is kind of I hate to say it, the mainstream luxury three-row segment. So there's just not a lot, and this becomes basically, other than Range Rover, the go-to. Let's talk about what this does really well. I mean, clearly, I have my other video that I'm doing when it comes to why I got an X7 trading in the XC90 and all that fun stuff. And we have an MDX Type S, which is a value in the three-row premium segment at $74,000. I mean, we drove this back-to-back with the MDX Type S. Yeah, right before we did this drive, we drove them back-to-back just to kind of, I don't know, reacquaint ourselves with what they both do differently. And this is not a comparison with the Type S. But what I think you feel in the BMW is, yes, it's a big SUV, and you feel like you're on top of it. It feels like it's almost truck-like, despite being a unibody SUV. But when you're past the turn-in process, like the MDX turns in better than this, the SHL wheel drive, the front end works better. But the kinematics of the suspension and the way it deals with being a rear-wheel-drive architecture is amazing. It feels like a rear-wheel-drive car. You can get this thing to rotate. Yes, the stability will kick on, but it is an SUV to stop it from rolling. Like a big, heavy sedan, it will get in and out of corners in a way that basically nothing else does. Right. I guess that's the thing. That's why I said, really, the only comparison you can make is to the Porsche. And where this suffers is it does have this feeling of you're riding on top of it versus feeling connected inputs. Because you have all these electromechanical systems here working just to right the vehicle. So the air suspension is active. You have read-ahead technology looking at road imperfections to adjust dampers. You have the active anti-roll bars. So all of these subsystems and rear steer. So essentially, the car is doing all of the adjustment for you. And that's why it feels very synthetic. Now, when you get over the performance part, and I had my X7 on track. So I know where the limits are. You know, you're never taking it out there. What you really are doing is what we're doing right now. How quiet is it? How comfortable is it? How does it handle the daily driving and usability, which I beat to death on the interior part of this. But in terms of driving this every day for a three-row, you got to leave out the X5 and the Cayennes of this because they're not three-row vehicles, true three-row vehicles. It's quiet. It is very, it's one of the quietest big SUVs I've been in. We have not been in the full-blown Range Rover yet, but that's with the same kind of options, $150,000. Yeah, it's more money. This is quiet. You know, I'm sure it's just as quiet in the B40, B58 during the six-cylinder. We're in the V8. It rides well. I will argue maybe not as soft as the MDX Type S. Like there's more secondary head bobble, but it doesn't beat you up. The seats are good. There's more compliance in the Type S. There's, I think there's more compliance in the Q7. This is trying to blend like really, it's trying to blend the sport part. With the M60i, they're giving you the connectivity, the reactivity of a smaller vehicle. They're trying to shrink down the size of this with all the electromechanical systems, which is what we talk about on like basically every big SUV and all the high-end vehicles. They're trying to do the same thing because the weight continues to go up and up and up. So how do you take something that's 6,000 pounds and shrink it down? So there's got to be some trade-off and the trade-off really is you don't have really good connectivity in the driving experience, but you're still getting the high level performance of having a twin-turbo V8. It's crazy fast in a straight line. The gearbox can go from almost unperceptibly smooth, no gear shock, to when you're in Sport Plus, it like nails you. They've blended the performance and the luxury part of this better than pretty much any other vehicle of this size on the planet for the price. Without it feeling too ponderous, I think the rear steer in a parking lot is where you're really going to notice it because you're never going to drive this thing above 60 percent. No, you're not. It'll find parking spots easier than like a Suburban, right? Something really, really big. I think that's the interesting part about this and that's the joy of modern technology. The thing I'm going to ask you is compared to your generation X7, which is the I guess technically the pre-facelift, that has the N63 versus this S68 and it has slight differences to interior interior refinement and suspension tuning other than the lack of all the V8 verbalness. There's difference in character. There's some tuning differences here and I think it's in the upper to mid-range that you notice there is more pull. I think this is making, if you put it on a dyno, this would make more power in the upper end even though it's not on paper because there is more pull there, but it's very, very minimal. The other thing is the transmission calibration, aside from sound, the engine has a slight difference in sound. Where the old engine had more of a V8 tone, this is a little bit smoother. It's a little bit more refined, less V8 noise, but I think because of the changes in the transmission, you do hear a different like higher frequency coming off the gearbox because of the electric motor that's in here and whereas in the M50i, the one that I have, the previous generation of this, I literally had to code out the start-stop. The start-stop was obnoxious using the regular starter. I just left it off. I felt like it was doing more harm than good. We're now having the integrated motor in the trans where it starts it up with the electric motor. It's more seamless and there's no option to turn it off here anyway, so I mean it's just baked into the car. It's far less obnoxious than it used to be. Other than that, the core of what this is is identical. It's just taking the next generation technology and trying to bake it in here, but I think if you've got a 2020, 2021 or 2022 version, there's zero reason to upgrade. I'll be completely honest. There's not enough here and in fact, I explained it on the interior why I thought that that 2020 switch over to the, you know, having the better engine, the better tuning and still having the old legacy controls was a better thing. This doesn't add a whole lot unless you like the glitz and, you know, gloss of this tech that they put in here. I think if you've not currently owned an X7 and you're looking to spend, quite frankly, a lot of money on a full-blown premium luxury SUV, this, unless you're spending way more, is the best three-row luxury SUV currently on sale, in my approximation. That's a good time to get in the final thoughts, Jack, I'm gonna tell you all about what I think. Final thoughts on the updated X7. There's no doubt what you're going to gather from the driving impressions and the fact that I own one of these is not a surprise that it's pretty good. It is a luxury boat. This is something that appeals to a small group of people that want driving character, a really good drivetrain, and handling out of a massive vehicle. It's counterintuitive, it doesn't make a lot of sense. For me, what I wanted was a third row that I can put down and never use. I wanted the cargo capacity for our work stuff. When I go to the track, I pile camera gear in it, I can put everything in this, and it's still fast and it checks all those boxes that something like a minivan doesn't do in terms of speed because there's no luxury minivans, otherwise I'd own one of those. It's something that the commodity three rows don't do too well. They're either kind of off-roady or they're just so bland and boring and they're focused on, you know, fuel economy and just the basics for a lower cost. They don't deliver what this brings to the table and that's why you're paying so much more money for it. Is it worth like $92,000 to $100,000 for the V8? I would say yes. If you have the money, there's nothing quite like this drivetrain experience out of the V8. It's very special, that's why I wanted it, clearly. The B58 that Jack is absolutely just drenching his jeans over all the time is an amazing engine, don't get me wrong, but in the X7, it's just not enough to propel this monster. You need the douchebag factor of loud V8, well, even though it's not so loud anymore, and you need the power. I love that part of it. It is excessive, but it works. Everything about this works to a very high level. Now, people are going to say, okay, what's the negatives? The truth is the depreciation of this is tyrannical. When I got mine during COVID, I'm like, I wound up getting rid of the XC90 for it and I paid a lot more money than I probably should have for it and now I look at the values and within a year, they've dropped by like $25,000 and I'm not even kidding, one year is like 25, probably even 30. So, you have to lease it. I The other part is, what's going to go wrong? Well, probably a lot, but to be fair, if you're getting the V8, this is something they've evolved. It's not like it used to be. The Inline-6 is one of the most reliable high-performance luxury products in the world and the gearbox, including the ZF on both, granted with the hybrid stuff, don't know how that's going to be. It's going to be expensive to fix. Air ride, rear wheel steering, all that's going to be more money. It's going to a specialty mechanic or the dealership only. So yes, you're buying an expensive car, it's going to be expensive to fix, but I don't feel like, at least in my driving and a lot of the people I know, it's the chicken ---- stuff that goes wrong, not the big stuff, unless you're piling on, you know, 200,000 miles. But I'm going to leave it at that. I'm going to cover way more when I get into my own video on this. Thanks for watching. I'll see you next time.