New And Used Mercedes-Benz A Class: Prices, Photos, Reviews, Specs

New And Used Mercedes-Benz A Class: Prices, Photos, Reviews, Specs

The Mercedes-Benz A-Class is a compact sedan that serves as the luxury automaker's most affordable car. Although it has been available around the world for a while, the new Mercedes-Benz A220 is the first of its kind in the U.S. More than just a value proposition, the A-Class showcases some of Mercedes' latest tech. When the car arrived in 2018, it was the first to receive Benz's updated infotainment system, dubbed Mercedes-Benz User Experience (MBUX) with touchscreens and natural voice commands. With the A-Class, Mercedes-Benz has a competitor for the BMW 2-Series, Audi A3, and Acura ILX. On sale in late 2018, the 2019 Mercedes-Benz A220 arrived in the U.S. Powered by a 188-horsepower turbo-4, the A-Class is related to the CLA-Class but skips the swoopier lines of the small sedan in favor of a more traditional shape. The A220 was made available with front- or all-wheel drive, which Mercedes-Benz calls "4Matic," and all versions use a 7-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission.

Four-wheel independent suspension helped the small sedan stay planted on the road, while a stiffer body compared to the CLA-Class gifted the suspension more compliance to soak up ratty roads. Inside, the A220 featured two, large screens in different sizes. Base models get a pair of 7.0-inch screens for its digital instrument cluster and infotainment system. Top trims swap out the smaller screens for a pair of bigger 10.3-inch screens tasked with the same information. Regardless of screen size, the infotainment screens are touchscreens and boast Apple CarPlay and Android Auto compatibility. Aside from smartphone systems, the MBUX system featured natural voice commands to "wake" the system up. Simply saying "Hey, Mercedes" or "Mercedes" (similar to Siri or Alexa or Google) could prompt the system into setting a destination in navigation, turn the radio up, find the nearest gas station. Mercedes says the system uses onboard computers or cloud-based data to understand commands. The A220 seats four adults with more head room than the CLA-Class, a byproduct of its traditional sedan shape. The trunk holds 8.6 cubic feet of cargo, which is small for its class. A hatchback version of the A-Class is sold in other parts of the world, but Mercedes isn't likely to bring those to the U.S. Safety features on the A-Class include forward-collision warnings with automatic emergency braking, blind-spot monitors, a surround-view camera system, and active lane control. Most advanced safety features cost extra on the A220, unlike similar offerings from other automakers.

The female voice on the other end understands requests on everything from college sports and the stock market, to nutritional information in the donut you were about to chow down on. Impressively, MBUX can understand complicated and nuanced strings such as, 鈥渇ind me an Asian restaurant that鈥檚 open now rated four stars but is not Japanese,鈥?and will promptly display answers, sorted to your criteria. If talking to your car doesn鈥檛 come naturally, rest assured that the level of redundancy built into MBUX is impressive. You can interact with the car in whatever way works best for you. Though a bit of a reach to the main infotainment display, the touch functionality makes zooming in on the navigation or interacting with Apple CarPlay easier. Stuck on where to configure a particular vehicle function? Call up a 3D A-Class, rendered in real-time, and spin, touch, and interact with the miniature model to precisely find the feature you're looking to adjust.

The central touchpad, the successor to the COMAND controller knob, allows you to quickly snap through slickly styled menus and is considerably easier to use than the trackpad setups from Lexus and Acura. By contrast, few will dispute that the A-Class鈥檚 Intelligent Drive suite of active safety systems is at the top of its game. 2,250 Driver Assistance Package bundle brings flagship-grade features turning the little A-Class into a semi-autonomous vehicle. Full-speed adaptive cruise control will follow the car ahead, and it takes inputs from map data to slow the car down when approaching curves, roundabouts and junctions. 1,150. It overlays street names, building numbers, and navigation instructions over a live stream from a high-mounted camera atop the car鈥檚 windshield. It works brilliantly, though we wish it projected directly onto the windshield through the newly available full-color head-up display. When kitted with all the goodies, the A-Class is a formidable tech machine that should dazzle even the most ardent gadget geeks. With so much technology it would have been easy for Mercedes to glaze over the A-Class鈥檚 dynamics. Thankfully, it hasn鈥檛. It is apparent that much time was spent polishing and refining the shortcomings of the CLA.

While it may not have the same oomph as some of its cross-town rivals (it鈥檚 some 30 horses down compared to the Audi A3 Quattro), the new 2.0-liter delivers power smoothly, quietly, and without lag. In either the default Comfort or Sport mode, throttle response is well judged and off-the-line acceleration is sufficient. Better still is what Mercedes has done with the tuning of the ride, or at least when the car is fitted with the AMG-Line package (Comfort suspension with Sport ride height and 19-inch wheels wrapped in summer tires). Over the cobblestone streets around Seattle鈥檚 Pike Place Market, it absorbed impacts that would upset most bigger cars, and it avoids excessive harshness over potholes. It's firm but not uncomfortably so. We didn鈥檛 have a chance to try out the optional adaptive dampers or the standard issue 17-inch wheel and with run-flat tires; be sure to sample them when test driving.