Photos: 2013 Honda Accord Test Drive

The redesigned Honda Accord is set to hit dealerships September 19th. Bernardi Honda in Natick, MA got some in a few days early so I headed over today for a test drive.

2013 Honda Accord EX-L V6 Sedan

The 2013 is said to be a complete redesign, and it is indeed a brand new model. But to those familiar with the prior Accord -- as I am since we've been leasing a 2010 Accord EX sedan for two and a half years -- it feels like more of an incremental improvement. A very nice incremental improvement.

2013 Honda Accord Sport Sedan

The trim levels should be familiar to long-time Honda fans. An LX, an EX, an EX-L, and an EX-L V6 are available along with a new Sport model priced just south of the EX, and a loaded Touring model. The Sport lacks a moonroof but includes 18" alloy wheels, dual exhaust tips and a spoiler.

To my eye, the rear styling is a nice change from the prior model. They probably could have done more to catch my attention on the front - I think it looks almost identical to the 2010.
 
The new Accord offers some very nice standard features. It's amazing how much a single little feature -- like an AUX input for audio from your mobile phone -- can change how much I enjoy a car. All new Accords come standard with Bluetooth integration, AUX and USB inputs, rear backup cameras, dual zone climate control and more. Compared to our 2010 Accord EX which lacked external temperature display for example, the 2013 is very nicely equipped.

2013 Accord Sport Interior

The view of the dashboard from behind the steering wheel is significantly revamped, mostly for the better in my opinion.

I took a 2013 Accord Sport sedan out for a test drive. It comes with cloth seats which I thought they were a bit more comfortable than the prior model. A bit firmer in a good way. Touch points are nicely trimmed in leather and the car feels very comfortably sized with a touch of new technological splash.
 
If there's one complaint I have about our 2010 Accord, it's that the car is a bit slower than I'd like it to be. Even when you really give it some gas it doesn't have very good throttle response from say 10-45 mph when you're merging with traffic.
 
The 2013 boosts horsepower slightly while also improving mileage so I was looking forward to seeing if it was any more powerful. I'd say it felt about 10% more powerful. Which is probably enough to give us what we need but not necessarily what we want. This is an Accord after all.
 
One other unique feature in the 2013 is its Continuously Variable Transmission. I've never driven one of these before - and I think this is a first in the Accord. I was expecting the car to never feel like it's shifting but the net effect is that it felt to me like it was holding its current gear for a long time under heavy acceleration.
 
Separate from the CVT is a Sport mode which can be selected just south of "D" when selecting which gear you'd like to drive in. And separate from this is an Econ button to the left of the steering wheel that can be used, presumably, to improve mileage. I think these are welcome additions but I'm not sure I'd like to think about these things and would prefer the car to adjust automatically to provide the best mileage possible while giving me power when I need it.
 
They also had a 2013 EX-L on the lot. I thought the EX rims looked a little lackluster compared to the Sport's, and not quite as stylish as the outgoing model:
 

2013 Honda Accord EX-L

Pricing looks to be very modestly increased compared to the outgoing model. The 2013 Sport sedan I drove stickers for just $24k. I think that's a lot of car for the money.

2013 Sport Window Sticker

Full details on pricing, colorization options, and packages is set to arrive this Wednesday, September 19th.
 
I'm also considering a new 3 series or a used 5 series. Long shot considerations include the VW Passat and the Hyundai Genesis. I'd be a trading in a used 2003 325i -and- terminating a lease on our 2010 Accord 6 months early. Discounts on the new model are said to be hard to come by - but isn't that always said to be the case when you're on the buying end of a car transaction?
 
Bottom Line
 
I think the 2013 is a very nice redesign of a very reliably good midsize sedan. I'll look forward to learning a bit more about them and seeing if we can work out a deal I can't refuse.
 
Question of the Day:What do you think of the new Accord? Leave a comment below or ping me on Twitter: @RobertDwyer
 
Further Reading: How to lease a new car for a rock bottom price
 
I'd love it if you SUBSCRIBED to Casa Dwyer for future updates.
 

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Who and How Much: Wellesley Window Cleaners

Every time I get a quote for a home repair or maintenance item it seems to cost twice as much as I think it should. I recently had this experience as I requested quotes to clean the windows in our 1,800 square foot home.
 
We've got 10 double hung windows on the second floor, and 10 more on the first floor. Also on the first floor, we have 24 casement windows, 4 skylights, a sliding glass door, and a front door with glass and sidelights. The majority of the windows have screens and the casement windows have removable grids.
 
The first quote came from a local franchise of a nationwide window cleaning company: $390. I thought this was a little high so I called on Service Magic to see if we could do better.
 
Service Magic (now Home Advisor) is an interesting business. You submit a request online and they try to match you with service providers in your area who reach out and arrange a time to come by for a quote.
 
I submitted a request for quotes at 4:00 pm on a Tuesday and within 10 minutes 2 companies called to set a time to stop by for a quote. By 6:00 pm two of the providers visited our house and provided a written quote. Amazingly quick - these guys know they're being price compared and there are other firms competing for the business. The quotes were in the $350-$365 range.
 
The next morning a third firm stopped by when we weren't here and left a quote for $220 along with a brochure and a business card. I was skeptical that the lowest quote would be the best, but after comparing ratings on Service Magic for each of the providers, the cheapest guys had the best overall rating. And the homeowner reviews gave me confidence it would be a solid experience. So I called Rise and Shine Window Cleaning and scheduled an appointment for the coming Monday morning between 8 and 9 am.
 
That Monday morning I got a call at 8:00 am letting me know they were on their way and shortly thereafter Leoni and Giancarlo Carvalho -- brothers and owners of the business -- showed up in their totally legit-looking signed window cleaning van.
 
Window cleaning is a bit of a tricky industry and looking back, I had to think a bit why it took me so long to have this done. I say it's tricky because on one hand it seems like tedious but simple work. All it takes is some Windex and paper towels, right? Wrong. It takes ladders, scrapers, solvents, know-how, skill and much more. Furthermore, nobody likes strangers in their house. If we're lucky, we've found housecleaners we trust. Going through that again with window cleaners is a bit of an adventure. But it's worth it because after 5 years windows and screens can get pretty dirty.
 
When the guys showed up they politely introduced themselves and described how they'd like to do things. First they'd remove all the screens from the inside, then they clean the outside of the windows, then the inside.
 
We've got a no shoe policy in our house so I asked them if they could wear shoe covers while they were inside. They said of course - they always do that. We've had contractors over for much more expensive remodeling projects who didn't show that kind of respect for our home. Nice touch.
 
So I went about my work from my home office and they set out cleaning the windows. They were quiet, and efficient and polite...I really don't think I could be any more pleased with window cleaners.
 
About half way through the project I took a break to see how they were doing. It dawned on me just how much work this is and how I could have spent 3+ weekends on this project and still not achieve the results they did in 4 hours. They quietly moved furniture away from in front of windows and replaced it exactly where it was. They scraped away built up debris on windows that would have taken a lot of elbow grease otherwise. They removed, cleaned, and replaced screens without breaking a single thing. I'm sure I could have busted $200 worth of stuff bungling the job on my own.
 
I had a conference call towards the end of their time here so I left a check for them knowing I'd be happy with the job they did. I love it when I do my job while professionals do their job better than I possibly could. These guys were fantastic. And what a difference clean windows make. Absolutely sparkling clean and clear. Well done.
 
These guys were great. Absolutely highly recommended. 5 out of 5 stars.
 
Check 'em out:
Rise and Shine Window Cleaning
 
And check out Home Advisor too while you're at it.
 

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Back to School Lovin' from the Oven

I'll be the first one to tell you that I'm not much of a baker. Between cooking and baking, cooking offers more recipe flexibility which suits my impatient improv in the kitchen style. Even so, sometimes there's just no replacement to something warm out of the oven. Anyone who has baked at all knows that baking requires accuracy and measuring; neither of these my forte.

Even so, I've been wanting to have something to offer two hungry, growing boys that was hearty, healthy and filling. Sometimes carrot sticks and ranch just don't cut it. And the baked snacks that are available for purchase never seem substantive enough. One afternoon, I came across a recipe on Pinterest that looked interesting and offered a way to incorporate more veggies into their diet - always another objective of mine.

Against my better judgement, I modified Marcus Samuelsson's recipe and made my own version of his Whole-Wheat Sweet Potato Coconut Muffin. Now twice adapted, mine contains healthy fat, fruit, veggies and a bit of protein from the yogurt.

I strongly recommend using silicone baking cups like these if you don't want to grease muffin tins or mess around with paper liners.

2 and 1/2 cups whole-wheat flour, preferably pastry flour
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup ground flax seed meal
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup mashed or pureed sweet potato
1 cup applesauce
1/2 cup dried, unsweetened coconut
1 egg, beaten
1 cup non-fat Greek yogurt

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, flax seed, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. In another bowl, whisk the egg, add applesauce, cooled sweet potato, coconut, egg, and greek yogurt. Fold wet mixture into dry mixture until just combined.
Fill muffin cups; sprinkle a pinch of sugar on top of each muffin and then bake for about 25 to 30 minutes, or until muffins are puffed and turning golden brown on top. Remove from muffin cups when cool enough to handle. Serve warm. The others will last in the refrigerator for several days.
The result? Sweet muffins my boys beg for that are easy to pack in lunches.  Let me know if you agree.

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Does the new Apple Airport Express have better range than inexpensive Linksys routers?

Update (9/4/2013): A couple months ago I complained to Comcast that my Internet service was unreliable. It went down frequently and needed to be rebooted - and that didn't always solve the problem.

They came over and replaced our modem/wireless router combo with a new device (this one here) which has incredible wireless range. It easily covers our whole house with a strong signal, is more reliable than their previous modem, and provides faster connection speeds both wireless and wired.

I didn't need the Apple Airport Express after getting this new Comcast router so I sold it on Craigslist. Moral of the story: Check with your Internet service provider if they have an option for an integrated wireless router. Having multiple wireless routers/range extenders is a pain. If you're with Comcast this latest/greatest device really makes a difference.

Apple currently offers two wireless routers, the Airport Extreme and the Airport Express. The Airport Extreme retails for $179 and especially since its redesign last year has been known for its strong range. The $99 Airport Express has been around forever but was mostly known for its versatility. It can serve as a wireless router, a wireless range extender, facilitate wireless printing, and serve up wireless audio.

But Apple recently redesigned the Express in ways that make it a viable wireless router for the home. They added an ethernet port (for that one rogue device you have which you'd prefer to connect via a cable - we use it for our printer), made it a dual-band N router (it was previously single band), and alluded to improved range.

The new Airport Express looks nearly identical to the Apple TV other than its color. The Express is white and the Apple TV is black. The prior Airport Express plugged directly into the wall whereas the new one connects via a more standard cable. It's about as minimalistic and beautiful as I can imagine a wireless router being.

It's also very small. Here it is alongside a Linksys E2500 N router for size comparison:

Wireless router manufacturers seem hesitant to make concrete range claims, perhaps because everyone's situation is different. Which brings me to the purpose of this post - to compare the relative strength of the new Airport Express vs. inexpensive Linksys wireless routers.

Does the Airport Express have better range? Can it cover the whole house?

We live in an 1,800 square foot L-shaped house. The Internet comes into my home office on one end of the house and the most challenging wireless connection it needs to make is to our home entertainment system which is about 80 feet away if the signal tries to travel through the house -or- about 58 feet if it wants to sneak outside - according to the Pythagorean Theorem. ;)

When we first started streaming content from our home entertainment system through a Linksys WRT160Nv2 wireless router to a Roku XDS box it seemed to work okay for the most part even though the signal wasn't terribly strong. But intermittently we'd have issues with buffering. Then I noticed when security was enabled on the Linksys router the Roku would need to be reminded of the wireless password every day or two. This become annoying enough that I disabled the security on our router for a while.

Then we added a new Samsung "Smart" TV with "Internet capabilities". I put these features in quotes because it's not very smart (nor pleasant to use for that matter) and the Internet is only possible with the addition of a USB WiFi adapter. I was curious to see how it worked, but didn't want to spring for the Samsung USB adapter so I got a more affordable one (~$20) from Rosewill that technically works with the Samsung but seems to have the weakest range of any WiFi client of any device on our network.

So I thought to try a new Linksys router to see if it would improve the range. I got a refurbished Linksys E2500 from Cisco for around $35. Sadly, it seemed to have even worse range than the WRT160Nv2.

When we remodeled the house a few years ago we had an ethernet cable installed that ran across the house to where our iMac is. I thought to try using our old Linksys router as a wired/wireless range extender. After some futzing I successfully configured the old router as a range extender and we mercifully had strong coverage over the entire house.

However, the situation was precarious at best. Think about it - if you're watching a movie and there's some buffering (due to who knows what?) what are you going to do? Reboot the cable modem, reboot the primary router, and reboot the secondary router? The system was too complicated.

I also ran into a crazy situation where my work VPN would have trouble connecting as I'd switch connections from the repeater to the primary router and vice versa. And my issues with Roku and router security settings persisted. It was a mess.

So I sought a wireless N router with strong range that could cover the whole house. I'd heard the Airport Extreme had good range but I didn't want to pay $179 for a router. You can often buy a refurbished Extreme for $139 and though I'm a fan of Apple refurbs I hear you can't return them to the Apple Store. You have to ship them back if you want to return them.

So I thought to try the new Airport Express to see if its improved range would cover our whole house reliably.

I bought it at the Apple store. Setup through our iMac was a breeze. Apple bundles an Aiport setup utility with their operating system - I'm not sure how setup would go through a PC or iOS devices. The setup utility made it very clear how to name the router, how to set up a guest network, and how to set up wireless security on the Express. Very nice.

The initial results were promising, but it wasn't a slam dunk.What I'd like, unrealistically, is for every device in our house to have 5 bars of strength and have everything work perfectly all the time.

The most challenging device - the Samsung/Rosewill TV - still isn't able to establish a connection. But I don't care about that anymore especially since we've since added an Apple TV to the mix. Between the Apple TV and the Roku we're all set with streaming devices.

Once I got past that I've been testing the Airport Express in a variety of real world situations. Coverage for various portable devices around the house (iPad, iPod touches, iPhones, Lenovo laptop) has been outstanding. No problems anywhere. Coverage for stationary devices (iMac, Apple TV, Roku) has been very good as well.

I thought to perform some slightly more rigorous comparisons to give those who might be considering an Airport Express as their primary router some reference points.

Test #1: 50 Feet Away through 2 Walls

The first test I did was with each router about 50 feet away through a couple walls to our iMac. Both routers reported strong signal strength according to the iMac. According to Comcast's speedtest site the connection speed was faster with the Airport Express (25 mbps) than with the Linksys E2500 (20 mpbs).

I replicated this test on a Lenovo laptop in the same location. With the Airport Express the speed reported was 17 mpbs whereas with the Linksys the reported speed was 14mpbs.

To be sure my incoming Internet connection speed didn't change between these experiments I went back and tested on the iMac again and the speeds were the same as the first time I checked.

Any of these speeds are pretty good, but it's interesting to see that the Airport Express is faster in this scenario. And that the iMac reports a faster connection than a similar aged Lenovo laptop.

Advantage: Airport Express

Test #2: 60 Feet Away through a couple walls, outside, on an L

This is the most critical connection for streaming. It's the connection between my home office where the Internet connection comes in and where we keep the router and where our home entertainment system is. We stream from this location via an Apple TV and a Roku box. I tested it with my Lenovo laptop since it would be hard to move the iMac.

First I ran a speed test at this location with the Airport Express. The Lenovo reported 7 mbps, a new iPad reported 13 mbps and an iPhone 4S reported 11 mbps. The iPad and iPhone were tested with speedcheck apps. With the Linksys, the Lenovo reported 12 mbps, the iPad reported 12 mbps, and the iPhone reported 2 mbps.

Advantage: Unclear.

Test #3: Real life streaming signal strength and performance - does it work?

I don't know how to perform a speed test with the Apple TV nor the Roku. But the reported signal strength, for what it's worth, with the Apple TV was 4 out of 5 when connected to the Aiport Express and 3 out of 5 when connected to the Linksys.

The Roku box reports "fair" signal strength with the Airport Express (3 out of 5) and oscillated between "low" "fair" and "poor" (1-3 out of 5) when connected to the Linksys. The first time I tried connecting to the Linksys from the Roku box the connection failed. The next time I tried it suceeded, but when I launched the Amazon channel it failed to connect. Then I tried again a few minutes later and it was able to connect to Amazon. This is symptomatic of what I've experienced with this Linksys router when connected at this distance in conjunction with streaming in the past. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. That's pretty frustrating during family movie night.

We've been able to stream movies on the Roku (Amazon Instant Video) with the Airport Express without incident. Streaming the trailer for Brave as a test on the Apple TV with the Airport Express it starts playing within a few seconds and streams the 2 minute 30 second clip without issue. Streaming Ocean's Eleven in HD from Amazon Instant Video with the Roku started within a few seconds and played the entire movie without incident.

Advantage: Airport Express

I went back and re-tested our old Linksys WRT160Nv2. As I remembered, it seems to have slightly better range than the newer Linksys E2500. This seems strange because they're both N routers, the E2500 is newer, and the E2500 is dual band. However, I still had trouble reliably streaming with the WRT160Nv2. Although it connected without incident when I tried to browse for movies on Amazon through the Roku it failed, then later worked. Then later failed.

Conclusions and Recommendation

I've been very pleased with the new Apple Aiport Express. It reasonably covers our entire house whereas our previous Linksys routers had a hard time doing so reliably. Setup is a snap, it's small, it's sharp looking, silent, and versatile.

It has very good range and provides faster speedtest results than the our prior Linksys routers even when both have a strong connection.

I'd be interested in testing the Airport Extreme under the same conditions, but I'm not going to buy one just to return it. If someone in the neighborhood has one and would like to drop it by let me know!

I highly recommend the Airport Express. A fantastic product.

93/100 points: Outstanding

Here's a link to the new Apple Aiport Express on Amazon:


And here are some links to other products mentioned in this write-up:

• Roku 2 XD Streaming Player 1080p 
• Cisco-Linksys WRT160N-RM Refurbished Wireless-N Router 
• Rosewill RNX-N1 Wireless-N 2.0 Dongle 02.11b/g/n USB2.0
• Factory Refurbished Cisco Linksys E2500 Advanced Simultaneous Dual-Band Wireless-N Router
• Apple TV (newest version)

Question of the Day: What's been your experience with home wireless routers? What works for you? What doesn't?

I'd love it if you subscribed to Casa Dwyer for future updates. Coming soon: Reviews of the iPad and comparisons of the Apple TV vs. Roku.