Recenze

The seats are surpisingly soft, thought their ergonomics are not great. The seats recline, and offer a seat base extension. (For both of which, the lever is under the seat.) Legroom in airline styles is fine, though it gets pretty limited if you fully recline. Power sockets are located well, down between the seats, featuring a single Schuko plug and a USB-A socket (why not C, come on?) per seat, which is pretty great. Tray tables are large, and there is also a device holder shelf, with a wirelss charger that never worked in any seat I tried.

Overhead racks are large enough for suitcases, and there are huge racks for even more bags, no complaints there.

A/C worked fine, and the Wi-Fi was also reliable for browsing and even some light video streaming. There are information displays, and announcements are made in multiple languages. The information displays do not have the slightest clue on what is going on, but that sadly appears to be a much broader issue with ÖBB. The ÖBB Railnet website is garbage though, barely works for tracking where your train is, which would be the only purpose of the damn thing. The windows have a weird mesh on them (supposed to improve phone reception, and yes, I can confirm it does that), which gets in the way of your views, unfortunately, Stadler has done a better job on the SMILE's windows with their mesh.

Lavatories use sensors for damn near everything, and they are placed horribly, and do not work half the time. Water pressure is good though. Also the low floor part of the train is pretty sweet to have with large bags and for PRM, though I'd say maybe they should not have made entire train like that, because my god, there are lots and lots of stairs to climb.

Ride quality was buttery smooth and noise levels were also modest. I'd be surprised if it rides any worse than a 1st gen Railjet, though I only got up to 160 km/h on this specific train. (I did reach 200 on the Nightjet version, and that did about as well if not better than the OG Railjets.)