- 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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4 out of 4 people found this review helpful
3.5 stars
"A nice shift in the the car audio paradigm...but there's a lot of work left."
Pros: Complete headunit-ipod functionality
Cons: Controls are slow and cumbersome
Summary: I was putting off the replacement my older Alpine headunit for quite some time. When I saw the x001 was released I figured it was time to pull the trigger.
Although I was a little set off by the fact there was no cd-player it didn't bother me because I never use CDs...what I was disturbed by was the small display. After the unit was installed this would become my biggest gripe with the unit. The display only shows six lines at a time, and it shows very few characters across. It's extremely annoying searching for music. The problem's magnified by the fact that only the song title will scroll. If you have an artist that fits into several categories, it's downright frustrating, i.e. Dave Matthews, Dave Matthews Band, Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds, etc...well then your display will show five lines of "Dave Matthe" The only way to effectively listen to music is to play an entire artist at one time, or listen to the playlists. Also while the display's nice and crisp...it's still no match for a sunny day.
The navigation functions don't make matters any better. It often takes a painful amount of time time between such things as pressing the ">>" button and waiting for the song to change. Many issues could've been alleviated if everything was done with the scroll wheel...like the ipod itself does. But for some reason Alpine found it necessary to make you use the enter button and other buttons for navigation.
Finally, past the ergonomics of the system, the unit's solid. If you have a high-end system, you may get frustrated with sound quality (especially bass/treble response) because there's definitely a noticeable difference in sound quality from using compressed MP3 files and and a CD. But as far as I know, there's not much that can be done about that. But if you're using a high quality transferred MP3 the sound is great, and the one function ipod got right on this system was a simple "audio" button which quickly and easily allows you to adjust your subs, bass, and treble....which has been extremely painful on the other Alpine's I've owned.
On a side note this is my 4th alpine unit and the first one that didn't come with a remote. While the older remotes will work, they're extremely limited in their functionality. For $400, it shouldn't be an optional accessory.
In sum, If all your music's on an Ipod, this is definitely the route to pursue. Even then, if your happy with the head unit you currently have...I'd just wait a year to get the second generation model, or the copy cat models that will work out the simple kinks and will quickly turn this from a 7/10 to a 10/10
