HP TouchSmart. Touch the future now.
- Average user rating: 3.0 stars out of 19 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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2 out of 2 people found this review helpful
2.0 stars
"Good iPod integration; terrible human factors on interface"
Pros: Fast and seamless iPod interaction
Cons: Poor User interface, poor radio reception
Summary: Alpine makes much of their collaboration with Apple on the production of the x001. Given this, I expected the high level of perfection in the user interface that we have come to expect of Apple. Not so!!!
The Good: the iPod integration works well. All the different ways of accessing your music are present, and the access to the iPod is fast. Setup is quite straightforward, as well.
The Bad: quite a bit, actually.
1. Display is too small, and not well laid out. Album artwork is hard to see; titles inevitably go off the end. There probably is enough screen real estate to do a much better job, but it's not well laid out.
2. Aesthetics: let's face it, when you buy an aftermarket deck, you want it to look sexy and tightly integrated in your vehicle! However, you can't: (1) adjust colour of display and backlit buttons to other than red/blue; (2) change the wallpaper to your own picture - you have to use Alpine's.
3. Layout of interface - poor. You constantly expect certain behaviours - that pushing the center button will "Enter" your selection (not so, you have to push a separate enter button); that pushing the >> and << buttons would take you to the next station while listening to the radio (not so; they are manual tuning only); that when you select Preset, it will highlight the station you're listening to, so that you can select the next or previous station easily (not so; it always gives you the first station in the list), etc.
4. Radio - reception is poor.
5. Faceplate removal is fiddly, requiring wiggling of the faceplate to disengage.
Overall, I'm not impressed at all.
