did you buy your head unit through Crutchfield?

 

No I got my headunit from amazon.com it was the cheapest place at the time for $299

 

Yeah, sometimes Amazon even beats eBay.

 

no kidding? hrmm im going to have to look around and maybe with the savings, i can get it professionally installed. cuz im absolutely retarded with that stuff

 

I have a Pioneer head unit. It is my 6th unit to have in a vehicle. I don't think I would have anything else installed. I mostly had the AVICD3, but now have the AVICX920BT. I can say that it is worlds better than the D3. It has alot of features built in and looks great once installed (nice look and matching lights to the dash). I use the bluetooth regularly, but also have HD radio, XM, iPod, and back up camera installed. I highly recommend it.

 

I got an '07 H3x on Monday and will be replacing the nav unit with a Pioneer unit this weekend in order to get a backup camera and DVD playing for the kids.

Having lived with the standard unit for a week, I can definitely say I'd never want a nav screen that low in the car. I've hated it and I'll also be installing my Garmin dashtop unit up where I can see it.

 

I have the AVIC in my H3 and I'd offer some warnings. It does some things well, but there are quite a few annoyances to consider.

PROS:

• Bluetooth works well. Pairs well with my iPhone and I have no complaints.
• Satellite Radio works well. No complaints with XM service.
• iPod connectivity works fairly well. Sound quality is good, but some connection issues.

CONS:

• Have had reliability problems with the unit. Sometimes the unit functions but the on screen display is black (makes touch screen control problematic, yes?). Turning the car off and back on again solves.
• Bluetooth connectivity between AVIC and iPhone sometimes drops mid commute.
• There is a long "boot up" time when you start the car. Unable to use the touch screen controls for 15-30 seconds.
• Back-Up camera does not therefore function until boot up sequence is complete. I don't know about you, but in 15- 30 seconds I've already backed out of my parking space making the money spent on back-up camera a waste.
• iPod sometimes fails to connect. You don't know this until the boot up sequence is complete and you've likely started driving. Disconnecting and connecting the iPod seems to solve this in most cases. Could be an iPod issue, though I never had this trouble with the connection in my Lexus.
• Navigation as mentioned by other posters isn't so hot. The voice for the guidance is so annoying in quality and frequency of commands that I turned it off altogether.
• Tons of small design/user interface problems. In the H3 for instance, the only clock is on the head unit. When traveling on the highway the AVIC puts prompts for upcoming exits over the clock so you can't see it. Some frequently used buttons are tiny on screen while less frequently used ones take up large amounts of real estate. If listening to an audio book on your iPod and you get an incoming call, there is no way to pause the iPod once the call comes in (should happen automatically). I could go on and on.

Glad others are having such good luck with the Pioneer. Personally I'm very disappointed given the money I've put into it and won't be purchasing another Pioneer product in this lifetime (have had problems with products of theirs in the past).

 

can you please list more of the Cons? becasue if im going to drop a grand on a head unit and its little accessories i want to know what to expect

 

My key concerns are listed above - notably the reliability of the unit, accessibility, and intuitiveness of the controls themselves.

Other concerns beyond those listed above tend to be minor but taken as a whole add up to a mediocre user experience.

• I thought it a nice feature that you can import you own photo for the unit splash screen which is displayed during the boot up sequence. The software you use to edit the images is pretty poor however and I wasn't able to ever tell where it was importing the images to my PC (if it was properly) once edited in their software. No matter, I'm fairly tech savvy and I edited the image through trial and error in Photoshop. Try as I might I cannot get the image to display full screen however. 4:3 images display with black bars on the right and left side of the screen. 16:9 images have black bars on every side. Minor annoyance, but an annoyance nonetheless.
• I was pleased that the navigation display allows for top down 2D perspective as well as 3D perspective. Only problem is that in 3D mode street names are not displayed unless the zoom is set to 500' above ground level or less. Zoomed that close it's tough to see what streets are coming up making the view less than helpful. I would have expected the default zoom level to display street names at the very least.
• Voice commands look to be a nice feature. Imagine being able to click a button while driving and simply say "play U2" and have the iPod switch over. In practice, I've been unable to get any of the voice commands working properly. Can't tell if this is flaky AVIC implementation or something related to my older iPod. Since I have trouble with non-iPod voice commands I think this is a system issue.
• Spent a good deal of money having the adapter installed so that I can maintain OnStar capability with the aftermarket AVIC. Problem is that once the old head unit was removed and the new one installed I noticed that the volume of OnStar is very low - almost inaudible while driving. This makes use of the Satellite phone useless as are OnStar advisor communication. I think the volume was turned low during the installation of the new unit and now that the AVIC is installed I can't adjust it louder. An AVIC issue? Certainly not, this was something wit the install but is still an annoyance of the new system nevertheless.
• I've had trouble with iPod video playback from time to time. Seems to be working good today when I checked it but at times in the past the AVIC would only play the first video in a playlist and give me an error for playback on subsequent choices. Problem withteh AVIC? Perhaps not, this could be a video format issue but the inconsistency of problems I experience is troubling.

I do like the AVIC for bluetooth, satellite radio and iPod functionality. Just too many other issues with small things and annoyances with Navigation itself that rub me the wrong way.

Take it as one datapoint though. As mentioned, others on the board here seem to really like their Pioneer choices.

 

Thabks for all th input guys! Its really helpfull. I'm jusy wondering if I should upgrade my hu from my stok hu with monsoon system to the stock nav hu of the h3? Im planning to add a stealthbox to replace the stock subs and amp, and probably add another amp when i replace my other speakers. Is the nav system of the h3 has the rca inputs for this? Or should i get some things to make this work? Thanx!!