- Average user rating: 3.0 stars out of 12 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
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43 out of 45 people found this review helpful
2.0 stars
"Do Not Buy This If You Have A Fully Loaded iPod"
Pros: iPod, USB and Line-In Interfaces
Cons: Does Not Control iPods Well
Summary: Apparently CNET must have tested this unit with an iPod without much on it. If you have an iPod with a lot of music by a lot of different artists, controlling it through this unit is almost impossible!
First, you have only three top level choices - Artist, Album or Playlist. There are no additional options under these top levels. So if I want to play A Day in the Life by the Beatles, on my iPod I would choose the Beatles as the artist and Sgt. Peppers as the album, getting me to the song I want pretty quickly. On this unit, I can either scan through the 1000+ albums on my iPod and find Sgt. Peppers, or I can choose the Beatles as the artist and scan through every beatles song on my ipod until i find the beginning of the Sgt. Pepper album.
This might not be a big deal if you were able to scan through artists and songs on this unit as quickly as you can on the iPod itself. Unfortunately, this unit is painfully slow when it comes to scanning through artists, albums or playlists. It takes between 1 and 2 seconds to go from one artist, album or playlist to the next. So if I want to hear Nirvana, it takes me 1 to 2 seconds just to skip by each of the other A-N artists on my iPod. Because of multiple artist compilations and single songs purchased from iTunes, I have over 500 different artists on my iPod. Guessing that about half of them are before Nirvana, half after, it takes between 4 and 8 minutes just to go through the artist list to get to Nirvana! And this requires holding the "2" button on the deck continuously, which is not particularly comfortable or safe when driving.
Now if you could still use your iPod to select what you want to hear, this wouldn't be as big a problem. However, you cannot control the iPod with its click wheel when it is hooked up to the stereo through the dock connector - you HAVE to use the slow, inadequate stereo controls.
One solution would be to just use the line in port to play the iPod, and if I keep this stereo that is likely what I will do. However, then the track information would not be displayed at all on the unit - and I could have gotten a better unit for the same price if I did not get the iPod connectivity.
Until they find a better way to control your iPod through this car stereo, stay away unless you like frustration!Updated
First, to be fair, my 4 rating only applies if your primary use of the deck is to control your iPod. The stereo sounds fine and the USB and line in work as advertised. However, the 4 stands if a primary use of the unit will be connecting your iPod!
I finally gave up and returned the Sony today. After looking online, I decided to consider three other units - the Pioneer DEHP5900IB, the Panasonic CQC7105U and the Alpine CDA-9883. I found that both Circuit City and Best Buy had connections set up so you could try an iPod with the decks. Quick piece of advice here - test using your own iPod - the demo iPod at Circuit City had only 5 songs by 5 artists on it, so navigation problems weren't as evident.
The Pioneer deck was only slightly better than the Sony deck for controlling an iPod. You could again scroll through only one artist at a time, but the lag between artists was much shorter than with the Sony. However, it still only gave you the top level menu options with no submenus (could not search for an artist and then search albums by that artist). It was still too slow to be useful for a large music library.
The Panasonic was a little better than the Pioneer - rather than pushing a knob to change artists, you turned a wheel, which was a little quicker. However, the lack of submenus and the inability to go backwards from A to Z (from Aerosmith to ZZ Top, for example) kept this from working well to manage an iPod. (too bad, because this was one cool looking deck!)
The Alpine was far and away the best budget car stereo for controlling an iPod. It wasn't even close.
First, scrolling through artists was substantially faster that the other three decks. Alpine is not blowing smoke when they say they offer a "full speed" iPod connection. Second, the Alpine unit actually lets you use submenus, just like on your iPod! So if you want to hear a song on Radiohead's "The Bends", you don't have to scroll through every song on every other album they did to get there - you just choose "Radiohead" from the first menu, then "The Bends" from the second, and you have all the songs on that album displayed. Third, and perhaps most importantly, Alpine uses what they call "percentage search" to speed up accessing your music even more. Basically, the way it works is that your library is divided into 6 sections based on whether you are searching for artist, album, playlist, etc... The 6 preset buttons on the Alpine unit will immediately take you to that point in your library. So if I wanted to find Nirvana, rather than having to scroll through every artist A-Z to get there, I could choose button 4, which would take me about halfway through my artist list. On any of the other units, i would have had to have scrolled through 300+ artists to get to the halfway point. The Alpine unit brought me there in about a second!
f you absolutely need a deck with a USB port and a line in, and either don't plan on using your iPod with it, have an iPod without much on it, I would still recommend the Sony. It has a great feature set for a low price, and the sound quality is pretty good for a budget deck, although the Alpine sounds better in my car. However, if you are planning to use your iPod with your car stereo frequently, I don't think you can get a better budget deck than the Alpine CDA-9883 - and any of the other three decks will drive you crazy with their inadequate navigation!
If you are considering ANY deck that controls the iPod through the car stereo controls, I highly recommend you try it with your own iPod before making your purchase and having it installed, if at all possible.
- 3 replies to this review
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WOW! Thanks for a great report. Much like yourself, I am in the market for an iPod ready unit. I switched over my 1000+ CD collection to digital (iTunes) back in 2006 and I have not looked back since then. I too would be very frustrated if I had to hold a button and wait for minutes to get to the middle of the alphabet on my artist/album list all while driving on the freeway. I will take your advise and look at the Alpine before considering this stereo unit.
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As a person looking for a car stereo with iPod connection, I was extremely glad to read your review of the Sony unit. I was about to buy it, but since I have well over 13,000 tracks on my iPod Classic 160 GB, it would obviously not be a good choice.
The Alpine looks much more like what I want. You did not mention selection by Genre, which I think it does have according to the specs from the Alpine site. I usually use Shuffle within a Genre on my iPod, and wish to do the same with the car stereo.
The down side, is that the Alpine apparently does not have a front panel line-in; I have several other non-iPod mp3 players and the only way to use them would be with line-in. And according to the Apline site, the line-in accessory add-on for this unit is a whooping $160! Seems outrageous. -
this is one of the best written, most helpful reviews I've seen on cnet!
Sony CDX-GT610UI:
