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Overall Rating

Nice Deck for the Money
This is my first receiver purchase since I purchased an iPod a couple years ago. I had just been using a Monster FM transmitter and was getting tired of all the static and high pitched noise coming through. So when I set out looking for a receiver my main goals was to find one with ipod connectivity and built in bluetooth. The price for the amount of features on this receiver is outstanding. But, like all things, you get what you pay for. Don’t get me wrong this is a nice little receiver. The built in bluetooth is excellent. I drive a Miata and was worried that it would be difficult for people to understand me and me to understand them because of the road noise, but that isn’t a problem. Everything comes through perfectly. Also, the sound is excellent. I can’t believe how much of a difference this receiver makes over my factory deck. So what’s the problem you ask?? Why only 3 stars??? Well there is only one problem and it is a HUGE one, for me anyway. That is you can only control your iPod through the receiver. The iPod’s interface is locked once it is hooked up to the receiver. I have 3500 songs on my iPod with tons of different artists and some artists with over 10 albums each. Navigating to find the song you want to listen to is a nightmare, especially going down the road. And that wouldn’t even be so bad if you could just spin the knob and quickly go through artists, but you can’t. It is sluggish. If you spin it too fast it will just sit on the artist you are currently on. You also can’t go backwards. So if you want to hear an artist that starts with a ‘Z’ and you have as many artists on your iPod as I do get ready for about a 15 minute ordeal. Let’s say you finally get to artist ‘Z’ and click the button to go into their folder(assuming the sluggish controls don’t fly forward at the last second causing you to choose the wrong artist and yell obscenities because you have to start back at ‘A’) and you want to hear an album of their’s that also starts with ‘Z’. You have to scroll through every song under that artists name to get to the ‘Z’ album. You don’t pick /Artist/Album/Song, you have to pick the artist then scroll through everyone of their songs to find the one you want, and the same sluggish controls apply. They are all grouped together, so you don’t have any idea what album they are from. I have some artists that have the same name of a song on different albums, a live album for instance, and the only way to know which one it is is to figure out which album comes first in alphabetical order, in your head. And, if you choose the wrong version, and the version you want is on a different album, guess what? You have to start all the way back over at artist ‘A’. I do not understand why they wouldn’t just let you use the simple iPod interface(and they don’t, I emailed their support and asked). Other than that one hugely annoying problem this is a good receiver with lot’s of features for 90 bucks, but I wish I would of done a little more research and picked a receiver with much better iPod controls.

Overall Rating

AWWWWSOME! Best Radio Ever!
I mainly bought this for the SD slot. it took my 4 GB of memory. This radio is the best ever! It does everything it says it will do! flawless. SD Card Slot is the best thing ever. I thank you all own this CD stereo. It was very easy to install. The controls are eazy to use. I was going to get a separate Bluetooth kit, but what I saved so much money with Bluetooth. You hear your calls through all the speakers and the microphone is located on the stereo. Your calls to clear sound, the person you call can hear you perfectly. No road or the wind, and you do not scream when you talk on the phone. One thing you cannot do with this stereo you can not reduce screen brightness. I highly recommend this stereo for any music lover, stuck in traffic, has several discs in their car kind of person.