-
Average user rating:
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
-
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful
2.0 stars
"Worth it... if you light your cigars with $100 bills"
Pros: Flawless iPod navigation, Nice color screen, Reliable wireless controller
Cons: Has a mind of its own (and a strange one at that), Lack of refinement, Unusual feature omissions, High price considering its faults
Summary: For $400, you would expect the Drive+Play 2 to be nearly perfect. It is far from perfect. What you *do* get is flawless iPod navigation, a high resolution color display and a reliable wireless controller. What you don't get is the level of refinement, features and reliability in operation you would expect for $400. Hopefully a firmware update can solve most of my issues, but given that Harman/Kardon doesn't have an owner's manual for this unit (it comes with a simple 10 page 'quick start' guide and nothing else is available), I'm concerned this might not happen anytime soon. Here is a summary of some of the issues you can expect with this unit:
1. The swivel mount which holds the screen to the mounting base was tight at first, but after several days it began to loosen. Now, after a couple weeks, it is now very loose, and there is no way to tighten it. Thus, my screen does not stay straight. For instance, if I push on the gas a bit, the display tips.
2. When you open the box, the display has a warning sticker on it that says, "This device is meant to charge your iPod even when your car is off. Do not leave your iPod connected for more than 24 hours or your car battery may drain." I was shocked to see this; why should I have to worry about this? I didn't have to worry about this with my old external JVC iPod controller. Fortunately, you can just twist the yellow and red wires together and hard wire the power to a "switched" power source without losing your Drive+Play 2 settings.
3. The auto resume feature (i.e., playback starts once you start the car) only works if you've left the car for about 45 minutes or less. Even then, the iPod hasn't paused where you left off -- it seems to continue playing, because the song that's being played when I return isn't the same as when I left. Again, didn't have this issue with my old JVC external iPod controller.
4. The "auto resume" feature does not work if you leave the car for more than approx. 45 minutes -- you need to find something to listen to practically every time you enter the car. (This *might* be caused by my choosing to twist the red and yellow wires together so my battery doesn't drain, but I was assured settings aren't lost when you do this.)
5. The highly touted "Automatic Mix" feature does not seem to work properly, or if it does, it would be nice to understand it a bit more. I have over 3,000 songs carefully grouped into genres. Selecting Automatic Mix gives me four "stations" to choose from and the contents don't make sense. For instance, the first station is called "Alternative, Rock, Country, Easy Listening". Why would it group Easy Listening and Country with Rock and Alternative? And why would it show only four stations? And how do I create my own station? I figured this would be a bit more like Pandora where I could create a station based on artist, song or genre then tailor it by saying whether I liked what it picked next.
6. The "Shuffle" setting gets switched off at random.
7. You cannot rate songs.
8. You cannot control volume with the wireless controller while listening to songs (need to go into settings menus to preset the input/output levels).
9. You cannot view album art full screen.
10. You cannot view photos that are on your iPod.
11. The only screen saver is an advertisement for Harman/Kardon's other products.
12. The Bluetooth and Sirius modules come at an additional cost (and aren't available as of yet).
- 1 reply to this review
-
How are you able to review this unit before the unit is available to the public? Was your unit pre-production? If not, where did you purchase?
