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53 of 53 people found the following review helpful.
Pioneer hits a home run with this affordable nav unit
By L. Abate
Just finished installing the D3 in my '06 Scion tC this weekend. In addition to the head unit I also installed the Bluetooth adapter/iPod cable/PAC steering wheel control interface and XM tuner. At this point I am still unsure if I am going to install the reverse cam. This is my third Pioneer head unit, but first Navigation unit.The unit looks very nice installed with the included mounting hardware, much better than in the photos, I might add. The screen is very bright, and the touch interface works very well. The XM interface is very nice, especially when the Nav disk is in loaded, as it will then display station and category logos along with the standard XM track/artist info.Here are some of the pros and cons I have come up with in the two days I have had to fool around with it:Pros:-XM or Sirius, it stinks to have to make a decision on a head unit based on your sat. radio prefs (Eclipse comes to mind here)-Superb XM interface-Solid iPod interface with cool iPod scroll wheel on-screen image (although no search function)-So far the Nav has worked very well-Vehicle diagnostics are fun, although not for any practical purposes-Pioneers parametric EQ has always been great, it is even better with the enhanced visualization of the large color LCD-Great internal sub-woofer controls including high pass filters, as well as low pass output and sub level controls-Customization options are nice as you can match your cars instrumentation color-DVD quality is very good-Phone call quality is very good from the feedback I have gotten from callers (mounted the mic on the right side of my visor with the included clip)-Night mode: when you flip on your headlights you can choose how dim you want the screen to get, and the navigation screen has a night mode which uses darker colors for the map, and is much easier on the eyesCons:-No ability to have different EQ settings for each source as far as I can tell (source custom EQ)-this is a major disappointment, i.e. XM output is usually very flat compared to CD/MP3 sources, requiring a lot of messing around with the EQ to get it sounding right. Having to change EQ depending on source is a major pain-No automatic sound levelizer (adjusts volume level depending on road noise)-even my stock Scion/Pioneer head unit had this-No remote ($15 dollar option at [...], come on Pioneer, I know it's an inexpensive unit, but still)-Some background noise at times, but I have concluded that it does not affect sound quality, as much of it only occurs when no music is playing (i.e. caused by the button tones or nav guidance)- Having to use two little satellite antennas is silly- I don't understand why they couldn't have designed the XM tuner to be able to accept the sat. signal from the Nav antenna, i.e. pull the sat. signal through the IP bus-I have still not been able to load my phone book into the unit and I tried both my cingular sonyericsson and my nextel blackberry-have checked forums and others are having similar issues, I'm guessing there will be a fix out soon as this is a brand new Bluetooth module-No HD radio supportOverall I am very satisfied with the sound quality, interface, ease of use, and ability to customize the unit. I just wish it had the source custom EQ and the $170.00 Bluetooth module would load my address book.
31 of 32 people found the following review helpful.
Generally good, but with some significant flaws
By Often Disgruntled Consumer
I purchased this unit after trying two JVC products specifically because I wanted certain functions. After extensive research, I found that this device said in the product specs that it would do everything I wanted.Here are the functions I wanted:1. Bluetooth integration (including voice dial).2. Ipod integration.3. XM integration.4. Control of unit from factory redundant controls on steering wheel.While technically the unit does all of these, it performs quite poorly in some areas. I have decided to keep this unit, but it's a Hobson's choice. Frankly, I have been unable to find a unit that does all of them well.Keep in mind, in order to do a lot of these things, you need to buy a separate breakout box or adapter that is not included in the price. Here how it did in each of these areas:1. Bluetooth integration. OK at best. Call quality is fine. It also accessed and played music from my bluetooth smartphone. Where it suffers, though is voice dial integration. Basically, although you can initiate a voice dial call from the unit, there is a bug in the Bluetooth stack in the Pioneer unit, and, because of this bug, you cannot hear prompts from you phone telling you when to talk or asking you to confirm a selection. Pioneer says "yep, we have this problem", and "nope, we're not going to fix it". I have made a work around by disabling all voice prompts on my phone, but I still have to guess when to talk, and if the phone gets the wrong voice tag, you don't know until the wrong person picks up. This issue really is annoying if you rely upon voice dial. There is also no dedicated hard button to turn on voice dial that can be accessed no matter what mode the unit is in. You instead have to get to the phone screen & then trigger a voice dial. The JVC KW-AVX800 does a vastly superior job of bluetooth integration.2. Ipod integration. Quite good, but has a rough spot or two. While the menu tree could be better, it is vastly superior to the JVC. It does sometimes loses time sync with my latest generation ipod nano, but it recovers quickly.3. XM integration. Very good. Nice displays and easy to navigate. My presets do sometimes disappear from the preset list. What I mean is that the slot for the preset would be there, but the channel name would be missing. This happened with my JVC unit much more frequently, though.4. Control of unit from factory redundant controls on steering wheel. Good. I wanted to be able to control basic functions on the unit from the factory steering wheel controls so I would not have to take my eyes off the road. It works reliably, but every tap on the buttons brings an audible "bing" from the unit. This can be annoying when you are changing the volume.Finally, although navigation was not something I cared about, since it has nav, let me talk about it: it is incredibly sub-par. I have used a Garmin Nuvi unit for some time. The navigation experience on the Garmin is just vastly superior. First and foremost, the Garmin is just MUCH more accurate. The Pioneer seems not to recognize things like turns as well. Second, the Garmin's maps are preloaded. Each time you want to navigate on the Pioneer, though, you need to remove any cd or dvd you have in the unit & put in the navigation dvd. Cumbersome. Finally, and for me unforgivably since it would be a simple software fix, integration between an ipod and the nav system is poor. Unlike on the Garmin Nuvi which pauses music or book on tape content when the navigation system gives you a directional prompt, this unit does not. This means when the unit tells you "left tern ahead" and then 5 seconds later "turn left now" and then "proceed for five miles" you miss a lot of the thing you are listening to & need to keep rewinding.In the end, I'll keep it because it does most of what I want at least passably well. If I was relying on it for navigation, though, it would definitely be a reject.Finally, the product descripton says it has "15GB". I'm not sure that it has anything like that. It certaily requires you to use the nav DVDs, so I think this is a misprint.
21 of 24 people found the following review helpful.
Good unit for the price (good accessories)
By Ashwin Mudigonda
Why I like it:Unit:- Cheap.- Customizable with accessories.- Does its navigation job most of the time pretty well.- Nice extras such as vehicle dynamics, A2DP compatability, equalizer settings.- Quite intuitive commands regarding navigation.- Good sound quality (Better than factory setting).- Good POI database and telephone search is a blessing.iPod:- Whatever. It works.Bluetooth:- Works ok. Automatically stops playback and transfers call and vice versa.Why I don't like it:USB Interface (I returned this accesory)- Very archaic controls.- Only folder navigation, but no subfolder navigation abilities thus resulting in cumbersome searching.- Only 8 character text display for folder, artist, album.- Painful.iPod- For song capacities > few GB, searching is cumbersome.- No alphabetical navigation (that would be nice)- Scrolling doesn't work. With 200+ pages, finding an artist starting with M requires holding the down button for a while.- After all the hard work of getting to the artist/album, the entire process needs to be repeated for the same result.Eg. If you somehow found Buddha Bar - I, listened to it and now want to listen to Buddha Bar - II, the entire onus needs to be repeated.Unit:- Urban canyons can be painful resulting in wrong or convoluted directions.Bluetooth:- Had to buy a new phone because older version of BT wouldn't work.- Highway noise can cause receiving party to get frustrated.- Still doesn't automatically recognize phone (perhaps it is phone's fault)What I would like to see:- Z-axis information I.e. altitude. After the end of a trip, a graph showing the altitude points along the way would be great (As this reflects in the fuel economy)- Voice commands (its there in the higher end models)- Punchier colors.- Choice of different voices.- Trip information in real-time i.e. Distance covered, time elapsed.- NO CHARGE ON DVD UPGRADES (I plonked a coupla grand for this)
See all 33 customer reviews...
Good iPod integration - TERRIBLE NAVIGATION
