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Sony CDX M9900
by Hurdenish
I used to be a boy racer, and when you are everyone knows that at the centre of the car is the most important feature. The stereo. I picked up my M9900 second hand for £200 and what a lot of features for the money. The unit is a standard din size and has a really minimalist look with two main control dials. This approach allows most of ... the face of the stereo to be taken up with the widescreen TFT display.
The screen is bright with great colour and is capable of displaying Video input provided by any source through a Video RCA cable. Once a video source is plugged in, the included remote control allows you to setup the image (small square, letterbox etc) to suit you're preference. I used this function to full effect in my golf where the video was fed from a bumper mounted front facing camera providing real time video of the road on my dashboard. A very nice touch. This also be very useful when connected to a reversing camera on larger vehicles.
Sound is clear and crisp due to the better than usual power of 52W per channel. RCA in/outputs make easy the task of running an ipod in and setting up amplifiers, especially with the dedicated mono sub out RCA. Sony really thought this through.
Controls are taken care of with a rotating dial by selecting up or down a branch of options. It's ok when your used to it but dont try learning the menus whilst driving.
To access the CD slot of the stereo the face rotates down and forward, revealing a pretty dull functional slot loading drive, the disadvantage is that the face cannot be removed for security purposes. The unit comes provided with a neat cover to hide it when not in use but it's still obvious it's there.
The M9900 comes in two colours, blue and red so choose which suits your interior best and check before buying.
Be aware that if you wish to connect an ipod to this unit, you will need a separate sony adapter to control the ipod with the unit.
This stereo is still great and looks way more expensive than it is. If you want to show off your music, this will do it, the screen is something of a novelty due to it's small size but still great fun.
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Pioneer DEH 50UB
by jonny35
I bought this head unit a couple of years ago and I only have good things to say about it. For a start, the head unit looks great, has an elegant, curvy form, and it has a detachable faceplate - which is a big plus for any head unit to prevent theft. Also, the sound quality is brilliant, and without going into a load of technical detail, ... it is certainly powerful enough. It is unlikely that your speakers will be able to cope with high volumes unless you have replaced your car speakers. It also has a fader for altering the front and rear sound balance, and other settings for boosting bass etc.
The head unit is very easy to program although it will require reading the instruction manual the first time. You can save up to 6 am and fm channels, which is plenty by anyone's standards. One criticism I would make is that the buttons are quite small and it takes some getting used to being able to do anything other than basic tasks whilst driving, and they also have different functions depending on whether you are in USB/aux or radio mode - so, again, it takes practice but once you get to grips with what everything does it's not much of a problem.
The main reason I bought this head unit is because I can hook up my ipod and control it from the head unit itself. If you'd rather flick through your ipod manually, you can do that too - and the best part is you'll never run out of battery because it charges the ipod while it's connected. I hardly ever charge my ipod because I have it hooked up in my car so much that its always got full battery! The head unit will display what song is playing, and you can change this to display artist, album or even the current song number in relation to the playlist size (14/82, for instance). One thing you probably won't be able to do with this head unit (unless you have a small iTunes library), is navigate your whole music collection. This is done easily if you set it to iPod control, but to try and navigate 100s, or possibly 1000s of artists/albums/songs is pretty time consuming when using the rotary joystick. It can take a lot of scrolling to find an artist/song in the middle of the alphabet...
It is also worth noting that this head unit doesn't require any extra hardware to connect your iPod - it works by plugging it into the USB using your standard iPod USB cable. This is a massive benefit when you consider that the extra bit of kit necessary for other head units (even Pioneer ones) costs around £50.
For people who are buying their first head unit, you must remember that you will need the head unit interface AND the vehicle interface in order to hook it up to your particular car model. If you want to use the steering controls, you'll need another piece of kit specific to your car, and you will need a head unit fitting, again, specific to your car model, however head units themselves are a standard size unless otherwise stated, so don't worry about whether the fitting will fit your specific head unit.
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