The refreshed BMW 530i is stylish, capable and nice. In a week of driving, it neither made my pulse jump nor made me wish for the end of the drive. It’s all very good and nice.

It’s what you’d expect from the seventh generation 5-Series. It’s almost unremarkable. Until it becomes apparent it is a technology showcase on the internal combustion side of Tesla.

BMW has moved on from the ultimate driving machine catchall to more of an ultimate optioned machine. The 530i (base price, $53,500) successor to the 528i and little brother to the flagship 7-Series, came with over 20 options for just under $20,000.

On the outside, it’s hard to tell what is different. The kidney-shaped grille with active shutters for better efficiency is stretched to the headlights, which are a tad narrower and sport new daytime running lights.

The body is about an inch longer and a shade wider – barely noticeable unless viewing the side-by-side promotional video assuring customers of the full redesign.

The taillights are wider and the twin exhaust pipes are split on either side of the rear, instead of tied together.

The tester came in a dark greenish brown called Jacoba Brown Metallic ($700) that looked how forest camouflage would look if it were one solid color. It was more dull than sharp, even with the metallic reflections.

The significant changes are on the lightweight construction and the interior. The 530i sheds 137 pounds off the 528i, helping it add 1 more mpg, to 27 mpg combined.

Most entry-level luxury sedans are powered by some variant of a 2-liter turbo four-cylinder engine. The 248-horsepower (258 pound-feet of torque) inline four is competent, providing enough punch for most highway passing moves and enough grunt from a stop to have some giddyup in your go.

Handling is all very good and nice, but like Jacoba brown, it is more dull than sharp. For more driving feels, shell out another $5,000 for the inline six-cylinder. Or go nuts with the M550i.

But all that technology on the inside is connected to something: the car, the road, the cloud, your phone? All of it, I reckon.

Since BMW offers single or packaged options for just about everything (soft-close doors? $600) I’ll list the more noteworthy ones.

Apple CarPlay ($300) is offered wirelessly, which BMW says is a first for any automaker. It’s nice to not have to plug it in, but BMW’s iDrive 6.0 is good enough where it’s not really necessary except for hearing and replying to texts, or being DJ to your phone.

BMW’s native mapping is better than Apple maps, and its navigation system is great.

The redesigned display screen comes standard, and it’s a better system. The 10.25-inch display is now a touch screen, but we didn’t use it once.

Between good voice commands, radio and climate buttons, steering-wheel controls and the controller dial in the console, there are so many safer options for digging into all that info, such as how to change the ribbon of interior lighting ($1,050), altering lights in the doors and dash from purple to green.

There are also gesture controls ($190), where the kid riding shotgun could spin her finger in a circle in front of the center stack to raise or lower radio volume. There were other gestures equally as silly.

The luxury seating package ($1,600) features ventilated contoured seats with 20 different positional switches, and the most padded headrest this side of bed. The seats massage too. Get ’em in white nappa leather for another $1,000.

On the safety side of things, the driving assistance plus package provides eyes all around the car when backing up, and the split-screen display of behind and above the car might be the best on the market.

Add all those other backing up helpers, the dings and zings, beeps and blurps, as well as a crystal clear head-up display and the $3,200 upcharge starts to seem reasonable. I would have preferred the next step up with driver assistance plus II (I’m not making that up) for $1,700 to get adaptive cruise control and other semi-autonomous features.

Even the power tailgate was a $500 add-on. While the pricing sheet and options list for a new Bimmer can be confounding, once behind the wheel the systems blend into a calm user-friendly driving experience that is all very good and nice.

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