I looked at the Mercedes C-class and BMW 3 series before purchasing the 2017 A4 Quattro. By far, the A4 Premium Plus with the Technology and Sport packages was the better buy. The standard safety and convenience features beats BMW by leaps and bounds and the technology in the 2017 A4 definitely outpaces Mercedes. Overall, this car is fun to drive and looks sharp. Even in the base model, Audi Pre-Sense is standard and a very useful crash avoidance system. If the car detects a possible collision, you will be notified by an audible alarm along with a system warning on the screen. If you don't intervene, the car will then start to brake and decelerate. There is also a rear crash detection system as well that will alert you if there is an imminent collision. Aside from the audible and screen alerts, it will automatically tighten the seatbelts and close all the windows if a crash is unavoidable. With the Technology package, you get a cool feature that lets you remotely lock/unlock the doors from your smartphone and can even tell you if your windows are up/down. It also provides other useful data such as gas level, mileage and geofencing data (handy if you have children or if you let someone borrow your car. ) You can then set alerts to know when your car goes outside a designated parameter. Another useful feature is the Matrix LED headlight technology that will automatically adjust light levels and beam direction. This is useful when turning onto dark streets or navigating winding roads at night. This is not an exhaustive list of cool features as there are way too many to put here in one review. After test driving the competitors, I was convinced that the A4 was the best option for technology, safety and price.