I'm torn between doing a mod to my current factory fit cd player so that it can have an aux cord or to get a cheap digital only radio(ie no cd player). I think I'm going down the digital route as it also has Bluetooth and its a shallow fit. Anyone had any experience with these sort of units? I can get a lower end branded on for about £65 but ideally I'd like one with an SD card slot. I've already ordered the harness so I can still use my stalk controls and some keys to remove the old unit, I will also need to buy a facia to change it from a 2 din to 1 din aperture.
Mate of mine had a CD less HU, half deep and light as anything but worked a treat but you get what you pay for, I've had low end units and higher end ones, even on factory speakers you can tell a difference but you'll benefit form just having a more connectable HU.
I have a Pioneer DEH something something, can't remember the exact model but it cost under £100, 4x40W, 2 pre-outs and included a CD player. Have been pretty happy with it. It even came with a mic for hands free calling. It didn't come with a DAB tuner but at that price point I wasn't really bothered.
Think I've decided to go for a double din. Found a new facia kit for only £9.50 from ebay and that was one of the things putting me off go for a double din as the kits are usually around £30, I also bagged a new harness for £7 (to enable the steering wheel controls) instead of £15+. I'm now looking at this unit A little worried about it being more tempting to steal than the crappy factory one or a single din with front facia but cant think too much about things like that I suppose.
That's a lot of real estate frontage for not much function. If shallow fit is important then I'd be looking at a mechless unit along the lines of https://www.halfords.com/technology/car-audio/car-stereos/kenwood-dmx-110bt you don't necessarily gain an more functionality but looks better. Alternatively, although not as shallow, I had https://www.halfords.com/technology...mvh-a200vbt-touch-screen-bluetooth-car-stereo that fitted in my Civic for a good 8 or so months before it was written off and it did it's job well, again mechless so no CD player. Bear in mind that the cage that comes with the stereo might not fit the new fascia, I ended up having to get a Universal Double Din Cage Fitting Kit for a tenner, but that's car dependent etc.
I thought it had quite a lot of functions. The touch screen ones are really nice but its another £40 on top. I've bought the cage fitting kit anyway, I'll just resell it if its not needed but I'd imagine it is as my aperture isn't square its kind of tapered. I really am torn between a digital unit and the one I linked too, I like the look of it and you can change the colour to match your interior lighting. I'm sure when I was looking at them yesterday I found it for £98 but now the cheapest is more like £119.
Hey, you go for what you need based on what you can afford / are prepared to spend, you'll get no argument from me. When I decided to get what I got it was that or https://www.halfords.com/technology/car-audio/car-stereos/jvc-kw-r520-double-din-car-stereo , the JVC has better functionality, what as it actually has a CD player, but I didn't go for it as a I thought it looked a little dated compared to the touch screen jobbies. Good old fashioned push button units are also easier to use when driving than touch screen stereos as you don't have to look at them to use them. Would now be a bad time to bring up Pumpkin Android double din stereos ? Edit; Sorry I meant it had a lot of empty plastic space rather than lacking in overall functions.
I think I'd definitely be tempted to get a touch screen one if it was removable for security reasons but I doubt that's thing.
Keep getting tempted to get one of these to repleace my Android Auto HU I got a pioneer avh-x8700bt for that reason, comes off nicely
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/NAKAMICH...518557?hash=item56bf59c3dd:g:3ZMAAOSwEVlcSXbl I built one like that into an ITX case. Great unit with tons of functionality.
Well I bought the Sony one in the end as its the one I like. Ordered it for pay on collection at Argos, get my text to say its in, check one last time online to make sure there's no price oddities. Hmm they are advertising the same stereo twice, 2 different catalogue numbers, same unit and both EAN codes are identical but £22 difference in price, 20 minutes on the online chat system and the rep finally agreed to reduce it down from £119.99 to £98. Result
I've always had Pioneer after market car stereos. Always been happy with them. I had an absolute thumping stereo in my old Nissan Bluebird back in the day. 12 inch sub woofer in the boot, Infinity 6x9's on the year shelf and some Pioneer drivers and tweeters in the front doors. Since I got my i30 thats got quite a banging system in it as standard so haven't really had the need or felt like I've wanted to rip it all out. You can't go wrong with Sony kit in the car eiter to be fair. Most of my friends had Sony kit in their cars and they were always happy with it £20 off the price, thats pretty amazing, I was never that lucky.
Well today was fun. Bought some keys to remove the stock radio and they were utterly and I mean UTTERLY useless, spent 30 mins trying to get the radio out and it wouldn't budge. Went inside to my screw box and came back out with four identical drill bits, inserted them and the unit was out in about 20 seconds. The stock cage was also a bit of a pig to remove but manageable, used the iso kit io bought and tested the new sony unit and nothing. Connected the red lead to the dual crimp socket and it fired up, so the Iso I bought doesn't provide an ACC switched input so I now have to make a lead up to go from the cigarette lighter to provide a switched input. Radio worked brilliantly on the test, phone paired up really easy and I found that I definitely need the fascia kit as the one provided with the sony is just that little bit too big. While I had everything apart I decided to see if I could do something about my sat nav cable. A few years back I converted my cigarette lighters too usb and have had the lead from my sat nav dangling down the dash. Well today I decided to remove a cover on top of the dash to see what was underneath, to my surprise it was a speaker (apparently its an imaging speaker), anyway there was a small recess that was just big enough to allow a cable through so I removed the speaker. I removed the glove box and then poked the usb lead down into the dash and managed to grab it after a few tries so that's really tidied things up. The guy who sold me the ISO kit pictured it with a patch lead but I didn't get one with it so that was annoying so I'm now left waiting for one I have purchased to come through next week sometime, plus my fascia kit hasn't materialised yet. Really pleased with it so far though
Got refunded on the removal keys, made a general enquiry about the patch lead and the seller just refunded me on that too without me asking for it. Anyway just fitted the patch lead I purchased and now my steering wheel controls work yay. If I have the Sony app on my phone the stereo even reads out any text messages sent to my phone too
