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Average user rating:
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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1.0 stars
"The worst deck I have ever owned..."
Pros: Nice clean look, affordable price, customizable display color
Cons: Terrible reliablility, Mickey Mouse remote, bad user manual
Summary: I have had more problems with the Blaupunkt Bahamas MP46 than with all the other decks I have bought in the last 15 years COMBINED. And all these problems have occurred within the short 4 months that I have owned it!
Sometimes, the deck will just power itself off and then immediately come back on while you are driving down the road. Sometimes, when you either put in a CD or change to CD mode from the radio, the deck will say "READING DISC PLEASE WAIT"...indefinitely! Or at least until you take the disc out and reinsert it. After reinserting the disc most of the time it will start to play within a few seconds, other times it does the same thing again. And no, these are not old, scratched up discs.
Sometimes when you are listening to a CD and shut the car off the deck will change to radio mode when you turn the car back on. The reverse also sometimes happens.
Half the time, the display will not show the name of the song you are currently listening to...it will show the name of the song BEFORE it. Other times it will give you the artist of one song, and the song name of the previous song in the SAME display line (or vice versa).
Recently, the deck just stopped playing CDs all together. When I put in a disc, it will give me the "READING DISC PLEASE WAIT" message for a minute or two, then it will say "CD ERROR" and switch to radio mode.
Sometimes, it will flash very quickly from radio to CD to radio or from CD to radio to CD...this all takes less than a second.
Unfortunately, the Bahamas does not have a reset button for the processor behind the faceplate like most decks do. This would allow the user to reset the deck's chip and perhaps solve the problem. To further complicate matters, a "troubleshooting" guide in the manual is non-existent, and the deck does not tell you what something like "CD ERROR" means. So it is difficult to know what is wrong. Most decks will say "ERROR 1", or "ERROR 352" or something like that. Then you can look in the manual to see what that means. But the manual for the Bahamas reads like it was written by German chimps with about a week of English training, and it does not go into that kind of detail.
The remote is not very good. For a supposedly "credit card-sized" remote it is quite large and flat, and does not really fit well in your hands (and I don't have small hands). Worse still is that it only controls the most basic of functions despite it's generous size. I have seen smaller remotes that literally control 3-4 times as many functions as this one. Another annoying thing about the remote is the way it controls bands and presets on the radio. You can push the right arrow key to go up from preset to preset, but there is no way to go down...the left arrow key is used to change bands (FM1, FM2, FM-T, AM). VERY counterintuitive and annoying, and NONE of this is actually printed on the remote.
Still, the deck is not without merits. It was cheap (@ US$99 new). And the chameleon-like display is nice...allowing you to match the display to ANY color dash lights you might have or any other color you want, for that matter. It is an attractive deck, with a sleek, upscale, low-key look. No gaudy flashing buttons or bling-bling lights and knobs all over the place. I like the way it allows you to list MP3 files without listening to them.
Overall, this has just been a terrible deck. I have had nothing but problems with it since I installed it. Maybe I just got a bad one...I don't know. But I will be chucking it and buying a Pioneer, which is normally what I always buy. Nothing but GOOD luck with Pioneer, and I have had a lot of them over the past 15 years. If you buy one of these, I wish you good luck...you may need it. "AC"
Where to buy
Blaupunkt Bahamas MP46 - radio / CD / MP3 player:
$69.95
| store | price | in stock? | rating |
|---|---|---|---|
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eBay
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$69.95 | Yes |
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