After recently making a visit to my local tower on a familiarisation exercise, the tower controller hardly looked at his radar screen (was for extra info and when he was also manning approach frequency). Also they are taught to use mainly primary radar rather than secondary as primary more accurate.
I would expect pilots to have hands full on approach - playing with avionics would be last on their minds.
I don't know about this aircraft but my experience is they would either have to dial, then set it (5 button pushes), turn 4 knobs or turn and press 1 knob 4 times. All options not practical or the priority for them.
Radio is much quicker and easier.