Sony RMS Marine Media Smartphone Bluetooth CD MP3 Audio Receiver (5 Pack)

Sony MEX-M100BT Marine Stereo

The unit is powerful, water resistant and has all the nice features at a great price.

By Patrick on May 20, 2017 Verified purchase

Great sound / Poor Design

First, I am disappointed in how much I paid for this stereo. I bought it here for $268 in July. It is now on sale a month later for $199.

I purchased this stereo because it seemed to have the most overall power of any marine grade stereos that I could find. My goal was to get great sound clarity and volume without having to purchase a separate amplifier. This unit somewhat did the job. Let me explain.....

So after first installing the stereo it seemed to work well. I had great volume and sound clarity while using the tuner / stereo. However, once I started to play music through my phone using either Bluetooth or auxiliary I started to run into problems.

If I had the volume turned up over 30 on the head unit, the system would reset after playing for awhile. I double checked all my wiring and it seemed fine so I contacted Sony support. They were semi-helpful and we tried doing a hard reset and firmware update. The unit continued to work just fine when running the tuner / stereo no matter how high the volume, but would reset when playing over Bluetooth or auxiliary once the volume surpassed 30.

Sony issued a return for me but wanted me to first ship back my existing unit, wait for it to be processed and then have a new unit shipped out. Total estimated time. 3-4 weeks. I found this unacceptable. The initial support person informed me that it was my only option so I requested my ticket be escalated. After speaking with second level support they agreed to send a new unit as long as I provided my CC so it could be charged if they did not receive the old one within 15 days. This was acceptable.

The new unit arrived and I installed it. It worked fine for the first 7-8 minutes and then the same thing. So now I was forced to contact a professional to see what the issue was. He confirmed all wiring was good and was at first stumped himself. So I demonstrated how to reproduce the issue. He hooked up a voltmeter and we watched as the system would reset. Apparently if the voltage to the unit dropped to 11.8 volts or lower, the unit would reset. This was very surprising to him since he said in all of the 100's of installs he had done, he had never seen a unit so sensitive as to reset with such a small drop in voltage. Most wouldn't reset until the voltage was in the 10.x range.

The work-around isn't ideal, but will work until Sony makes an update to firmware (if that will fix it) or issues a recall. The work around is to only set the volume on my phone to about 75% output. This seems to keep the unit from resetting since it doesn't try to pull that extra power to output to the speakers. It is disappointing since I feel I am not getting all the benefit of the built in amplifier for which I paid all that money, but at least I can listen to my music without it resetting every few minutes.

Other than that, the controls and settings are not intuitive but after reading through the manual and playing with it a little bit I can now navigate through the menu fairly easy. Of course, with how small some of the labels are on the unit a bright glare can make it hard to read the small print as well.

Sony MEX-M100BT Amplified Marine/Powersports Bluetooth Stereo

Great unit for the money especially if you don't want to use an external amp.

good stereo

good sound quality,alittle hard to figure out till u get used to it. nice having remote but distance is short

Sounds great!

I just got my Sony marine stereo hooked up on our pontoon and haven't had a chance to really check it out on the water yet but just playing around with it, I love it. Thanks Sonic Electronix for the great prices and fast shipping and all your technical help!

Awesome

I give the product 2 thumbs up. Finally someone came out with the preamped stereo.

Good looking

Disliked only because it’s not fully water proof other than great stereo easy to use.

By Agustin on January 12, 2023 Verified purchase

Works great in convertible cars too.

I had a Blaupaunkt top of the line stereo that was standard in my car that is 15 years old. Couldnt hear it with the roof off. Got this stereo but non marine version and it is 100% better and works with bluetooth which is why I wanted to upgrade.
To person thst said it keeps cutting out- You need to wire it directly to the battery using a certain gauge wire to prevent voltage drop. Wiring to existing harness will result in not getting enough power. I have it in a car so battery voltage is always above 13.0 but in a boat it might drop if not being used all the time and fully charged.

Great Sound!!!

The price is a bit costly but overall, the extra bucks are definitely worth it!! For bass and balanced sound, it will make Any trip a BLAST!!

Loudest out there!

I changed out my older JBL marine stereo with this Sony and couldn’t believe the difference it made. My boats sound system is significantly louder and crystal clear...made a huge difference. I highly recommended.