Heated and Cooled Seats Might Just Be The Best Car Upgrade Ever [ADVERTORIAL]

I don’t know about you, but I have never owned a car that had heated seats. However, I’ve been driving around a 2014 Nissan Pathfinder that has heated seats in it, and they are now on my “want list” for every car I get from here on out.  (And the Pathfinder doesn’t just have heated seats, it has cooled seats too!)

Now, heated seats used to be a luxury item that you could only find in the cars of the filthy rich, but things have changed and you can find them available in all kinds of cars, but Nissan has taken it to the next level with heated and cooled seats; they just blew my mind.

It’s like a warm (or cool) comfy hug for my backside while I drive.

I had always figured that heated seats were a luxury that were more for show and that I would never actually use them much, but after driving this Pathfinder around in past couple of months, I found that I used them almost every time I drove. (Even outside of the sub-zero temps we had to get through.)

In most cars, you get in on a cold day and crank up the heater and shiver your way down the road until the cabin finally gets warm, and the seat you’re sitting in is about the last thing to get warmed up. With heated seats, your bum is one of the first things to get toasty.

Now, for a guy like me, the cooling option on the seats was what really made me a believer. I haven’t had it during the summer months, but we did see temperatures near 70 a few weeks ago.  After a workout at the gym, getting into a car that’s been sitting in the sun in those temps is warm enough to make me sweat. However, when I climbed in the pathfinder and crank on the seat cooling, I’m not sure I had ever been more comfortable. It’s like putting on a pair of underpants from the freezer on a hot summer day.

Now, what it truly amazing about these heated and cooled seats is that there are different temperature settings for each of the front seats. Anywhere from ‘Antarctic-chill’, to just-a-little-tush-warmth, to ‘almost-scald-my-backside hot’, and everywhere in between.

We’ll just say this, my wife likes the car a lot warmer than I do, and we can sometimes have thermostat wars on long car trips. But in this Pathfinder we could have a cool cabin with my wife sunk into a toasty leather seat, or we could have a tropical temperature inside the car, but I could have my seat cooling me from the backside to keep me from getting sweaty and uncomfortable.

Amazing.

The pathfinder had a ton of other cool features that could make my new car ‘want list’ (Such as remote start, keyless everything, GPS navigation, a touch screen display, and all-around cameras), but as far as something that seemed new and gimmicky, but turned out to be my favorite parts of the car, the heated and cooled seats get a big thumbs-up from me.

If you’ve never sat in these seats, you’re missing out. I’m just sayin’.