Pioneer AVIC-F900BT

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 The only problem I have with this unit is the map is out of date due to stuff around me being built.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.

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!!!!

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.

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!

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.

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.