Best Buy radio malibu 2002 installations

Very intuitive navigation, good quality, easy to install, USB feature, July 9, 2010

This is a really awesome stereo receiver. These are the pros:

1- The USB slot. I bought a 16GB microSD with elago USD adapter http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002HGFKR8/ref=oss_product and virtually, this little adapter goes into the receiver and integrate with it (you can only see 5mm or 0.2 inches of the adapter sticking out). If you do not know, you think the adapter is part of the receiver.

2- The USB slot cover. Unlike those slots that have a plastic cover which will hang around if you uncover the slot, the cover of the USB slot goes inside the reciever when you uncover the adapter slot. (The Kenwood receivers do not have cover, which I do not like and some other models of pioneer have plastic cover that is annoying)

3- Easy to search and find your favorite mp3 file even if you have 16GB of mp3. Basically you can go through folders and find the folder that you like.

4- Capable of reading AAC files (at least files with .m4a extension): AAC is going to replace mp3. So it is better that your receiver have this feature.

5- Very intuitive navigation of menus: There is only one multi purpose thing that can navigate you intuitively to mostly used functions such as finding files, changing the volume, finding the radio frequency that you want and so on.

6- Very easy to install.

7- Very loud: It is louder than my previus JVC receiver. To check the loudness, I could go up to 50% volume and was afraid of losing my ears so I did not go above 50%.

Until now, I could see two cons:

1- I cannot easily attach or detach the face. You should be careful not to break one end of the face. I guess after some use, I learn how to do it.

2- You cannot have play list.

About installation:

I suggest you to buy the following so that you can install the receiver immediately out of box:

1- wiring harness for your specific type of car (mine was toyota corolla)

2- wire connectors : bought 2$ from walmart

One note about installation: There is a blue wire that you might think whether you should connect it to another blue wire from wiring harness. That blue wire should be connected only if you have installed a sub or something similar that needs to be turned on when you turn on the receiver. So if you don’t have such things, you should not connect those wires (just cover them with one wire connector to avoid loose wires).

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Straightforward installation, fairly easy navigation, excellent sound, enormous flexibility, July 27, 2010

By 

Nathan Andersen “film lover, philosophy profe… (Florida) – See all my reviews

  

  

  

For my ’99 Toyota Camry, I was still running with the original factory-installed cassette/fm/am receiver. I’d been planning for a while to upgrade to something that would play CDs and MP3s, with a USB and auxiliary input. This does the trick. It delivers great sound, even from my original factory speakers. I never thought I could get this kind of big and clear sound out of the old speakers. I know you can set this up with an amplifier and subwoofers, but the setup I have now is exactly what I need to play the tunes that keep my ride alive.

It automatically recognizes when I plug in my iPod or iPhone and immediately shifts the mode to that input; same thing for when I pop in a CD, and it starts playing right away. Of course, I can switch the mode back to what I wanted, and leave the CD or iPod on standby. I don’t really need to plug in any other auxiliary sound, so haven’t tried that. One nice feature is you can control the iPod directly from the stereo – using the joystick-like volume and master controller button. It’s mostly intuitive, but I found I did have to read through the manual to figure out exactly how it works. The fact that the master controller knob controls almost everything means it will take some getting used to before the operation of this receiver feels as intuitively easy as my old one. The remote control that comes with it is a bit more intuitive and operates mostly like any old CD/iPod player remote.

You can play almost anything with this, whether through the iPod or what’s burned on a CD: MP3, WMA, and AAC files. There’s also a “sound retriever” function, that does seem to give a slightly “bigger” sound when playing compressed sound formats like MP3s. I was streaming Pandora on my iPhone while driving, and the sound didn’t seem as clear as ordinary sound files, but the “sound retriever” function did seem to clear that up a bit. It does make a more obvious difference when I play mp3 files I’ve burned onto a CD.

The sound for everything seems better than before – likely due to the new 50W amps to each speaker – giving cleaner sound at high volumes than I was able to manage with my original receiver.

Obviously you can run the radio with it, and you can pre-set up to six stations per band (it allows you to toggle between 3 “different” FM bands – i.e. to establish 3 different sets of favorite FM stations – and one AM band). You can toggle between these pre-sets easily, either by pushing up or down on the volume knob, or by pressing the number of the pre-set. When you’re on the road, you can have it search for the six “best quality” local stations and put them into the presets automatically. The “Supertuner IIID” really does work as promised – it picks up more stations more clearly, and even cleans up the sound of some of my old favorites that come in sounding better than ever.

It took some doing to install it. First, I picked up a harness adapter for my Camry – which was easy for me to find at my local autoparts store. The harness was easy to install, and hook up to my system, and I got it working right away. It was the mounting that was a bit tricky, since this is a little wider than my factory-mounted stereo, and wouldn’t fit when I had my original factory mounting brackets on there. I was able to make it work after a bit of tweaking, but I thought it would be worth mentioning that this may be too wide for mounting in some older vehicles.

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more pros than cons, August 4, 2010

It’s a nice radio, probably a bit better than the 2200UB, but still skimps on a couple of things.

Pros:

- very good sound

- supports latest iPods and USB sticks

Cons:

- doesn’t support iPods from even a couple years back. I couldn’t use my iPod mini and an older iPod shuffle, the “N/A USB” error shows up on display. That’s difficult to understand, should be a minor software effort. Do these things have firmware upgrades? Not clear that they do.

- blue-white wire is used for both Amp turn-on, and Power antenna turn-on. There’s no separate “blue wire” which is meant for Power antenna trigger. The documentation around this is very flaky. It says you can do one or the other. This means, a) that your antenna will be up even if you’re listening to iPod, and b) if you splice the wire and route it to both functions you could be in trouble if it draws too much current. This was supposed to be easy to install.. how hard could it have been to provide a separate blue wire.

There’s no illumination and dimmer wire connections (orange and orange-black), so close those off on the harness coming from the car. There are controls for adjusting those on the unit manually.

For the price its an excellent product from a sound quality point of view, and will make your stock speakers sound great without an expensive amplifier and/or subwoofer.

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