I was wondering who on earth the absolutely horrendous Merc and BMW interiors are made for but perhaps you will like them more than I do with slabs of screens everywhere LOL. I guess the main question is apart from Navigation and music, what exactly is it that you want to do?
Mercedes MBUX is the good one. The other 'standard' infotainment that you don't tick a R40K box for on most of them is absolute rubbish unless you're using the (in 2023) plug-in carplay/AA... "The Best or Nothing". Mercedes is also known for removing features as your car is being built so if you order be aware that you may end up with the speakers system or infotainment itself being downgraded. You will then have to reject the vehicle and start again. They famously did this in 2018/19 where a whole host of AMGs came without folding mirrors and various spec downgrades.
The worst part about owning a Mercedes is dealing with Mercedes. Bear in mind from my experience Mercedes and Audi are made to look good in pics. Living with them, in my case long term with Merc, the quality is ABYSMAL. I am talking about steering wheel trim (those cool looking metallic ones) bubbling. Window switches 'delaminating' and slicing open your finger... trim becoming sun damaged in the strangest ways (eg: on the roof rails, the rail made of the same material as the cover is perfect but the cover looks like it sat in the Sahara for 10 years). Paint is rubbish, panels are physically of poor quality - I thought I had a hidden repair for years until they replaced the bootlid and the replacement from Merc had the same kind of random imperfections in finish. The cool AMG wheels? Clear comes off in sheets through normal wear/washing. I was blamed for this. They cost more for the 18" cast wheels than my Forged 20" M5 wheels... The car is still on plan so not old... has been ceramic coated for its entire life (this was one of the potential sources of this problem according to the geniuses at Mercedes BTW). The solutions from dealers is that "everyone does" is just to replace these parts... and that it is somehow your fault... straight out of the Porsche owner's coping handbook... Making a motorplan claim? Rent a car for a week rather than wait in frustration as they request the same thing 10x from your service advisor before approving and wait hours/days in between giving feedback.
iDrive is still the gold standard for me. It is also the most robust, not randomly resetting and doing strange things. The connected features of BMW are contained in their own platform and have some good features (the road object warnings for instance and remote 3D view which I used far more times than I thought I would)
Audi is for those psychopaths who play first person shooters with mouselook inverted. Rinse and repeat with Audi quality - looks great, actual quality is meh - The interiors wear in the strangest of ways... I will get bombarded with posts about how these various squeaks, rattles and wear are either the fault of the user or 'normal audi sounds' if I go further
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I would not buy ANYTHING linked to the Google ecosystem beyond having Android auto capability. I have no desire for my functionality to be either exploited or randomly discontinued by them. This goes for ANY ecosystem: Mercedes had a class action lawsuit where certain functionality they sold the car with stopped working because their agreement with Microsoft ended. They also remove features and add them back as subscriptions after the fact sooooooo don't trust platforms and subs for core bits of your functionality.
IMHO You need wireless carplay or wireless android auto and you are good to go. ALL these systems will be dated in 3-4 years (even with a consistent interface like iDrive, the changes become very noticeable.
The above are the 'good' systems. Virtually any other system feels unintegrated and tacked on (at which point you may as well retrofit an Alpine Halo or double DIN unit.) My system from 2002 is probably better than Toyota's for instance.
