Customer Ratings & Reviews

Best low cost NAV unit with double din

I've had this unit for about a year now. Sound quality is excellent, installation is simple. There's even a simple fix or hack to get the unit to allow input and view video while driving. This can be found searching the internet. At first I thought the idea of having one DVD slot for music and GPS functions would be a problem however with the addition of an IPOD unit one never needs to use the DVD slot for anything but GPS. For short drives the units internal memory will store the route and allow you to eject the NAV disk and play DVD's or CDS. This unit seems to play just about any media you throw at it. Cosmetics are not the high point for me since I don't like the high gloss black front trim, mat black would be better and not show finger prints. Most dash boards don't have high gloss. Compared to my Nuvi 650 Garmin GPS the Pioneer is second rate, driving directions are excellent however POI's and search functions for POI's is a major disappointment. This unit will only find POI's in the vicinity of about 5 miles which is useless. My Garmin unit starts with the closest POI's (Points of Interest) and shows the distance and lists them from closest to farther away. You can find POI's in an city before you arrive or along the route, this unit does not do this. Buck for buck you can't beat it, it does have it's short comings.

touch screen volume

Hi my name is Bee and ive had this radio for a few months and has yet to figure out how to turn down or off the touch screen volume. Mine is extremely loud even with the volume on mute or down. When i touch the screen its loud and very annoying!

Best Nav & DVD player for the price

I self installed this unit. There is plenty of internet support and documentation on Pioneer products including the AVIC-D3 including installation, "hacks", set-up, etc. The NAV directions are good not great (comparing to OEM Lexus and GM Nav units; the Ipod interface ROCKS!; blue tooth set up was easy enough and works well; Audio quality and DVD play back are excellent; Overall a great value.

Great deal, but has some bugs

For the price, this is a decent unit. However, as a new product, it still has some bugs that need to be addressed (i.e. vertical or horizontal white streaks across the background display, which is annoying, but the unit is still functional). Even if by-passed, the video will not play consistently unless parked or stopped. There is no true "off" button. Other than those, the unit is quite useful and functional.

Pioneer review

This headunit is awesome if you have the patience to play with it and understand all of the amenities that it has. The quality of sound that you get from it is great and the features make it irresistible. I love the DVD and navigation. Both really easy to use.

I love mine, you can agree or disagree with it.

This unit is great!!!

Ive been reading different reviews of this unit and most of the problems Im hearing sound like they are due to installation. The only problem I have with this unit is the map is out of date due to stuff around me being built. Buy if you want it the unit works great.

nice value

this came stock in my 2007 chevy topkick cinch edition. nice little set up but the screen is a little small but other than that pretty well over all

Great Navigation & Multimediaplayer!

I cant give a full review of this product since i dont use all of its functions, but the navigation, ipod support and bluetooth works great, since i am using it in norway, the FM radio isnt super duper, because of the frequency differences, but all the stations i usualy listen to are good enough :) i would say im pretty picky when it comes to sound quality, and the Pioneer Avic-F900BT delivers great sound from the original speakers, cant wait to upgrade the speakers in the car :)

Great value, absolutely worth it ;)

THUMBS UP!!!!

Beautiful Nav Unit

I bought this nav unit upon other people having it and using it with great success in there 2007 rav4's.Upon installing this nav unit I was amazed at the great look and usability of it.It looks much better then the factory one and at a fraction of the cost.I would buy this again and again!

Amazing headunit

I do noo own this myself but I am going to shortly. A good friend of mine that works at an audio shop has this HU installed in his truck. It is an awesome HU. He has never had any problems out of it. The voltage may seem a little low but I pushes his two subs amazingly. You can hook your ipod,bluetooth,and a iphone up to this. Awesome, many presets, but can be hard to set up.

Not so hot, but still a good product for the money

Great for the money, but DVD navigation will always mess up, and sure enough mine does. It can't follow where I am going epecially when I am in the city. It can be off by 3 or more streets.

Amazing Product

The Avic is amazing in what it can do. I have the iPod hooked up and it works flawlessly with great sound quality. Compared to the factory Chevy unit that was in the car, it blows it out of the water. Picture quality is awesome on DVD's and the navagation works perfect with great voice guidance. Well worth the money!

the best .dont look at it . buy it

have the d3 for a day. and it the best product i have ever bought .so eazy to use. if i had another car i would buy one more.

stereo

i had this unit in a silverado and it looked and sounded pretty good

Pioneer F900BT

This site has great pricing and really great products, i love my new headunit THANK YOU SONIC ELECTRONIX!

So much potential to be awesome, but it is drowned with problems.

I bought this stereo unit holding hopes that it was the most feature packed and powerful unit of its type avaible anywhere. That is exactly what it was, too. For about the first 2 weeks.

After the aforementioned two weeks, the unit unexpectedly shut off and restarted on its own. I shrugged it off, and figured it was just a freak occurance, and kept right on chugging along. Then it did it again. No warnings, it just goes black, and then shows the start up screen as it reboots itself.

This would be tolerable if not for the next problem.

After a few days of the weird random restarts, I began to notice the touch screen's sensitivity was beginning to decline. Where it used to respond nearly as fast as you could tap icons, it started to take two or three tap attempts to make it work. After about a month since it was installed ( by professionally licensed Pioneer dealing people), the screen barely worked at all, taking sometimes hundreds (yes, HUNDREDS) of taps to get an icon to respond.

This on its own would be very annoying and hampering, but for someone like me who hates waiting 6-8 weeks for warranty service, it could be managed and be part of a peaceful coexistence.

But these two problems coexist with each other, making this unit quite a nightmare.

Don't get me wrong, the features of this unit are superb to most any other product I've seen ( and I did my research before buying this too ), and the sound quality, bluetooth, dvd quality and gps are the best I've seen.

This truly would be the ultimate car stereo/navigation system if not for the two aforementioned problems.

You see, when you have the iPod hooked to it and it does its random restart, it forgets you have the iPod hooked to it and you have to start from the main menu to reach it again. This would be tolerable, but the nonresponsive touch screen makes this unit a very tempting target for a fist.

Maybe I got a lemon, so I could have just been unlucky, but I'm being forced ( for my safety while driving and general musical sanity) to send this off to Pioneer for replacement, repair or refund very soon. I hate doing this because of the rate warranty service is usually doled out, and I work many hours during the week leaving me strapped for time, but I cannot stand this any longer and have come way too close to just ripping it out off my dashboard, dousing it in gasoline and dropping a match on it for my prolonged ownership of this certain unit to be smart or pleasurable in any way shape or form. I hope what Pioneer sends back is 873433 times more durable and responsive than this "thing" in my dashboard.

Pretty Good Product

Overall this is a good product. The start-up time is pretty slow even with the 2.0 update. Another problem is sometimes i find myself tapping a button more than once until it finally responds. But the bluetooth is nice along with the voice controls. About 90% of the time it understands what album or artist i tell it to play. Overall a good product.

Failed Expectations

Well I looked at this thing in a real live store because I didn't want to make a mistake, and still I did. It has some pros and more annoying cons.

1. Sound quality
This is a pro, it sounds 10 times better than the six stacker CD player that came in my hi end automobile, clean clear bass and sharp uncoloured treble.

2. Playing off SD card
It takes forever (2-3 minutes) to start to the point where it will play music, and when playing off SD card it won't do volume levelling, yet it does off CD/DVD and iPod. Also if I turn on the ignition of the car, wait 1-2 seconds and then start the car it starts playing from track 1 on the SD instead of the next in it's random sequence. It also starts up on the main menu screen then instead of the list or item screen of the SD menu. Another annoying feature is when switching from CD to SD it enables a GPS route telling you to turn left/right or whatever to take you who knows where, and you have to stop the car to enable the route menu so you can turn the damned thing off. AND until you've read the entire directory of the SD card you don't seem to be able to switch music sources.

3. Music Randomiser
It has a very poor randomiser, often playing a song twice in a row and or after playing one other track. Obviously running my iPod this doesn't happen because the iPod takes care of it.

4. GPS
It has been giving me very misleading directions when getting on/off motorways and has maps that are 2-3 years out of date with regard to some features. It also has one of the clunkiest user interfaces for setting routes I've ever seen, not even letting me set the street number for a destination, only an intersecting street. I bought it in December of 2008 and even though map features in major cities are 2-3 years old, there's no update coming until August 2009. Seriously, if you need GPS get a stand alone GPS at least you will get more frequent updates. Also it takes you on long scenic drives around in circles rather than the direct route. last weekend I used it to go somewhere I had never been before and I thought hmm I should turn here of main road A into the suburb, but it said no, go another 1/2km make a dangerous right turn onto a divided highway and then make another right turn into the North end of the suburb, adding 2km and several additional chances of a serious accident to the trip. Another annoying thing is that in Victoria we have school speed limits some of which are at school times only, and others 24hours a day. The speed warning goes off anywhere near a school whether there's a speed limit or not. Also many of the speed limits are wrong.

5. Bluetooth
Address books won't transfer if there are any pictures in the address book, even 1!! syncing with my Nokia was very haphazard, and even now sometimes it won't let you here the caller when you answer a call even though it works when you make a call. Also, it takes 2-3 minutes before you can make or receive a call. On the surface that doesn't sound like an issue, but if you take off straight away as most people do, and you get a call then, you either have to pull over or hand the phone to a passenger. Then part of the way through the call it's finally woken up and it takes over this started call, except now the passenger can't even press the answer button on the phone he has to figure out what the hell happened and then switch to using the touch screen.

6. Touch screen
It is way to slow in response, sometimes you press a button (on screen) and 2 seconds later nothing has happened so you press it again and get double press executed. It's definitely uncommercial.

7. Start up time
This is bordering on the ridiculous. It takes 2-3 minutes from power on until it's fully functional. If it were the GPS only you could live with it, but the GPS only takes 1 minute to start tracking but you can't do anything until a minute later. It's almost like someone took a Windows computer and stuck it in a dash sized box.

8. Volume control
The volume knob is extremely difficult to operate while driving, it's too small and slippery (difficult to grip) and because it's also a 4-way toggle as you drive and if the road is uneven you find the switches being activated as you try to hold the knob and turn it
I looked at a number of other units from other manufacturers, and in the store I could only tell that they had worse touch screen response issues, so I would suggest that until Pioneer and others get serious about providing a properly designed product instead of a PC in the dash I would recommend buying a radio with separate GPS and Bluetooth.

I would have given this 5 stars fro the audio quality, but all these issues detract from that.

crushes the pioneer d3's

right know i own a pioneer d3 in my scion. my brother just got pioneer avic-f900bt installed in his susuki. the avic-f900bt is 10 times better than the d3. about $200 more than the d3 retail price but this has a 30 gb hard drive with the nav saved inside the system, so no more hassle with changing cd's just to take a look at the nav. with this u could be watchin a dvd and without canceling the dvd u can change it to nav with just a touch of a botton. also u can store music now and videos with the new sd shots. basically no more hassle for basically the same price. i would definitely get this or get the other models of the f series.

Pioneer AVIC-F900BT

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I have had this product for awhile now and finally decided to write this review. The system for the most part works ok.

Sound quality is great.

On screen display is very hard to see even in low sun light. I had to get my windows tinted just to help with the screen display. $250.00 later.

The voice command works like c***, the system never knows the name of the person I am trying to call. I have tried many times and just get pissed off and go back to old school.

I have an I- touch and this works very good... but again never plays the song I want when trying to use the voice command.

I wish there was some real way of trying these products before making a purchase. For the price of these units they should work flawlessly

Great nav and ipod control

My dad bought this for me on ebay a couple weeks ago. I got it for 100 dollars cause the speaker outputs were blown. Since I didn't need them because I use the RCA's and an amp for my mids/highs and subs. Having only 1 cd/dvd slot isn't too bad if you have an ipod and use the ipod connection, because you have to keep the nav disk in to be able to use the navigation. Other than that its a great head unit.

Would Reccomend

I am one of those people that reads a lot of customer reviews, and hesitate when making big purchases like this, but I'm glad I did. I got it pro installed, then bypassed the brake myself. (it is very easy) The options are endless. If your nav is off you can reposition yourself. Mine is extremely accurate. Sound quality is great, hooked up amped 6x9's and sub. The sound options are great as well. (it really does play almost anything you throw at it) As far as the guy who says it only searches POI's within 5 miles, he's half right. It searches around you, but if you touch the screen twice anywhere else, it will re-search POIS there. (I'm in ND and can search POI's in CA) The NAV has great clarity and is easy to use. When the DVD NAV disc is not in, it will remember info around your current location. But I bought I-pod attachment, which is amazing. It basically turns the screen into your ipod so there's no need for using the actual ipod when it's plugged in. ( and it charges it ) Overall, I would recommend this product to anyone hesitating to buy it like I was.

Great Nav Radio

I spent a long time looking into Nav radios before finally deciding on the Avic-D3. Other decks had a separate unit that had to be mounted under a seat, or behind the glovebox. This was a one piece unit. It also had all the features I wanted, plus it had the option of adding a Sirius radio tuner. My only beef would be the price of replacement DVD maps...$200+ is a little pricey.

Amazing!!!

I absolutely love this unit!! its amazing it integrates with your factory dash so good its the cleanest unit i have ever seen in a NNBS silverado. all the features work perfect

Excellent Product!

This product is great! You get so much for your money! The two other reviews that give this product bad/inaccurate review are irrelavant. The navigation very accurate unless installed improperly. Also, if it is still off track, all you have to do is go into the settings mode and re-position your exact location. That will fix the problem. It also could be b/c the person mounted their GPS antenna in a bad spot.

All-in-all, this product is great! You will not be disappointed! I have purchased two and never had any problems! Enjoy!

So happy

Received everything fast and easy, for the price i thought something was fishy but everything came sealed from the factory. i saved more than half buying from sonic electronix they've definitely got my business. Everything works and i highly recommend them you'll pay way more anywhere else.

Dissapointing

That one word sums it up perfectly... Disappointing.

That makes the word even more fitting for this unit.

When it comes to implementation, this unit is purely unacceptable. I could ramble on and on for hours about the quality problems with this system. You might not believe me. "But its so pretty and the display is so charming!" you might say. "But Pioneer makes great stuff!" others might exclaim.

But you all would be wrong. I read an article about a group of monkeys that disappeared from a zoo. I know what happened to them... they went to work for Pioneer!

Just to give an idea of the frustration I am encountering with this system... this morning I was on my way to work and decided to call my wife over bluetooth. Now that I had installed the firmware update my wife could finally hear me over bluetooth so I wanted to say hi.

Well, after 2 minutes of furiously pressing buttons trying to get the voice prompt up, the system wigged out and rebooted. Which meant 3 minutes before it would finish booting and I could finally make my call.

I am pulling it out this weekend. Either this or my hair!

*** Sonic Electronix Admin Comment ***
We believe the firmware upgrade was installed improperly on this unit or the unit has a slight defect. In any event, we will proactively contact the customer to hopefully set up an exchange for the AVIC-F900BT. - Sonic Electronix Xperts