Automatic and manual mode

I'm interested in a new Tacoma. I owned a 99 reg cab 4x4. It was a great truck. I recently owned a 2015 Camry and much like what I'm hearing about the new Tacoma automatic, it liked to shift a lot. Though I've been reading that the new Tacoma shifting does settle down after its broken in a little? One thing that kinda bothered me about the Camry is that when in manual mode in some situations when shifting through the gears, it didn't tell you what gear you were actually in. Is the new Tacoma like this as well?

 

Think of the S (or manual) mode as a limiter. Popping the lever to the left from D to S will put the truck in 4th gear, and in doing so will use 1st through 4th gears as needed. Each time you pull backwards on the shifter in S mode, it will drop a gear, all the way to 1st. At that point, you're limited to 1st gear only. Actually works great for me, I have about 3/4 mile steep downhill gravel road I travel daily and coming down I use S2 for engine breaking. If you pull left and push forward on the shifter, you can select 5th and (I think) 6th, although it would be meaningless. 5th works real well on back country highways and roads.

In Drive, the transmission is going to do some hunting. I'm at about 2500 miles or so on mine and it has smoothed out considerably. I use it on the interstate or similar state highways that are fairly flat. Anytime a hilly section comes along, S5 is your friend!