Dual XHD6430

To start, I had a good experience with the previous model (xhd6420), the HD radio was great and it had all the features that I could want. If the reception was not that great in an area it would switch seamlessly between standard and HD (when reception allowed)



This one has been quite a different story... The first thing that became annoying is when it would switch from HD to standard radio (or the other way around) it would have a noticeable echo. You have the option of switching that off so it stays on standard radio but who wants to fiddle with settings while driving? With the previous model the only thing that you would notice when switching is the changing sound quality, not an ECHO. The lights on the faceplate are very bright at night, almost distracting



Now, the most frustrating part: The radio had been installed for about 4 months and it died on me! Sent it back under the 1yr warranty ($16 shipping round trip), received it back pretty quickly, re-installed it and IT DIED AGAIN! Within one week! So now I need to pay another $16 in shipping to get it replaced. So now I will have paid $32 in shipping for the warranty claim for a radio that I bought for $109..... Next time I will just buy the better brand. Very disappointed with this purchase!



I also purchased the bluetooth adapter and it does not work with my phone (which is not more than a year old) Boo!

I have owned this stereo for about 6 months so I have a good idea of it's strong and weak points.



First the good. You can't get a better deal on a bluetooth enabled HD radio that has an aux jack, USB port and will run your IPOD (I don't have an IPOD so I can't say how well it works) The blu tooth works well, the best place for the mic is on the visor pointing directly at the driver. Anywhere else and it doesn't pick up your voice well and you get a lot of background noise. The HD radio works great and you can turn the digital tuner on and off if you have problems picking up HD. The USB reader does well with my jump drive with about a 1 gig of music on it ( Not a lot), and the aux port works well with my MP3 player. the sound is great as well especially when you turn the "Loud" setting on.



Now for the bad, the buttons feel kinda cheap, and there is no dimmer for the extremely bright blue back lighting! I don't know who thought blue would be a good color as light green or red is generally easy on the eyes at night. I have had to turn the radio off while driving at night because the blue lines between the buttons (that serve no purpose) are so bright and distracting. I made it better by taking the faceplate apart and taking out the clear plastic that the light shines through and painting it black. Now the only light that shines through are the letters on the buttons. That made it much more bearable at night.

The bluetooth only shows the phone number on the display, no names, so you really don't know who is calling unless you actually know their #. It is also difficult to dial from the radio, you have to use the remote to enter the #, you can't use your phone book on the radio to dial. We use the phone to select who to call and let the radio do the rest. The sound is good on both ends.



Certain things will cause the radio to lock up every one in a while, most of the time it can be fixed by removing and replacing the faceplate, but sometimes you have to reset the radio which causes you to loose all your settings.



I also had to put noise filters on both the antenna line and power coming into the radio to get rid of some engine noise, but that may just have to do with my vehicle.



Overall I am satisfied with the radio, it is a great deal for all the features you get especially the HD radio. Most of the other brands HD would cost another $100 to 150 to get HD.

These are all the issues I'm having too. Came to my car one day to find the faceplate fell off. I removed the faceplate maybe 2-3 times before, so this is a super bad design. I superglued some plastic to the rear of the faceplate to give the latch something to hold on to. Then the radio stops working. I found the reset, but also found I need to reset about once a week. Don't bother typing in presets, the radio will forget them with every reset. To call this radio a Turd is being kind. Don't buy one!

My friend has this and he loves it. He has had it for six months now, and no problems yet looks cool and compliments his ride. I would recomend it to anyone in the market for a head unit.

This was the first aftermarket radio I put in my car. To start everyone looks at Dual pretty poorly but I can honestly say I enjoy this HU. The iPod feature I use everyday and it works really well. USB port reads quickly and the sound quality is more than decent on all the modes. I used Bluetooth for awhile and loved the audio streaming from my phone but stopped using it because i don't know why but it just stopped connecting, so I stuck to the iPod feature. Great for a first HU.