Made Entertaiment on Your Car

I just put a Pioneer DEH-P7100BT stereo in my car. It is their top of the line single din CD stereo. I was only looking at stereos with integrated Bluetooth and iPod control. It is dumb that companies are still making mid and top of the line stereos requiring $100 adapters for those features. Personally I think companies should get rid of the CD player and offer more USB and memory card inputs.

I considered this Pioneer, one older and cheaper Pioneer model, and a Kenwood model. The Kenwood had pretty poor reviews for Bluetooth sound quality and pairing robustness. I chose the new high end Pioneer because I liked the 2nd USB input, the multi line display, and telephone voice control sounded intriguing.

The Pioneer is a solid piece of hardware. It could be a really enjoyable stereo with some firmware updates to resolve interface errors. As it stands, the user experience is pretty dodgy. I would probably buy the cheaper Pioneer model, instead of this one absent improvements, if I could do it again. I hope Pioneer recognizes these problems, and releases a firmware update I can apply to my unit.

The big problems -

The tune and seek buttons are the same. You press the button quickly to go to the next possible channel (up or down by 0.2 mhz exactly), or press and release after the beep to go to the next receivable channel, or continue to hold to quickly scan through the stations. The problem is if you don’t release the button in less than a tenth of a second after the beep, the radio may scan past the next receivable station (especially if it is within 0.2 – 0.6 mhz of the current station), and land on the receivable station several away from where you currently were. The radio should have a debounce in the button so if you release within 0.3 seconds, the radio will back up to the receivable station immediately after where you were, even if it has already scanned past it. As much as I don’t like Sony, I’ve seen this feature in their products and I LOVE it.

The display has some moving and static “screensavers” it shows. I’m not a big fan of the moving ones (but to each his own). What I find disgraceful, is even the 2 simple static screensavers, and few elaborate static screensavers, reverse their contrast every so many seconds. There is no way to have a completely static display, and no way to stop the contrast changes. It is visually annoying, and the dark text on light background is way too bright at night. I want a simple display frozen at light text on dark background. It is funny because occasionally the stereo will forget to change contrast, but if you press a button it will wake up and start doing it again.

You can set the daytime brightness of the display “undimmed” (with the headlights off). But you can’t set the nighttime brightness of the display dimmed, and the amount it automatically dims is not near enough. It should either dim the display much more when you turn on the headlights, or you should preferably be able to set both the daytime and nighttime brightness. Even cooler would be if you could set the daytime setting with negative contrast (dark text on light background) and nighttime setting with positive contrast (light text on dark background).

When you seek or scan to a channel that also happens to be a preset station, the radio never identifies it as a preset. This is pretty annoying when trying to set your preset stations. Also when you are setting a preset station, the preset number will flash twice, then the new station will appear next to the preset number. If you release the button while the preset number is still flashing but before the new station number appears, instead of setting the new preset, the radio will tune to the current preset. This is incredibly counter-intuitive and annoying. There is no reason to tune to a preset from the preset setting screen. As soon as activity begins on the screen, releasing the button should set the new preset.

The display flow is a disaster. First the preset number is tiny and in the top right corner. It should be bigger. The station number is bigger, but it should be bigger still. The station number is ONLY shown for a few seconds in the bottom right of the screen. That 8 digit area is reused as a scrolling RDS display until all data is received. If the radio station is kind enough to embed their station number in the RDS data, you might get a second chance to see the station number. Otherwise the radio never again shows you the station number unless you go into another function and back out. After all RDS data is received, the band and song name is reposted in 2 lines in the bottom left.

How should it flow? First the preset number and radio station number should ALWAYS remain visible in 2 lines on the right side of the display (preset line smaller). Second, RDS data should be posted as received sequentially in 2 (potentially smaller) lines in the bottom left of the display. This may mean the data is in the wrong position. After all data is received, the RDS data could be reposted in the correct format in the same place.

The small problems -

The radio tune/seek button (rather than the preset seek) is also the song skip button for CD and iPod control. This is apparently a problem with every brand that shares the Pioneer remote control protocol. This means if you have a remote control on your steering wheel, you can skip songs but you can’t go to the next preset station. Instead you go to the next station you probably don’t want. In CD mode preset seek may seek through the song (though that is counter intuitive), so you might not want to change anything in CD mode. But in iPod mode, preset seek does nothing. Instead in iPod mode, both tune/seek and preset seek should skip songs.

The stereo should be smart enough to skip inputs (Aux 1, Aux 2, USB 1, USB 2, BT) if a device is not connected, but automatically offer the option if something is connected. Currently you can manually disable Aux 1 & 2 & BT, but not USB 1 & 2. This is 2009 and the stereo should do better.

The button layout and combinations isn’t very logical, and it is easy to press left/right/up/down part of the rotating joystick when you were trying to press the center select. The buttons around the joystick are also partially hidden and hard for big fingers to press.

In bright sun, the display can be hard to see due to the shiny surface and bright (but not super bright) display.
Rating: 3 / 5

Lots of features. Controls are not that user friendly. Once you get them figured out, it all works nicely. A good receiver, no complaints just wish it was easier to get it all set up.
Rating: 3 / 5

all the information on this unit’s specs regarding its usb usage is incorrect (as I was told via pioneer tech support manager). the owner’s/operations manual, website, and online manual all list incorrect amount of folders, files, and maximum size that the unit is able to handle. it boasts ability to read over 65000 files and 6000 folders, with no limitation to the size of the hard disc or usb drive that is connected to it. this however is not the case. if you exceed 99 folders, or 500 songs, or 32 gb of information, folders, and files will not show up. as if this wasnt disappointing enough, pioneer doesnt make a model that is capable of anything more than this, not even the units with full dvd screens or in dash nav, which means a slew of other units specs and descriptions are also wrong. upon first calling pioneer, the tech support I received was garbage. the rep somehow pulled off the attitude of a pompous prick, cutting me off while I was explaining my problem and describing specifics, talking over me, and very confidently blurting out information and quickly putting me on hold, only to return moments later to confirm the information he was so sure about, and ignore the information I was trying to describe to him. when at last I had a moment to get a word in, and finally said “well, if this IS the case, that the information is incorrect not only in the products physical manual, but the online pdf, AND the website, don’t you think that’s a little misleading and inconvenient for someone who’s looking at this information to base a purchase on?” to which he then responded “that is a warranty and complaints issue, I’ll transfer you”. Needless to say I hung up, called back the main number, asked for his boss, and found the answers I needed. Just the fact that Pioneer is aware of the massive amounts of incorrect information on their products there is, and have yet to do anything about it, besides provide shoddy tech support, flabbergasts me. I’m not expecting them to reprint paper manuals, but they have more than ample time to update their website with newer models and pdf’s of their respective manuals, but cannot go back and edit old ones to provide good customer support and service? After this warranty claim goes through and I receive my money back I’m using it to buy another brand of head unit, one that’s specs and functionality are correct, and stood behind, and who care about whether their customers are happy with their products or not.
Rating: 4 / 5