Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I bought this hookup (and a Kenwood receiver for it) because I wanted to control my iPod direct from my dash, and get direct-connect sound quality. I have a nearly full 60 gig iPod photo I was using with an iTrip, and taking my eyes of the road to mess with the scroll wheel seemed like an accident waiting to happen.
I bought it at Best Buy who installed it free, so I can't speak to ease of installation. It's a small box that hangs out behind the dash, and they ran the connecting cord up and out next to my hand brake. It took the BB professional about 2 hours to install it.
The Good: Sound quality rules. There's no comparison between this and the iTrip I was using.
I love that it charges your iPod too, happiness is a charged battery icon on your iPod (or 5 bars of cell phone reception).
The Bad: The interface is really clunky. You use the [SCAN} button on the head unit to change between sorting by Playlist, Artist, Album, and Genre (a Podcasts option would've been nice in my opinion). Then, you use the Disc up/down buttons like you're flipping around in a cd changer to get to your selection. The problem, at least on my head unit, is you can only move ONE artist AT A TIME. That's *up one artist*, loads, starts playing, *up one artist* etc., one by one. In my case I have a few hundred artists, so that won't work. I suppose it's be more bearable w/ a mini or nano, but a fully loaded 60 is basically impenetrable. It also overrides the controls on the actual iPod, so you can't use the scroll wheel.
The saving grace is that when you plug your iPod in, it resumes the track you were playing. So what I end up doing is unplugging it, picking a track/album/whatever using the click wheel, and plugging the iPod in again. That doesn't take very long - you can disconnect your iPod at any time, and when you plug back in it "loads" up quick. This works fine, but not at all what I had in mind when I bought it.
Bottom line: Great sound quality, nice to see the disc/track info on your head unit, VERY hard/slow to navigate your library. If you've got a small iPod or like to make playlists, that shouldn't be as big a problem. Otherwise, get ready to plug/unplug every time you want to change your music.
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