Dodge Journey: That's Entertainment!
When you leave one car and get into another, it’s impossible to not judge the second one against the first. In the case of a 2009 Dodge Journey on the heels of a 2009 Ford Flex, that’s a bit of an unfair comparison: The Flex is larger, has more options and just feels more affluent. Of course, that’s because it is. It costs roughly 10 grand more than the Journey.
Entertainment is a key concern when you’re on the road for as long as we’ve been on this vacation. The Journey’s system helped keep everyone entertained, but not quite in the way I’d hoped — my kids were amused with my inability to handle the Journey’s joystick-managed nav system. If we’ve said it once at Cars.com, we’ve said it a million times: No more joysticks with nav systems! We definitely prefer the touch-screen approach, and I’m personally very much in love with the Flex’s voice-activated nav system, despite the flaws that come with being a new system.
The Journey’s navigation display is really very good, with a clear screen and good images to determine where you want to go. What’s less impressive is the process of entering in the name of a town, since the system doesn’t seem to be familiar with upstate New York’s arcane way of naming towns and villages. Of course, that joystick leaves you with all sorts of funky spellings if you can’t hit it dead-on. In addition, the nav system makes a really odd jump from the half-mile view to a two-mile view. When you get up to a five-mile view, you often don’t see the numbers for the interstates, which is really annoying if you’re trying to determine an alternate route.
While the Journey offers satellite radio (I loved the station dedicated to Bruce Springsteen), I found its iPod solution awful. There’s an auxiliary jack like the one found in many cars, but there’s also a USB jack. Unfortunately, unlike many other cars, that USB jack doesn’t connect your iPod controls to your stereo. Instead, it lets you upload music and photos into Dodge’s MyGig system. In reality, I suspect most drivers and their families would rather just use their iPods and have no desire to fill up their car with music. I think they’d rather be able to listen to the music they already have with a simple connection. This seems like a victory for design over common sense.
The six-CD/DVD changer was a hit, at least for its DVD component. We picked up some cheap DVDs and the kids were able to watch and listen to them with wireless headphones while my wife and I listened to the radio.
Next, I’ll talk about the driving, handling and seating options in the Journey, where it’s a stronger competitor.
