Versprechen

I re-upped my subscription for 18 months. Costing less than a dollar a day even at an early adopter price, it's worth it to me to have built-in Google Earth, traffic notifications and Wi-Fi.

Spartan-S4

The B&O system come standard on the Premium +. The Prestige gives you additionally

Everything on Premium Plus and

mplsbrian

As long as we are discussing the value proposition, I wonder how many of us have fully explored the power of AudiConnect. As my trial subscription ends in about 1 more month, I have been diving in deep.

My favorite features so far:

1. The car will only display headlines while in motion, but if you jog the dial right it will read the entire article out loud (and the synthesized voice sounds better than Siri!). "Why not just listen to the news on the radio," you ask? Because I can choose just the stories I want, on demand, and then get back to the music.
2. The weather feature is awesome. I can easily pull up hourly weather reports near my destination or along my route, and I can even see a weather radar map. I am going to be driving over 5,000 miles all over the United States to go skiing in January and February alone, crossing tons of mountain passes in the process--this feature will be as useful to me as it is to an amateur airplane pilot. (If only there was a way to layer the weather radar over the GPS navigation...that'd be sweet as hell. Maybe in the next S4?)
3. Fuel info -- sounds trivial (I'm a firm believer in the philosophy in "put the nozzle in and pay the man // who cares about MPG" when you buy a $60K sport sedan), but when you're driving 2,500 miles a month to go skiing, you might save you a hundred bucks over the course of a season. Sure, it's an edge case, but that could pay for half the AudiConnect subscription right there. This feature also tells you what octane various stations carry, which matters when you're in the mountains where 85 or even 83 Octane is considered "regular" due to the local elevation, and 91 can be tougher to find (which matters if you plan to descend below 5,000 feet on the same tank).
4. Of course, the app--specifically sending GPS destinations to the car. Saves a lot of time screwing around with the MMI before starting off. I only wish retrieving sent-to-app destinations was a few less MMI button clicks than going into the "MyAudi Destinations" menu. But honestly, it's pretty damn quick once you do it once or twice.
5. I haven't used it except to test, but I truly expect the hotspot is going to get a lot of use on my ski trips. I'm going with a close friend, and there will be days where we'll be driving 12 to 16 hours and probably taking turns driving (consider me a trusting friend). The opportunity to VPN in and get some work done or just mindlessly surf the internet is going to be great and will make those long hours in the car sneak by. Is it overpriced? Yes. But considering how many people fork over $20 just to get Wifi on an airplane for a 2 hour flight, I figure that if it saves me even one single PTO day because I'm able to set my Skype status as "working from passenger seat" and handle a few things, then the entire AudiConnect package has already paid for itself.

That all being said, I sure wish you didn't have to pull the trigger for 6 or 18 months at a time (a monthly or 3-month package for ski season only would be ideal) and it is still exorbitantly overpriced. But my point is that when you really peel back the covers on what AudiConnect Prime/Plus are actually capable of, the value proposition can still be made...despite the price.

...or at least, this is what I'm telling myself as I dig for my credit card...

markcincinnati

Well, I caved.

I went ahead with the $499 prepay for 18-months. I also "disabled" (deny) WiFi in the car as it seems that would be where I could run up some data charges -- some folks say they can be seriously large. I don't know, but I have an iPhone which contains audio: books and music. I do not use "streaming" services (and certainly won't now). The $499 program did have in the description "unlimited" data, vs the $199 program.

I reset the usage counter, too -- since it was last reset when I picked up the car at the beginning of May.

I've also prepaid one-year of sat radio.

Hopefully, I'm good to go so to speak for 12 months of sat radio and 18 months of Audi Connect Prime and Plus. If I did something wrong that eats large amounts of data, I will know shortly, as I plan to check the data-use counter twice a month, until I get the understanding of what consumes data.

What I want to know mplsbrian, is how to invoke the features (1, 2, etc. you detailed in your post this morning). I know I can look it up in the manual and I am not opposed to that approach, but would appreciate your "telling" us how to "dive in deep" as you say.

The cost, go with me here, for 24-months of a feature I do enjoy (Audi Connect) is $499 (I paid for 18-months and got the first 6 as a free-trial). Still not entirely convinced of the value (seems, still seems, a bit high), and the vote with my dollars hardly will encourage Audi to cut the price, I know. But, I like having the features and it is hardly "unaffordable" (I mean the car, all in before any discount and including sales tax, was $65K) -- so I have 18-months to enjoy the functions, certainly get at least some benefit and there you have it: Rationalized.

As I always say: I'm driving it like I live.

You may find its value nearly zip, or completely zip -- and, guess what, you're right (for you).

I'll just keep the thought that often prices tend to decline.

mplsbrian

Hit the menu button, use the wheel to scroll down to "AudiConnect," and play around: under that menu there are sections for weather, fuel prices, news, etc. Within each (or at least many) of these sub-menus you can either press the right drawer button or push the wheel to the right to access additional options, such as "Read" while within the news section to have a soothing voice read you the article you've selected. I believe the weather map is also something you find under an additional options drawer, for example.

markcincinnati

Thanks!

frankrockford

This is really timely information on Prime/Connect, as I am taking delivery of my S4 this evening. Not sure how much actual work I'll get done today while daydreaming about the red seats, the carbon, the metallic paint and the quad exhaust. My goal is to completely ignore the reality of the "expiring trial" discussed above, and to live in new S4 ignorance for at least the first 30 days, then I can consider the upcoming situation with Audi Prime/Connect. Thanks for sharing... I think. HaHa!

sethz

Just curious, do you already have an AT&T mobile phone plan? I currently have a carrier that isn't supported for use with my 2017 Audi Q7 and am thinking of switching so that I too can prepay the $499. If it were possible to just prepay and still keep my mobile carrier (cheaper than AT&T at the moment).

Thanks again for posting, it's really helpful and informative. I like the GPS and the ability for me to view it on the VC in my Premium Plus (my only regret was not getting the Prestige).

sethz

I hit the wrong button to post, so sorry for the duplicate...just wanted to direct my reply to the correct place. (sigh) Just curious, do you already have an AT&T mobile phone plan? I currently have a carrier that isn't supported for use with my 2017 Audi Q7 and am thinking of switching so that I too can prepay the $499. If it were possible to just prepay and still keep my mobile carrier (cheaper than AT&T at the moment) I think things would be better.

Thanks again for posting, it's really helpful and informative. I like the GPS and the ability for me to view it on the VC in my Premium Plus (my only regret was not getting the Prestige).

superswiss

You do not need to be an existing AT&T customer in order to subscribe to Connect PRIME. If you are an existing AT&T customer, then you can add the Wifi hotspot for $10/month to your shared data plan to use the same data pool as you do for your phones etc.. You will still need the Connect PRIME subscription either way, but if you use the hotspot a lot in the car and go beyond the included 6GB, then adding it as another device to your existing data plan might be a good idea.

Just for further clarification, the Audi connect services such as Google Earth, Traffic etc. do not count against any data limits. Connect PRIME essentially includes unlimited data for those services. Only the Wifi hotspot is subject to data limits. Either the 6GB included in Connect PRIME, or the limit from whatever Connect PLUS plan you have in addition, or if you added it to to your existing AT&T plan, then it's the limit of your shared data pool.