Buttons Are Bougie Now
The 2022 Ford Bronco Raptor, among the most expensive offerings in the car manufacturer’s line of tough-guy throwback SUVs, features 418 horsepower, a 10-speed transmission, axles borrowed from off-road-racing vehicles, and 37-inch tires meant for driving off sand dunes at unnecessarily high speeds. But when the automotive site Jalopnik got its hands on a Bronco Raptor for testing, the writer José Rodríguez Jr. singled out something else entirely to praise about the $70,000 SUV: its buttons. The Bronco Raptor features an array of buttons, switches, and knobs controlling everything from its off-road lights to its four-wheel-drive mode to whatever a “sway bar disconnect” is. So much can be done by actually pressing or turning an object that Rodríguez Jr. found the vehicle’s in-dash touch screen—the do-it-all “infotainment system” that has become ubiquitous in new vehicles—nearly vestigial.
Then again, the ability to manipulate a physical thing, a features dedicated “Page Forward”/“Back” buttons, while the comes with a “premium pen” for note-taking that has a button. Or consider the Apple Watch, among the most expensive smartwatches around: All models come with a button and knob on their right side just below the bezel—plus a second button for the more expensive Ultra model. The sold on Amazon, by contrast, offer nothing but a screen on a strap. Speaking of which, I recently bought an Amazon-brand smart thermostat with a touch screen that nearly burned my house down. Perhaps a dial, like the one on the primo Google Nest, could have helped.
