Reach

I'm looking for some real-world opinions on the operation of these units. When they first came out, they were dogged in some reviews for extremely slow response times. Subsequent firmware updates are supposed to have improved both speed and reliability on these, but I've never had an opportunity to lay my hands on one!

I'm thinking of upgrading my D3 to one of these, and moving the D3 to another vehicle or selling it altogether. Hoping someone here has one and can chime in! What do you like / dislike about it? How is the traffic info on the 900? Anybody have hands-on experience with both an F series and a D3 / N4/5 series to give an apples-to-apples comparison?

Thanks

rattmann316

i have installed several of these and have been very disappointed. its nice to not need nav discs but the load times are ridiculous (especially if youre trying to troubleshoot an install!). bluetooth seems to be the weakest link on them, not really working for all phones. i paired my 8100 to it to test, customer tried to pair his 8800 and it wouldnt recognize...BOTH are blackberrys though. im not impressed with pioneer anymore...im sticking with alpine. just my .02

subsonicman

The new pioneer products were really bad.... They have tried a few times to come out with updates, to fix the slow processors, but so far, they all sucked

Reach

So I finally got to try a F700 hands-on. I don't know what all the fuss is about, it seemed to work great!

ASIDE from a 30 second startup time, which I can admit is utterly outrageous, it was quick and responsive. It didn't have a phone paired to it (wall mounted demo), but I looked at some youtube vids, which suggest that the phone stuff works great with 2.0 firmware, again the catch is that it can take up to 2 minutes from the time you turn on the car until the time it fully syncs up with your phone.

In my opinion, it seems to work great, just suffer from frustratingly long startup times. Once its going, it looked good.

So, what to do?

I don't know of any other units out there that offer anywhere near as good, or complete, of a system as the AVIC series. Do I just get another D3 for now? The D3 is my definition of excellent at this point. I just wish there would be something better out by now, as its over 2 years on the street for this product, and nothing from Pioneer or anyone else seems to be any better!

rattmann316

its your money brotha.

have you seen anything from alpine lately?

subsonicman

phones, ipods, and any thing else take months to load up

just get the IVA-w203 from Alpine, it cost the same, and is way better....

trust me I put this stuff in for a living

Reach

The navi on the IVA-w203 looks terrible though, I'd be embarrassed just to have that in my car.

/me dreaming for (AVIC+NUVI)

BlueAc

iTrader: (2)

I heard the Kenwood DNX-8120 was supposed to pretty nice...

Blazin Si

I have the F90 in my CL. The slow start-up time isn't all that bad and I was well warned about it before the purchase. Music will start playing in roughly 10 - 20 seconds depending on if your source is set to CD, iPod, SD card or radio. The back-up camera works in about 8 seconds after start-up and the Navi works in about 45 seconds with the bluetooth connection taking the longest at over a minute (I have an LG Dare). It seems like "media" phones connect better than smart phones.

Some people have been trash talking the unit when their problems were strictly user error. The firmware 2.0 update that comes pre-installed on the latest units has taken away a lot of the quarks that many people were complaining about. It is still a little slow when processing commands while the Navi map is up.

My biggest gripe is with the display not dimming in low light. Pretty much all the menu's you'll use have a black background, however it still lights up the whole inside of the car at night. Also, when in 2D map mode, you're stuck with North Up. The map will only rotate around you in 3D mode.

It runs on a Windows CE operating system and with the SD card, it makes it really easy to do software hacks.

I did the installation and bypass myself. This was the first time attempting anything like this and it went really well with almost no problems. I hope that helps. I've only had it installed for a few days, so I'm still getting aquatinted with it.

BaByBlAcKtYpE-s

iTrader: (2)

Hey blazin,
i have the f90 and i am getting it installed next week and i wanted to ask you how you bypassed it? it would be great if you could tell me how you did it thank you.

wside09

i have f90 and i'm trying to change splash screen.
how do i do that?
and how do i connect usb to CD-IU230V? both have same side for usb...

Blazin Si

Sorry, I haven't checked this thread in a while. If you still need help with the bypass, shoot me a PM.

chaosnexstacy

in the chance you havent found this site yet, just a start for some ideas and more this site rules for mods just search for anything else you need if not I can probly find it.

http://www.avic411.com/

http://www.avic411.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=21617

http://www.avic411.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=99

http://www.avic411.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=21