zlacker

That entirely depends on what other interactions you've done recently. If you've moved the dial to any other control, you have to carefully scroll it back to the right place. The highlighting showing which control currently has focus isn't very obvious, especially once Android Auto starts showing two or three apps in split screen. If you want to mute the speech, change the compass heading, go to the Spotify section, etc, it all takes careful dialing.

The dial itself also sucks. It has both a rotary spinner that's too easy to turn and a 4-way joystick that's too easy to nudge. If you happen to drive across a tiny bump (especially with the stock shocks, which are really stiff), you can entirely lose your place and have to hunt for the highlighted control before you can resume. I have to lean forward because my eyesight isn't that great compared to before. It's not bad enough to stop driving, but not good enough to see Android Auto on that tiny screen, of which Maps is only like 2/3, and each button is tiny.

Touch screens don't really have that problem because there's not a control that has focus at any given time. You just poke whatever you want, regardless of current context.

Touch screens (like on Teslas) are worse than traditional buttons. But the Mazda spinner is even worse than touch screens. It is far far more distracting, IMO, and a life-threatening dealbreaker for me.

It's cool if you like them though... I just won't be buying a Mazda anymore, but that car (to my surprise) got pretty high reviews and nobody even mentioned the infotainment UX. Shrug. I'm just picky about these things.