For a fiercely unique automaker like Mazda, it’s weird to see it give in to peer pressure. Model year 2024 brings a round of light updates to the popular CX-5 compact crossover, stuff like new paint colors and a new Carbon Turbo trim. However, buried deep in the list of minor tweaks is a significant sentence. I’ve bolded the really important bit for emphasis.

The 10.25” full-color center display features the latest Mazda Connect infotainment system that can be controlled with the multi-function commander knob and is integrated with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto that now feature touchscreen functionality.

Well, that’s a pretty big deal, is it not? Just last year, our very own Jason Torchinsky railed against Mazda gating customers into using the infotainment knob (even though I think it’s brilliant). It turns out that many of you also think the knob is brilliant, as seen in the comments section of that article. However, mass appeal is important when it comes to sustaining a car company’s future, and Mazda has bit the bullet and gone with limited touchscreen capability on the CX-5 for 2024.

It’s worth noting that Jason isn’t the only automotive journalist with beef over Mazda’s knob. The list of outlets complaining about the knob range from Jalopnik’s “The Mazda 3’s Infotainment Dial is Distracting, No Matter What Mazda Says” to Edmunds claiming that a touchscreen on the Mazda CX-30 crossover “would be welcome.”

This isn’t really that surprising; the Mazda CX-50 launched with touchscreen CarPlay functionality (it’s buried in a submenu but it’s there) and the new CX-90 full-size crossover also supports touchscreen interaction within phone mirroring. This HMI addition hasn’t yet made it to the Mazda 3, MX-5, or CX-30 models due to a different physical infotainment screen, but it seems to be slowly spreading across the Mazda model range.

On the one hand, this re-introduction of a touchscreen explicitly for the purposes of phone mirroring should placate shoppers put off by Mazda’s infotainment system. While the screens themselves may be a bit of a reach and the native infotainment software may only support knob inputs, most people will spend the rest of their driving lives in CarPlay or Android Auto, so knob control becomes more of a concept than a reality.

On the other hand, fingerprints on touchscreens are a scourge and once you learn how everything works and go through the order of operations, the knob controller makes perfect sense. Sooner or later, you’ll memorize the clicks required to flag traffic in Waze, respond to a voice text, and change your current playlist. If you are a very logical person, this setup should make perfect sense to you, but most people aren’t. Most consumers crave familiarity, which is why J.D. Power Initial Quality reports flag anything unintuitive as a problem. Coincidentally, stop putting any weight in IQS reports, they’re made almost entirely of bullshit. Once you develop the muscle memory, you can make key inputs with your eyes off the screen which is entirely safer than poking around on a touchscreen.

In any case, I’ll keep using the knob, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Mazda ships a few more CX-5 crossovers thanks to this touchscreen for Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. It’s a sensible move, and there’s a chance we could see more Mazdas on the roads because of it. Or not, who knows? I mean, I live in Canada — I see them more often than American crossovers regardless, but that’s the weirdness of different markets, right?

(Photo credits: Mazda)

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