Best Buy radio malibu 2002 installations

Good iPod integration – TERRIBLE NAVIGATION, May 3, 2010

By 

A. Milam (Indiana) – See all my reviews

  

For the new flagship from Pioneer, I’m very disappointed in the navigation. The deck has great sound quality, and great iPod integration, complete with album art and the ability to quickly browse artists or songs, even with 6000 plus songs on your iPod. The NAV system is useless and a real disappointment. A 2 year old $100 Garmin stand alone GPS performs light years ahead of this. I actually just came back from a 3 state road trip using both a $100 Garmin and this Pioneer. Four times on the trip, the Garmin said turn left, and the Pioneer said “turn right”. The Garmin was correct with the short and faster path all 4 times. Every trip I’ve used the Pioneer with has the estimated arrival time about two hours later than actual arrival time, and it doesn’t adjust until the final few miles of the trip. Completely inaccurate, bad directions, no speedometer. I could go on, but suffice it to say it’s BAD BAD BAD. I’ll probably be selling this one on eBay when someone finally comes out with a good iPOD interface AND good nav systems.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

>Report abuse
| Permalink

 Comments (6)

Great Upgrade, April 21, 2010

Had this installed for one day. So far, so good. Replaced an Avic 900BT. I like the new menu interface. Flicking & scrolling using the fingers. Mostly used in the Ipod, FM/AM, XM screens.

The navigation screen may take some getting used to. The maps don’t look as sharp. Seems a wee bit fuzzy around the edges of objects on the map whether in 2D or 3D mood.

You will need the current Ipod (new) cable to get this unit to work with your Ipod. Also it’s now using a micro SD card. The sound quality is an improvement. Imaging is sharper/cleaner. I do feel that the manufacturer skimped about 64MB on the RAM. With these newer units going back about 3-4 years they’re beginning to behave more like a computer (what with boot-up times & being able to update firmware/wallpaper via SD card) so when they skimp on the RAM it really affects the overall minute to minute usability of the unit. Thankfully with this unit you don’t notice it as much but a bit more memory would have helped.

The Ipod interface is really nice & has a 3D look to the menus. Same when in the XM/FM/AM radio menus. Touching names/items causes them to slide, flip & rotate to reveal additional choices. Very neat. I still like the way that Pioneer has been programing these units in the sense that if you’re driving & you touch a menu feature it doesn’t automatically time out & revert back to the original or home screen if you take too long to make a choice. Had a few Clarion units few years back that used to drive me crazy with this feature. Ohh, video off Ipod works as well.

Will be purchasing a micro SD card so I can change the boot up picture from the Pioneer logo to an image of my choosing. Kinda sucks having to purchase a micro SD card for basically a one time use, but. . . . . . On my 900BT I had installed my own start-up photo but that unit used SD card so I just borrowed the card from my digital camera.

Not too many comments on the GPS portion of the unit as yet. Going to have to figure out how to adjust the trip method on the fly (fastest route vs. shortest distance kind of thing).

Ohh man, the Blue tooth feature works the way it’s supposed to. I’m using an Iphone & I was able to not only sync contacts onto the Pioneer but I was also able to stream music from the Iphone as well as other internet audio. Pandora & many other internet radio stations I play on my Iphone using various Apps. Can’t believe it worked so flawlessly. Didn’t even have to use the manual. My phone book synched in about 1 minute & I was able to stream audio via blue tooth in another 1 minute. On the unit’s menu you just select blue tooth audio & within seconds whatever is playing on the phone comes through the car speakers. No fuss, No scuss.

So far I would say this was a great buy. I know that Pioneer will shortly be releasing more units using this menu interface but I decided not to wait & went ahead & jumped on the first one out the door. We’ll see how well that decision fares in the next few months. I still say that compared to other manufactures, who offer blue tooth as an additional item (module) to purchase I’ve always appreciated the fact that for the past 3 plus years Pioneer has built their blue tooth connectivity directly into the unit. I looked at the current Alpine “top of the line” unit a few days ago & they’re still asking you to buy a separate blue tooth module. While I’m willing to entertain arguments regarding unit stability & only paying for features you’re going to use, I still say Boo to those manufactures that implement this approach, and Yeahhhh to Pioneer for their blue tooth approach.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

>Report abuse
| Permalink

 Comments (7)

Huge waste of money, September 1, 2010

I’ve had this unit for a couple months now, and I’m not pleased at all with it.

Pros:

- Plays DVDs

- Has iPod integration, and shows album art

- Backup camera integration is nice

- Can play streaming bluetooth (Slacker!) from phone

- Looks cool at first

Cons:

- Horrible integration with Sirius. It just looks terrible. I’ve emailed support and they blamed the interface on Sirius. I’ve seen stock Chrysler products with Sirius built in that looked fantastic via touch screen, so I know this can’t be true.

- Preset buttons are HUGE and generic. Not sure why they need to take up so much room that only 2 buttons are visible at one time. And why do they need to simply say “1″ or “2″? Why can’t you save the FM channel, or the Sirius channel on the button?

- Song/Artist display is sparse. There is a ton of real estate on the screen, yet they can only show one of artist/song/cd/station. Seems ridiculous that you have to hit a button to toggle between artist and song. And the field is pretty long, yet no matter how short the song or artist is, it scrolls from the right to left for everything, which is dumb and annoying.

- Navigation directions are pretty bad. I took a trip from Michigan to DC and used the navigation on this, as well as on my Droid phone (Google Maps), to compare the two. The x920 navigation was pretty bad… had me getting off on a side street in downtown Detroit, only to turn around and get back on the freeway. Many other head-scratching directions.

- The biggest con of all is the bluetooth phone integration. It is completely unusable. Every time I try to use it, the person I’m calling says everything is repeated multiple times and just sounds terrible. I really wanted this for hands-free calling, but it’s simply not usable for two-way conversations.

- The other features (Eco something, pandora, etc) are half-baked at best and unusable.

I REALLY REALLY hope some of these things are fixed in future firmware updates, because the unit has potential.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

>Report abuse
| Permalink

 Comment