Ok, so I spent a few minutes going between MCU1 (with
brand new, fast emmc) and MCU2 (2 years old) cars comparing performance. Here is what I found:
- UI speed, the time it takes for menu windows such as controls or climate to show up, almost indistinguishable between the two MCUs (I'd have to video and count frames, which I'm not willing to spend time on)
- Map scroling - the actual speed with which I can move the map around is similar, map lags begind the finger a little more on MCU1, but it took going back and forth between cars to notice that MCU2 is faster
- Map refill - you can definitely see the difference there, I had both cars on WiFi (MCU1 on 2.4GHz and MCU2 on 5GHz so faster max speed). MCU1 took 2-3x the time to refill the map with new information - on MCU2 is was usually under a second to refill, on MCU1 between 1-2 seconds, more if I scrolled fast to a whole new area. At speed on a highway however, even very zoomed auto-scroll fills in seamlessly following the car's location.
- Media player - both have responsive UI (see #1 above) except MCU2 took longer to switch between streaming channels. MCU1 took less than a second to start streaming new selection, while MCU sat there spinning the wheel for 2-3 seconds - maybe it caches more before it starts streaming, or maybe a different media player built on new towers of abstraction web tech on MCU2?
- Browser - here is where you see the biggest difference. MCU2 is way faster, though not as fast as an iPad or premium Android device. MCU2 is at least 3-4 times faster to load pages like Tesla.com (neither is iPad fast). Google.com loads in 1-2 seconds on MCU1, under a second on MCU2. I guess the good news is that MCU1 browser does work with new emmc. It loaded tesla waze in 3-4 seconds - very usable while driving.
So, for me personally, MCU2 for $2,500 is definitely not worth the money. It would be cheaper to buy a premium tablet with cellular data to keep myself entertained while supercharging, than upgrade to MCU2 (even assuming free premium data would stay). Of course, worth is always relative "to whom", so everyone makes their own decisions on that.