Customer Ratings & Reviews

A good deal on a simple radio

I was looking for a simple Double DIN radio that would fit into my 1997 Buick Lesabre and which had USB capability. Sonic had this radio as a factory refurbished unit for a good price and I took the chance and bought it.

The radio exceeded my hopes. The radio plays both my iPod and flash drive very well and I am able to tailor the unit's button colors to match my car's dash lights.

The radio is a good radio for playing CDs or your ipod/USB flash drive and also has an AUX port for other music players.

Pros

Good price
Plays media well

Cons:
Little radar/bulls-eye graphic in the right corner is annoying.

Awsome Stereo

Love this stereo, I like the idea that I can tune the colors to match my interior gauge cluster lighting. The only drawback of this stereo is that I just cant get the "subwoofer" function to operate properly.

Great Looking

This is a great looking piece of hardware and is very easy to install. The only problem I had was getting the dimmer to adjust automatically according to when my lights were on or it was time for it to be dark outside. I love it so far. No other issues.

Love it!

This radio is fantastic with the my ipod. Lots of cool features on this radio. Found it the cheapest by far at Sonic electronix. Very easy to install myself with the kit they sent.

Well worth the money

Never really owned any JVC Products, but as doing my research on this particular radio, it seemed very well worth the price. It has everything that is needed to do some serious customizing on the output of the speakers on the size of the vehicle for the dimensions as well. Being able to match the color on the gauges of my vehicle was a plus :). Bluetooth pairing has been a blessing with not having to use headphones, the mic is awesome, it also automatically connects the Bluetooth device to the radio in less than 45 secs or so which is great with the Pandora. The overall construction of the radio it self seems very sturdy and good quality.

Very impressed with the radio from JVC. It was installed in a 05 Subaru STI. Great investment ! and I recommend!

Great Radio, Great Price

The radio is incredible. For a double din I think it's one of the best at this price range. I installed it in a 2005 RAV4, and works perfectly. The only problem of this radio, is that I can't see clearly the display in the sunlight, which is pretty annoying sometimes.

Great and Powerful Sound! Worlds Better Than OEM.

JVC has the most selections for more "budget-priced" double-din head units. My 2012 Corolla will accommodate a double-din, so I wanted that. Single DIN head units just look too tiny. I've never had JVC car audio equipment before, but had some home audio stuff from them many years ago. While often overlooked for other brands, JVC is quite a respectable brand and should not be overlooked.

I bought this to use exclusively with my iPod nano. I don't listen to CDs anymore, and I don't listen to the radio. Practically everything I would want to listen to is on my iPod. So I can't comment on the CD player or radio tuner.

I won't spend too much time talking about the features of this model. You can easily look that up yourself. I'll just quickly say that it's not difficult to use. Anything that isn't immediately obvious to use can be quickly looked up in the owner's manual (which is pleasantly succinct).

What I will talk about in this review is the sound quality and power output from the built-in amp.

I had this installed with Pioneer TS-A1674 6 1/2's in the door, and Pioneer TS-A6974R 6 x 9's in the rear deck. I had the installer disconnect the stock tweeters. I'm not running an amp to these speakers. They're both pretty efficient (90+ db sensitivity) and this JVC deck puts out 20 watts RMS. That might not sound like much to some people, but turned up, this hurt my ears well before any distortion set in. So as far as the 20 x 4 RMS amp, it's plenty powerful to drive efficient co-axials. In fact, I'd personally have no problem using this deck to power a set of efficient components up front. So to sum up the power portion - it's plenty powerful. I was drawn to this instead of competing decks offering 14 watts RMS.

Now let's talk about sound quality. When first installed, the sound is actually pretty bad. I wasn't too surprised. I figured I would just have to adjust the bass, mid, and treble. (Some head units only have bass and treble - I like how this one has mid as well). So I started tweaking the bass, mid, and treble. Didn't help. At all. I was convinced that I either bought the wrong head unit, but was really suspecting the speakers were cheap crap. That's when I remembered reading about the "Pro" EQ settings. Accessing these Pro options is different than hitting the EQ button to adjust bass. The Pro options let you adjust the frequency of the bass/mid/treble that you're boosting/lowering with the normal EQ button. It also lets you adjust Q. Even if you don't know what Q is (like me) it doesn't matter. You try the few (or so) different settings until you like what you hear. After I adjusted the Pro settings, I had a big smile on my face. It now sounds GREAT. Now I just need subs and an amp and my system will be complete.

Speaking of the Pro EQ settings, it might sound like you either need to know what you're doing, or that it's a huge pain that takes forever. But it's not (I promise). It's actually pretty quick and easy, and it's all by ear.

Should you choose this HU, or another one in the JVC line? I went with this one because it's the cheapest. I don't care about bluetooth, nor do I care about HD radio. Those are really what you're paying for with more expensive models. The power output and sound quality (and Pro EQ options) are the same. If I want good sounding radio, I'll just plug my iPhone into the USB connector and run an app like TuneIn which apparently streams at higher bitrates than HD radio anyway.

Conclusion - I'm very happy I went with this unit. It's powerful, sounds great (and minor tweaking) and didn't break the bank. It does everything I want it to. If I had to come up with something I wish it had, it would be the ability to store more user selectable EQ settings (instead of just one) but it's not a huge deal.

Economy Product - meh

I was looking to replace the GM CD-Player/Receiver in my Chevy Express van. I mainly wanted to keep within the double-DIN models, of which only two really show they fit my vehicle.

Installation was "relatively" easy, and I made sure that all the connections were solid before finally installing the unit.

Mainly, I wanted to get a better EQ control from a new unit. As advertised, the JVC comes with a 3-band parametric EQ. This is misleading, however. The term parametric in most engineer's eyes is one that allows variable center-frequency and Q. The JVC does neither. It only allows VERY limited center frequency and Q choices. There's some control here, but not as useful at cutting some frequencies as I was hoping. Again, it's very limited. I found SONY's 7-band graphic EQ to be more useful. Plus, only 2 bands allow Q settings to be changed, not all three.

I can honestly tell that JVC still has the same audio smoothness that I could detect from JVC receivers I've had in past years. You might want that, but if you've ever heard a nice tube amp, you'll find the JVC unpleasantly sterile.

If you use a subwoofer from which its source is from an amp fed by the high-level speaker output of the JVC, you might realize, as I did, that the sub loses a lot of low end. I fought with trying to match the sub to the low-end of the speakers and found this more of a fight than with the factory stereo. After perusing the Owner's manual and seeing the frequency response of the amp-section of the JVC explained why. 40Hz is the essential cut-off for how low the frequency response goes. That's pretty lame if your speakers and ears can easily enjoy 30-35Hz. I can only assume this to be a cost-savings, speaker saver, or a heat-reduction strategy, but in any case, bad design decision for a pleasurable experience. My ears definitely could hear a downgrade from the factory radio. If you use the RCA outputs (low-level) for your sub amp, you should be ok. BUT, since my door speakers can drop a 35Hz frequency with the factory system, and it's weaker through the JVC, I had to work a little harder with the sub.

I sincerely invite JVC engineers to add $50 to the street price of the unit and work a little harder on the life of the sound. I've heard some pretty basic audio gear sound more lively and inviting than this.

Features USB and iPhone interfacing; these work pretty well.

Controls are OK, but I'm sorry, holding down a button for a couple of seconds to access menus is truly not the way to go for me. Sometimes the changes you make will be retained without pressing the ENTER button, while others require it. I simply found the unit difficult to work with, even after a week of solid use.

Cost is a nice welcome, however. Keeping the cost of a head-unit this cheap is pretty awesome. But at the expense of quality and easy of use, I think a JVCKW-R500"X" model with improved audio quality, a fully parametric EQ, and a better way of accessing menus (joystick, or an actual menu button, not a secret "hold this button" menu button?) and you'd have a better idea of what car audio can be like in a consumer world.

I kept the unit, but to better enjoy it, this required a lot more work, cost, and possibly a new set of front-speaker monoblocks to regain some of the musical bass of the factory unit. It's not an upgrade from the Chevy Express/Silverado CD-Player/Receiver.

Great Features & Price

Simple to use, complete with great features (USB port, mini plug for auxiliary input, wide array of color themes, crystal-clear sound, plus remote control), and all for a great price! Easy install in my 2000 Toyota Tacoma pickup.

Great Product

Very happy with the product and this wonderful company which sells it. Saved lots of money as well since I needed it for my car in Canada. I had it shipped to my friend in Arlington who brought it with her to Toronto.

Once I had everything is ready I realized that Dash Kit for the US model only and I had to cut it to fit to Canadian model of Hyundai Elantra 07.

Other than that installation was pretty easy, sound was great plus I had an option to play via USB and AUX.

Thanks Sonic Electronics.

Nice headunit at a great price

I got this receiver as a replacement for my 12 years old oem deck, at that price I couldn't resist. First I installed it with my 4 oem speakers, big difference from my old headunit but sill not enough for me, so I replaced the old speakers with some 6.5" mb quart coaxial, it's like night and day, precise bass, mids and highs , even at higher volume, still i wanted more sound quality so I added a used 4 x 75 watts rms alpine amp, tweeters in front and a belva 600 watts 12" bass package in the trunk, now we're talking, deep sub-base and sound quality that is amazing for less than $350 for the whole setup , the only negative point of this receiver, for me, is that it can't play any mp3 material at a bitrate above 320 kbps ( on the USB port), can't play lossless, flac or any other format above the 320 kbps mark, at $79 you can't have everything, all in all I'm satisfied with this really inepensive unit, a great performer at a great price.

GREAT RADIO

radio works great and it looks amazing! its really cool at night when it goes into color rotation. the only bad thing is sonic told me that it would fit in my truck with no modifications but it needed major dash modification.. i had to cut about 1/2 inch of plastic from around the outside of the old head unit but other than that it is a great head unit and i would recommend it to anyone.

Eye Candy

I don't know of a better stereo for the price. The double din in my Ranger looks awesome. You won't believe how much more power this has over stock. The display that changes colors constantly grabs your attention. It can also be turned off. Together with my JBL GTO speakers make a hard to beat combination. Highly recommended. Thanks Sonic for a great deal on an awesome stereo.

Great stereo upgrade

I replaced ome stereo in 08 Hyundai Santa Fe with this unit. I also purchased Axxess ASWC to operate steering wheel controls and everything works and looks great. Very pleased with this purchased . Great price and value.

Exceptional value and sound

I would highly recommend this radio, it sounds great with plenty of features. I love the option of changing the screen color to match factory colors. iPod and I Phone control are great through cord and IPhone 4s really charges too.

Great Head unit

Great head unit. I have had no problems with it. It looks awesome and all the features are great.

nice headunit

it was easy to put in works great for what i need it for not a lot of money overall it was awesome clock never stays with right time only problem

Nice Unit

Just what I had wanted. Fairly basic features, a bit more hassle to adjust the audio to my liking. High recommendations though...

Great stereo,sound great

like this double din,affordable,and sound great,and adjust color,lot of different light to choose from to match my dashboard light,...
And last of all SONIC done a awesome service,
Letting me know that this will fit on my odyssey 05,if not for them i wont have a clue,bought it,and its perfect..
THANK YOU SONIC ELECTRONIX