Pioneer AVIC-5000NEX

pioneer avic 5000.

I just had this system installed in my 2012 honda civic. Everything works great except in the xm radio mode. When I turn the volume up I get a check tuner warning on my screen. Installers don't know why. Other then that sound is amazing..

Pioneer 5000 NEX

Overall very happy with the product installed in a 2012 nissan maxima, id like to point out some issues, dont buy a universal back up camera, although it works, it seems to have issues with sensing it, and it will kick it on sometimes randomly.

the EQ is very good, and let you do alot, the mirror link is a tad slower than what you see on the phone, a second lag time, maybe as the tech gets better it will be smoother.

and if you are buying the aftermarket steering wheel control interface it seems to have issues getting it to work properly, ill update you if it work with the aswc-1

overall a good purchase for the price, and a great product.

Another solid Pioneer head unit, with plenty of quirks

I seem to churn through a new head unit every 6-8 months. Just installed the 5000NEX last month, so here are a few impressions.

The 5000NEX is a highly evolved Pioneer Double Din Navi head unit, and it has lots of good features. Not all work that well, but they're there.

Navigation is pretty decent. It hasn't gotten me lost yet. ITs pretty complicated to set up the Navi to take you somewhere, but it may be a matter of getting used to it. I find putting an address in pretty cumbersome, even though Pioneer tried to make the unit do most of the work for you. Its still annoying each time I do it. But on the good side, its pretty accurate so far, the voice cues give ample warning, and the maps are fairly easy to read.

The NEX has a zillion connections, many of which may be useless to anyone other than a gadget freak. But the ones that really count, such as USB, Aux, SD, etc are there, as is Sirius Satellite. There's a giant Pioneer specific RGB/VGA connector for some iPhone adapters. That, and/or the Android adapter are sold seperately. There are 2 camera inputs, one for the back, and another one, although its not clear what the second one is for. Also, the backup camera input only works sporadically for me, as well as others seem to report the same issue.

Using the NEX day to day is a mix of good, less than good, and ugly. The screen shows most things in a very large high contrast typeface, so basic use is fairly straightforward. Changing sources is really slick and nicely done. On the ugly side, they chose to make the specific thing you're listening to a smaller font, as well as lower contrast. So the screen is polluted with all sorts of things, but you can almost never see what you're actually listening to (ie, song name/album name, etc). Album art is huge, which is useless most times, as is the Sirius logo, which is completely useless. But Pioneer, what am I listening to?

The speed sense wire, if connected, makes certain things not usable unless you're stopped, but its actually one of the less intrusive implementations I've seen to date.

One of the biggest annoyances of all head units (save JVC it seems) is that sorting MP3 files is a total random event. Pioneer has always been lousy at this, and the expensive NEX is no different, although they are now providing 2 ways to sort your files on USB/SD. They sort by the dreaded alphabetical order in "album" view, which is unfixable by any means (in other words, it will always play songs out of numerical order). But now they allow "file" view, which depending on how your files are labeled, should play them in order. I still can't understand how in 2014, they can't make an album play in correct song order...just dumb...still.

Audio controls are fabulous though, from EQ to Time Alignment, to every sort of sound tweaking you could ever want. Definitely the top of the industry here, nobody does it better. I don't use any of it, as I use preouts to DSP to outboard amps, but the functions are all there, which is terrific.

I can't speak to iPod/iPhone integration, as I don't own either. I won't bother with Android "integration", whatever that means, as you need a seperate device to achieve it. And Mirrorlink is basically unusable for all but the diehards. I've tried it on 2 different head units, and it was so painful to use, I've given up.


All in all, its a decent unit, albeit an expensive one. The screen layout is the biggest annoyance living with the unit day to day. I don't know what they were thinking. Features are everywhere, many you will never use nor care about. But the basics of modern car audio and navigation work well. Pioneer is clearly still committed to being good at car head units, and it shows, even though there are some goofy design decisions

Nice Product, if a touch quirky

I purchased this product as an upgrade to my OEM head unit. This is a feature-heavy head unit with a lot of functionality but the user interface isn't exactly intuitive. Doesn't take long to get the hang of it, but it took me a few minutes to work out where everything is. CarPlay is still new and in its infancy and it shows. While its nice to have music and podcasts and even Apple Maps, I find that it can be a little annoying having text messages popping up on the screen regularly. Dictating text messages is a cool feature but, like any speech-to-text conversion, the results are more often comical than useful, but maybe that's me. The number of CarPlay apps is currently quite limited, but should expand, and expand the usefulness of this mode as more cars adopt the technology.


The hands-free calling works well with both Bluetooth and carplay and the microSD, while slow, is a nice way to add a large music library to the unit quite easily.

Now the limitations. The maps are ok, but not good. I find myself using the Maps app on my iphone more often and that defeats the point of having bought the -5000 model. It has the capability of using traffic information from a traffic receiver or from an AppRadio app, but I don't have the receiver so traffic is notably absent from the maps.

Now, the AppRadio. I took a look and there are quite a number of great apps that should make this unit really sing--traffic, parking, internet radio, etc. all at the cost of chewing through cell data, of course, but there when you need it. Here's the problem. To use this mode, you need to plug the iphone into BOTH the USB and the VGA port. To do that, you need the right Pioneer cable to get you the VGA, then you need an apple VGA-lightning adapter and a lightning cable and then you have a little pigtail to connect your iphone to. That's a lot of cabling to manage. With a dash mount for the ipod, it wouldn't be bad, but it seems surprising that the usb connection isn't enough, especially when it's all that's needed for CarPlay. Another little quirk is the that 5000 is the only one with a VGA, the other models are HDMI, a much more sensible, and modern, option.

Admittedly, these things are somewhat picky. The sound quality is great, it has a rich feature set, it's among the first head units to support CarPlay, it looks great, and its a huge step up from the factory unit. If I had it all to do again, I'd look more carefully at the 4000 and plan to forego the built-in GPS for the apple one, or go up the line to get the traffic feature and HDMI. I'm happy with my purchase, it looks good, sounds good, and works well, but stops just shy of being truly great. I hope Pioneer figures out how to run AppRadio over USB soon and that'll make a big difference.

Happy shopping!