A very strong attempt to be the everything head unit

Author's Rating:

Pros: Awesome 3" display, plays everything, Giga-mp3 DVDs

Cons: Slow interface, complicated FM/AM radio operation

The Bottom Line: 
Best do-all single din head unit....for now

Author's Review
On paper, this unit seems to be the ultimate single-din car stereo upgrade. Beautiful glossy finish, crisp 3" color screen, and a laundry list of options and capabilities. I've owned this HU for a few weeks now, and I'll start off this review with the negative.



The biggest gripe I have about the JVC is lag time and loading time. The fact that this thing plays mp3 DVD's is one of it's biggest assets, but the fact that it takes 15-20 seconds just to load up the mp3 DVD disc after you insert it is just way too long. Also, when you want to change to a different track, regardless of whether it's a burned cd/dvd or a store bought commercial CD, there is a significant delay before it changes to the next track. I also wish this unit had a conventional rotary volume knob instead of volume buttons. As I mentioned before, the button interface is slower than average, so even lowering the volume takes time, although not as long as it takes to change tracks. The last gripe I have about this unit is with fm/am radio. Finding and presetting stations is a bit of a hassle, and again, I wish this unit had conventional 1-6 station buttons. Instead, you have to use the cursor to move through the menu of saved stations and press enter on the one you want.



Ok, now for the good...actually the great. This thing plays nearly anything thrown at it. Best of them all is the giga-mp3 DVD's. I burned a significant portion of my mp3 collection onto 1 DVD. I don't know how many songs I burned, but it consisted of 61 FULL albums on that 1 DVD. Also good is the interface. A list menu shows up sorting all the folders, which I have organized by artist. Then you can easily go into artist subfolders and play whatever song you want. As for the sound, I'm not a huge audiofile; I'm just your average young listener. This unit has a built in amp and is supposed to put out 4x50watts blah blah blah. I drive a 350z and am still using the stock speakers, and with the JVC installed it sounds great enough. There is a seven channel EQ adjustment option, so you can EQ the unit to how you like it. The video screen is sublime. Extremely crisp and bright, the only draw back is that at 3" it's slightly on the small side. I'm not a big fan of the blue color buttons, but you can change the screen background color to most of the major colors of the rainbow. Lastly, there are more auxilary inputs than you would ever need, so hook up anything and everything you want in your car. I have an amp and sub hooked up to it, and I liked how it has it's own Sub Out channel. Also, you can adjust sub volume from the unit and even cancel out low end frequencies from coming out of the normal speakers so that low end freq. only go into the sub, which is great if youre using crappy stock speakers and dont want to blow them.



All in all, this unit is jam packed with pretty much everything you could need. Despite a few nit-picky things dealing with its controls, I'd still recommend it. However, I'd only recommend it if you get it for $400 or less. Any higher and I think something else would be better.