Car stereo buying guidance

[scooterinmn]

I have an old Pioneer deck that works well with my phone's BT and plays iTunes from my iPod. This is the ONLY reason I own anything with an "i" in front of the name.

Is there ANY headsets out there that will allow me to eliminate my iTouch? If I could use my phone for both functions, I would upgrade tomorrow!

 

[G4bama]

My phone is Droid 3 and Kenwood has several models available that work with the Android format. I have the model 996 which is new for 2012. You can use bluetooth, aux, or USB. I use DoubleTwist and then BT stream the music. Kenwood has an app that you can download which works along the same lines as double twist.

 

[scooterinmn]

Anyone recommend a nice one with GPS?

 

[beallpatrick]

Pretty much any in-dash car stereo with a GPS will do what you're looking for if it was built in the last few years provided it has a bluetooth unit.

Just keep in mind that the wired/BT connections each have their own set of considerations to be aware of.

If you can survive with the not-so-sexy BT interface (when compared to the album art-enhanced one you can get when attached via USB--if your stereo can even recognize a phone via USB), you really only need to worry about checking the call quality and usability of the head unit since the phone will be the brain that does the "thinking" requiired to shuffle, etc.

If you want USB, you're really just going to need to download manuals and find out what kind of hare-brained problems each stereo has. For instance, my 2nd from the top tier Kenwood DNX7160 (last model year) can't even do something as "Shuffle All" from a USB drive unless I press "Music", "Artist", "Play All", "Source", "Random" every time I start the car. Granted it remembers to play randomly, but when you restart the car it only plays in the last folder it was in. Keep in mind, the stereo isn't even as powerful as your phone, so each one of those button presses is followed by a lag of 2-3 seconds while it draws the next menu screen.

...which of course wouldn't be a problem if there wasn't a much-too-small limit on the # of files/folders within any given folder that requires me to arrange songs in odd folders based on Year and Grouping using a media manager.

...long story, short. There's so much variance between units themselves, how they interact with phones, and how people want to use them that you're really just going to need to head to a store and badger some people to let you try them out after checking online to make sure they're not universally despised.

Last year's Kenwoods were nice, in that they had Garmin GPS, good BT music quality, fast song switching, traffic monitoring, and an almost-usable-while-driving interface--but that comes with awful BT call quality (on the other end) and a bunch of caveats that pretty much force you to buy an iDevice, or give up pretty basic functions. Kenwood doesn't do much to improve anything outside of fatal software kinks after release either--so I really wouldn't recommend them.

 

[scooterinmn]

Pretty much any in-dash car stereo with a GPS will do what you're looking for if it was built in the last few years provided it has a bluetooth unit.

Just keep in mind that the wired/BT connections each have their own set of considerations to be aware of.

If you can survive with the not-so-sexy BT interface (when compared to the album art-enhanced one you can get when attached via USB--if your stereo can even recognize a phone via USB), you really only need to worry about checking the call quality and usability of the head unit since the phone will be the brain that does the "thinking" requiired to shuffle, etc.

If you want USB, you're really just going to need to download manuals and find out what kind of hare-brained problems each stereo has. For instance, my 2nd from the top tier Kenwood DNX7160 (last model year) can't even do something as "Shuffle All" from a USB drive unless I press "Music", "Artist", "Play All", "Source", "Random" every time I start the car. Granted it remembers to play randomly, but when you restart the car it only plays in the last folder it was in. Keep in mind, the stereo isn't even as powerful as your phone, so each one of those button presses is followed by a lag of 2-3 seconds while it draws the next menu screen.

...which of course wouldn't be a problem if there wasn't a much-too-small limit on the # of files/folders within any given folder that requires me to arrange songs in odd folders based on Year and Grouping using a media manager.

...long story, short. There's so much variance between units themselves, how they interact with phones, and how people want to use them that you're really just going to need to head to a store and badger some people to let you try them out after checking online to make sure they're not universally despised.

Last year's Kenwoods were nice, in that they had Garmin GPS, good BT music quality, fast song switching, traffic monitoring, and an almost-usable-while-driving interface--but that comes with awful BT call quality (on the other end) and a bunch of caveats that pretty much force you to buy an iDevice, or give up pretty basic functions. Kenwood doesn't do much to improve anything outside of fatal software kinks after release either--so I really wouldn't recommend them.

It sounds like I may have to stick with my iCrap unless I luck out and find something with some basic functionallity. I don't mind keeping my iTouch for this reason but it would be nice to have one device that I had to synch to.

 

[Demache]

Pretty much any in-dash car stereo with a GPS will do what you're looking for if it was built in the last few years provided it has a bluetooth unit.

Just keep in mind that the wired/BT connections each have their own set of considerations to be aware of.

If you can survive with the not-so-sexy BT interface (when compared to the album art-enhanced one you can get when attached via USB--if your stereo can even recognize a phone via USB), you really only need to worry about checking the call quality and usability of the head unit since the phone will be the brain that does the "thinking" requiired to shuffle, etc.

If you want USB, you're really just going to need to download manuals and find out what kind of hare-brained problems each stereo has. For instance, my 2nd from the top tier Kenwood DNX7160 (last model year) can't even do something as "Shuffle All" from a USB drive unless I press "Music", "Artist", "Play All", "Source", "Random" every time I start the car. Granted it remembers to play randomly, but when you restart the car it only plays in the last folder it was in. Keep in mind, the stereo isn't even as powerful as your phone, so each one of those button presses is followed by a lag of 2-3 seconds while it draws the next menu screen.

...which of course wouldn't be a problem if there wasn't a much-too-small limit on the # of files/folders within any given folder that requires me to arrange songs in odd folders based on Year and Grouping using a media manager.

...long story, short. There's so much variance between units themselves, how they interact with phones, and how people want to use them that you're really just going to need to head to a store and badger some people to let you try them out after checking online to make sure they're not universally despised.

Last year's Kenwoods were nice, in that they had Garmin GPS, good BT music quality, fast song switching, traffic monitoring, and an almost-usable-while-driving interface--but that comes with awful BT call quality (on the other end) and a bunch of caveats that pretty much force you to buy an iDevice, or give up pretty basic functions. Kenwood doesn't do much to improve anything outside of fatal software kinks after release either--so I really wouldn't recommend them.

I've never really come across a car headunit that really does Android connectivity well. Over USB I mean. Maybe someday Android will have some standardized USB interface for audio like Apple does? Who knows.

[rant]
And yeah I see what you mean with the Kenwood headunit quirks. I have one with Bluetooth (but no built-in Bluetooth audio, dammit Kenwood). The actual sound quality, and build of the head unit, top notch. However, there are a lot of "WHAT WERE THEY THINKING" decisions going on in the software. When navigating your BT phonebook, you can skip to different letters by pressing up and down on the volume knob. Hey that's pretty useful for navigating long lists right? However, when navigating your track lists over USB, they left that feature right out. And if you have 1000+ songs, your not going to scroll through 500 songs to get to the middle of the list while your driving. Heck, I wouldn't want to even if I wasn't! Fortunately, the shuffle feature on my headunit isn't a hare-brained as yours because that's really the only way that many songs on a USB drive is even practical. Just Function -> Playback Options -> Shuffle All: On and remembers it.

 

[beallpatrick]

I guess we should just be happy they've improved the iPod interface at least since the first gen units. The first Pioneer one I ever tried had nothing but folder skip and song skip and it took like 7-8 seconds to load up between songs.

If I wanted to listen to something in the middle of the alphabet I could literally finish my 20 minute commute before I even made it to the folder.

 

[Demache]

I guess we should just be happy they've improved the iPod interface at least since the first gen units. The first Pioneer one I ever tried had nothing but folder skip and song skip and it took like 7-8 seconds to load up between songs.

If I wanted to listen to something in the middle of the alphabet I could literally finish my 20 minute commute before I even made it to the folder.

Yeah, something these headunit need to learn how to design a user interface that's consistent and easy to navigate. They got the features down, they just need to figure out how to implement them well.

Its always made me wonder though, since the firmware can be updated, does that mean they could somehow be modified or hacked? Granted if you knew how to program for the processor it uses and could compile a working firmware.