Best Buy radio malibu 2002 installations

Pioneer quality…..Good Bang for the buck., April 18, 2010

By 

R. Goltsch (West Caldwell, NJ USA) – See all my reviews

  

The boss (Wife) had the stock 6 CD changer in her 2006 Explorer XLT. She wanted a new radio that would allow her to listen to her iPod and have Bluetooth for her phone. I also wanted to add GPS, since if I was going to replace the darn thing, I may as well give her all the functions she might need for the future.

I looked online for a new head unit but it seemed that all the units were in the above $500 range. I saw that Amazon had the Pioneer AVIC-U310BT on sale for $259.00. I did some research and found a mixed bag of reviews, for every good review, there was a not so good one. After a bit of thinking, I decided to bite. I’m glad I did.

I bought the head unit along with the PAC Can Bus module05-08 FORD RADIO CAN BUS MODULE INTERFACEand the Scosche Scosche FD1426B Double ISO DIN Kit for 2004-Up Fordmounting kit. The harness was about $80 and the mounting kit another $15. If you look at a lot of the head units out there, they offer Bluetooth as an option, not include it with as with this radio. That would have added another $100 to many of the competitors out there.

I opened up all the parts I bought and read all the documentation on all the items BEFORE I went outside. I prewired the Pac module, connecting all the wires to the wiring harness from the radio. This made it easy when I went out to the truck. Plug and play, the only wiring I need to do was routing all the wires for the microphone, GPS antenna and the Aux output wire for her Sirius radio.

About that Sirius, Pioneer offers the built in module for Sirius or XM. Both cost $100 and you have to find a place for the big Sirius modules under the dash. They don’t offer some of the features the little Plug and Play units Sirius offers; pause, FF, and favorite song or artist reminders. We decided to keep her existing Sportster 5 and plug it into the Aux port.

I got it all installed in about 90 minutes. I placed the GPS antenna under the top tray on the dashboard. The antenna sees right through the plastic tray, and stays hidden. The iPod cable is simply the USB cable that came with the iPod. You can buy the cable from Pioneer for about $40. I don’t see the need, as it works fine with the Apple cable. I put the iPod in the glove box, as you don’t need to access it, all the controls can be reached from the head unit.

The sound from the radio is great. The GPS navigation seems to be good, but I can tell you more as we use it in real world driving. Some people have said that they had issues with Bluetooth not connecting consistently. I started and turned off the truck about 20 times so far, and each time it finds and connects to my iPhone….no issues at all. The sound quality of the included microphone seems good, so far. Again, we will see how it goes in real world driving conditions.

Overall, it isn’t as neat as the $500-$1000 dollar head units out there, the screen is not as big, and it may not have all the features of its higher priced cousins. But to have GPS, CD, iPod and Bluetooth for about $350 total, it cannot be beat.

Edit 4/27/10 After a week of use:

Wanted to add a few items on the use of this system. First, some have complained about the quality of the microphone that is supplied with the unit. For us, it works well. I have been involved in both ends of phone conversations as both the sender from the truck, or as a reciever of a call from the truck. Both come in loud and clear. Perhaps other people had issue with the location of the microphone? We clipped it directly to the driver’s visor.

Sound quality is fantastic. This head unit really takes advantage of the factory sub woofer in the Explorer. We never heard such powerful bass from the stock unit.

The iPod control takes a little getting used to, but once you figure it out, it works well. My wife has simply put the iPod on random from the head unit controls. It is like a juke box with thousands of songs…..it is playing songs we long ago forgotten that were on the iPod.

GPS navigation has been fine. Sure, not a lot of POI’s, but we simply enter in addresses. For my wife, it is no big deal.

Using the PAC Sys can bus module made the wiring easy. The system knows when the truck is moving, it knows to dim the display when the headlights go on, etc. It is just like a factory installation.

Overall, we are still happy with the purchase.

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Good concept- Bad implementation-lot of bugs, system hangs, September 13, 2009

Sorry for the long winded review, but I want to provide as many details as possible for people to understand the unit better.

I bought this unit after seeing some so called professional reviews online. I did see their notes about very limited POIs or lack there off, no video etc. But I was not looking for Video or not even lot of POIs.

I liked this unit for the fact it is always in standby state and will come on instantly. For Pioneer F series that has a major complaint about start up time. I installed this unit a week ago and did lot of experimentation so far and here are my thoughts.

Looks and installation:

I liked looks of the unit for it simplicity, not too many buttons, and able to control Major audio functions without using Touchscreen etc. Installation went very well with excellent documentation provided(courtesy Crutchfield).

Phone, Bluetooth Module:

After everything is installed, synchronized my iPhone with bluetooth module and tried to make some calls. I can hear other side verywell, no issues here. But other party can hardly hears my voice. If I hold Microphone within few inches from my mouth it was acceptable, but if that is the case I would very well hold my phone instead of Mic. Tried lot of positions, and nothing helped. So, I looked around avic411 forums and saw quite few people having problems with supplied Microphone and used either Parrot Mic or Garmin Mic. So, I went ahead bought the Garmin Mic from local Frys electronics and installed it( Garmin Mic wire length is shorter, only 10 feet). Now the quality improved substantially and usable. But it still had problem with boomy echo(even with echo cancellation), but that was partially because of location. Moving the Mic close to head liner( above rear view mirror) somewhat reduced it, and now I thought this is usable. I was able to transfer the phone book quite easily from iPhone 2G(My other car Toyota Prius built-in system has problems with iPhone 2G for Phone book).

In total I drove the car 4 days, and out of 4 days, Bluetooth system hung 3 times. The symptoms are, bluetooth does not connect. But when to click on Phone button in Menu, it goes to phone screen and shows Bluetooth off and connections button disabled. When I click on Bluetooth to turn it on, it keep circling and nothing happens.

Trying to do a F. Reset does not do any good. Only way to get it working again is doing Hard reset by pressing the small reset switch on LCD frame. This does fix problem, but also resets everything else. Phone Book is completely gone, all Illumination color, Radio presets, Song details Display preferences, Eq settings, and Navigation preferences(ATT, Mute etc) are gone. We have to do set everything again back from scratch.

RESET OBSERVATION NOTE : We can reset the unit after taking out of docking position. This way unit does not reset AUDIO/NAV settings.(Contacts/Phone Book and Some Nav settings seems to be lost).

Also, the volume adjustment is independent from main audio system, so if you raise the volume to hear over road noise during a highway drive it would not reflect in bluetooth volume.

Another bummer is, you can not access the numeric pad after call is connected(it is disabled). That means, you can not select IVR systems voice menu option which is quite common if you call any customer service, and even more annoying, there is NO MUTE . But atleast you can do it from actual phone.

Navigation:

Size of the screen is small, but I think it is okay size as long as it is not too far away from driver. Menu structure, selecting options, settings etc are fine.

Just to clarify, DETACHABLE SCREEN DOES NOT WORK AS PORTABLE NAVIGATION. It does not have any built in GPS antenna/GPS processor. You can browse maps like paper maps, or create route etc.

This system uses Tele Atlas database(instead of NavTeQ) for Navigation which does not have good reviews. Despite being the latest database it does not have main roads( Bus route) which are 4-5 years old. Even for old neighborhood like 30 years old does not have correct road information.

Now the routing, I got to tell you this got to be worst navigation I ever used(Garmin, TomTom, Omnitech, Toyota in built). It lags much behind the actual vehicle position(not a signal problem), sometime a street or more behind actual location. I think unit is taking too much time reading the data, calculating position and representing on the actual map. It may not be a problem for most highway driving or sub-urban driving, but for downtown it is pretty close to useless.

For some reason it does not show the all the road names. It’s 3D mapview is not good, 2D is ok. It does not know the difference between a walking trail vs roads, it will insist on driving on trails!

Text To Speech is pretty bad too, it says take a slight…

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GPS – iPod Control – Bluetooth for about $400, September 20, 2009

Pros:

Instant On!

AM/FM/Single Disk CD Player with 18 FM presets; 6 AM presets

Total iPod control thru unit

Basic GPS with text to speech

Hands Free Bluetooth (when it works)

Detachable faceplate

Cons:

There’s a software glitch in the bluetooth software that requires re-pairing your phone with the base regularly. Menus might seem initially confusing.

Summary:

I installed the AVIC U310BTs in my 2009 smart car after reading that this unit would be offered as the “official” GPS upgrade on the 2010 model smarts. I picked up a unit on eBay for $370. Another $30 for the iPod cable plus $50 for the double din face plate and wiring harness and another 50 bucks for new speakers and for $500 I had an upgrade that the dealer will offer for $1300.

The GPS is basic but adequate. The lady in the box giving directions has a very slight flutter to her voice but she gets me there just fine.

The radio/CD player work great and the units puts out a lot of sound. Paired with decent speakers, you will not be disappointed.

With a 120 Gig iPod, my Holy Grail has been a way to navigate through the hundreds of artists and thousands of CDs to play the tune I wanted without killing myself while driving. I’ve found that the AVIC U310BT succeeds in allowing me to search with a minimum of clicks and twists to the exact song I wanted– while driving! However, here’s where the confusing menus might make you want to read the manual. Once you “get” the menu flow, it all makes sense in some weird way.

My biggest disappointment with the unit is the software glitch with the bluetooth. About every 4 starts of the car the bluetooth hangs and will not work with my phone. It requires a faceplate reset which takes about 30 seconds then you must re-pair your phone which takes another couple of minutes. This is really the only thing that I do not like about the unit. I take a star away for the bluetooth hassle.

Pioneer AVIC units in the past have been criticized for slow boot times. On the 310BT however, the unit comes on instantly because the battery in the removable faceplate keeps it in standby when the car is off. The instant on function seems to be the culprit that somehow causes the bluetooth to hang upon occasion.

The U310BT has only been on sale since June so I expect that as more owners report this bluetooth problem there will be a firmware update to correct, but until then I’m not as happy as I could be.

Update: I’ve found a workaround to the bluetooth problem and my phone– once I paired my wife’s phone to the unit, it began working flawlessly! Dropping and re-connecting my phone from the unit now seems to fix the lockup. On reconsideration, I give this 4 stars!

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