- You've probably found yourself
shopping for car stereos maybe browsing Amazon or Best Buy. And you may have noticed
that there are some that are super expensive, some that are super cheap and there are plenty right in the middle and they all kind of offer the same thing. So how much is the right
amount of money to spend? Well, I don't really know. So today, I bought three different stereos that offer pretty much the same options and wildly different price points. And we're gonna install them
in the Miata and figure out how much is the right
amount of money to spend. We'll look at user
interface, features, sound and how they feel overall to determine how our money is best spent. I'm Zach and this is Money Pit. Let's make some noise. (upbeat music) Okay, so when I bought the
Miata it came with this very terrible head unit, it doesn't work, the screen doesn't turn on. And it turns off completely
after about 15 minutes. So hopefully today we're gonna find a new good replacement for it. So we're gonna be looking
into three head units today, starting with this cheap one. But while we look at them, we're gonna be kind of
grading them on a few things, how they feel, in general,
like kind of build quality, the features that each of them have, the usability, how the user interface is, sound and how each of these
sounds compared to one another. Then we'll just kind of
do an overall summary and an overall kind of
confusion level with each. So without further ado,
let's open up the first one. I got it on eBay and it was $50, expectations are kind of low. Oh, we got a whole list of features. Look at this, seven-inch
touchscreen, 1080p video format, MOSFET amplifier, FM radio, mule function. Mule function, what does that mean? This thing weighs like, nothing. It feels like it costs 50 bucks. It gets a big fat F in the
in the field category so far, but let's, you know, let's
go install this thing and see if it works, see if we can figure it out and if it makes any music. Alright, so the first thing we're gonna do to get this $50 head unit installed is remove our $23 head unit. And then we've got to figure
out how to make this work with our new stuff. So if you just got a head unit, whether it's a $50 one or a
$2,000 one or whatever you got, it's gonna come with
some sort of pig tail, or pig tails like these. And what these do is connect
to the back of the head unit. So here you can see in the Miata, what we've got going on
here is the wiring harness, the pigtail that came with the head unit is then spliced into this
vehicle specific wiring harness, which is actually these two pieces that connect straight into my
factory Mazda connectors here. We're gonna re-use this
Mazda connector portion of this wiring harness because it's still good. All we need to do, cut
this old harness off, and then we'll reconnect to our new stuff. Then I'm gonna cut all of
these right here, okay, so that I'm just saying With
the OEM connector style harness on this side, 'cause I
need to re-use these, all day I need to re-use these. Alright, so we got the
harness for the first, the cheap head unit. (birds chirping) Alright, so we've got the. (birds chirping) We've got the harness
for the first head unit all ready to go. So far, the confusion level is pretty low. The only thing is that they never told me what this brown wire was for. So I don't know, lets plug it and see what happens. Okay, so right now I'm just
making some connections, we're connecting the
speaker wires at the moment. So now the only thing we got
to do is connect our ground, sweet, and now we should
be able to plug it in and turn this puppy on. Welcome, it's the most
satisfying part of all, are you ready? Hey, you know what, at first glance this screen doesn't look
like complete trash, I mean, it's pretty clear. Okay, let's see here, Bluetooth. I want to connect my Bluetooth phone, how do I go back home? It is slow to the uptake on
the clicks that's for sure. Damn, this is annoying. Plenty of typos in this thing. Actually speaking of which, I figured out what the
mule setting was, mute. Confusion level increasing. Maybe it's already attempting to pair and I just don't know it. Let's see what's going on here. Car BT baby, there she is. You know what, sometimes the device
knows better than you. Clicked it, paired immediately, sweet. Now it's time to see what it sounds like. Christ, (upbeat music) Okay, so we've been
messing with this thing for a few minutes now
and here's our findings. So it definitely feels cheap. The knob when you turn the
volume up feels very cheap. When you click the touchscreen, it takes a minute for it to register and sometimes it doesn't at all, The font is ridiculous, It looks like Times New Roman on here, which, honestly, it would
just drive me crazy. The only way it could be
worse is if it was Comic Sans. But, you know what, the
fact is, it was 50 Dollars and it does turn on, the screen work, so, in that sense, it's sort of
an upgrade from this old one, which the screen didn't work at all. But there was one weird
quirk with the music thing, which is that, you have to
be on the Bluetooth screen for it to be playing music. So we're here, now we
go to the home screen. You're home and it stopped
playing your music. But then you go back, and it starts again. How annoying is that? The next thing I think we
should do as far as testing this is try to give somebody a call. See how the hands free calling works 'cause that's kind of important. (upbeat music) All right let's give ol' Nolan a call. Hey, can you hear me now? - [Nolan] Yeah, I could, I could definitely tell
you're having to yell, oh, lot of engine noise. - Yeah a lot of engine
noise, can you still hear me? - [Nolan] Not super clearly actually. - Can I get a rating? - [Nolan] Well, I would
certainly give it a seven. - Oh all right, all
right, all right, cool. Well, hey, we'll take a seven for sure. I'm sure whoever made
this thing would be happy to have received a seven from Nolan. So that's cool, that gives us a benchmark. Yeah, I guess that's the last
test really for this one. We're gonna go back to the house now. And give the second one a rip. (upbeat music) Okay, for our second head unit, the middle of the road one. This is from Pioneer, it's
called the DMH 1500 NEX. Right off the bat, this
thing lists some features that the last head unit didn't have, of course, Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, last head unit didn't
have those, this one does. An extra set of pre outs
compared to the other one. We got three sets here. This is ready to be controlled
by your steering wheel. That's the kind of stuff that
I probably wouldn't hook up but yeah, it's cool in case you want to, otherwise you can connect
two phones to this head unit. Alright, let's pull this thing out. Oh my God, instructions, I forgot what those look
like right off the bat, as far as features go, it seems to have a pretty long
list compared to the last one and feel, it definitely
feels a lot better, it feels like a much
nicer piece of equipment. So, that all bodes well. What'd you say we say we install it, see if we get a nice click here, and I'm pretty sure we will, yeah, nice click, sweet. All right, let's see if she turns on. Shut up, so the first screen up, choose our language
let's go with, English. Speaker mode settings, do not
use the unit in standard mode. There goes the stool. All right, well, so right off the rip the screen looks a little brighter, it looks a little crispier,
it looks a little clearer. A little more high
definition, if you will. Okay, Oh no, not French, please. I'll never know how to go back. Okay, there's our home-screen. Hey, that looks pretty nice. What we got here? All right, the first thing
let's try to connect a phone. Damn, there she is, ready to grow. Just starts playing. (upbeat music) That's way louder than the last one, so loud, in fact, I didn't
dare to turn it all the way up. Oh my God, yeah, I didn't even think about how the sensitivity on the screen is which is exactly what you want. I didn't have to think about it. When I click it knows it
and it does something. Let's do CarPlay lets see
what's going on there. See if it just works when I plug in. Ah, hey, now there we go. Sweet, well, CarPlay pulls up and then you got the old
map so I can use some nav which is nice for going places and getting where you're trying to go. Alright, let's go to Bluetooth,
we'll play some music. All right, now let's go to the home-screen and see if music keeps playing. Oh, that's cool. You can go away from the Bluetooth screen and it keeps playing music just like exactly like what
you would want it to do. In other terms of sound. I don't know how it sounds
on a phone call yet. So why don't I drive around the block and bug Nolan some more. Thank you. So it's probably worth mentioning that the Pioneer head unit does come with a Bluetooth microphone that you can put wherever you want, but that's what you get
when you spend more money. - [Nolan] Oh, I think it
sounds so much better. - Heck yeah! So that said, can you give me a rating? - [Nolan] I'm gonna give this a nine dude. - Nine. - [Nolan] Say 8.5. - Okay, all right, I'll take it. Nolan said he could not believe how much better I sounded. He gave me an 8.5 out of 10. He started with a nine and I said nine, where do we go from here? (upbeat music) We are on to our final. Our third and final, our
most expensive head unit. So, this is made by Kenwood. It cost me over $700. And it does have pretty long
list of features it looks like. Namely, the first thing I noticed is that you can do CarPlay and
Android Auto wirelessly. So this one actually does have
a CD player and a DVD player. So I mean honestly in 2020, I don't really care about that but I guess if you do then
this has that so there you go. Let's open it up, let's see what we got
going on inside the box. This is the heaviest box by far. (whistles in amazement) All right. Okay, cool, well, that's about all we're gonna be able to tell by looking at it. Now let's install it, see how she does. Ah, a nice click. We've got some spaghetti
going on back here. This makes me. Alright, she's powered up,
let's see what's going on. First off just looking at it. And honestly it looks, well it looks similar in
screen quality to the, to the Pioneer, but the
font is a little less pleasing to my eye so far. So first thing we're going to try to do is try to get my phone
paired up to the head unit, get the wireless CarPlay working and then we'll see how it sounds. Bluetooth, maybe that. Add the phone. Well so far this is the most confusing to get my phone hooked up
to, which isn't saying much because the other two are so easy, but this one seems to be
giving me a little trouble. Alright, so it took a
little bit of figuring out, this so far has been kind of
the clunkiest user interface, in my opinion it's been kind
of difficult to figure out how to get everything
connected just right. But it is connected now, we've got our wireless CarPlay working, which is pretty cool. That's a pretty cool feature. No plugging it in, and
CarPlay is up there. So now we've got that working,
let's see how it sounds. (upbeat music) Damn, sounds pretty good. Although, and honestly,
that was max volume. And that was not as loud as the Pioneer. Sound quality at a normal volume is equally good to the others. So in terms of feel and the way the touchscreen works and
feels, it's pretty good. I mean, it is definitely
on par with the Pioneer which is what you'd expect
for a more expensive unit but it's definitely not
better than the Pioneer in any appreciable way. It feels the same actually, I
have less luck with my swiping than I did on the Pioneer, it
takes a few tries sometimes. Now the last thing that we need to do is give my boy Nolan a call and see if this thing
sounds like 700 bucks. So Nolan, how do I sound? - [Nolan] There seems to be more buffeting this time than the last time. - More buffeting, oh,
and I can't hear you. I have the volume all the way up. - [Nolan] There's a lot of buffeting now. How fast are you going? - Now I'm going 30, last time I was going faster than this, and you could hear me better, I could hear you better. I have the volume all the way up now and that's all I got. So can I get a final judgment? - [Nolan] Yeah, I'll give it a score, I'd give this like a 6.5. - 6.5 Okay, so-- - [Nolan] The buffeting is
just too much, too much. - All right, so you heard it from Nolan, it gets a 6.5 or maybe a seven. That's not very good for a $700 unit. So let's go back to the garage, tally it all up, we'll
stack these things up against each other and make a decision. Okay, so we've spent the day comparing three different head units at three very different price points. So let's talk about the cheap one first. The cheap one cost $50. And in terms of feel, it
feels like it costs $50. This screen doesn't look great. And the clickability of
the screen is pretty bad. On to features, it has next to none, so that's nice. It does have Bluetooth and that's the biggest
feature I was looking for. Because I wanna be able to Bluetooth music from my phone to my car while I'm driving. The user interface on the
cheap one was pretty bad, although we still hooked
up our phone pretty quickly and if you know what you're doing, it's just kinda ugly to do it. It was the quietest of the three by a pretty big margin though and that's not okay for me because I need this thing
to be as loud as I can to combat all the wind noise. And lastly, in terms of
Bluetooth call quality, the quality was pretty good. It just has a built in microphone,
wherever it is on there. You heard it, I think Nolan gave me what? A six or a six and a half. He was pretty pleased with it and for 50 bucks, that's not bad. All right, moving onward to our middle of the road price point, $300 for this pioneer head unit. In terms of feel, this was a huge leap from the 50 dollar unit. The screen looks nice, the
resolution is very good. And the click ability was great. Actually, the clickability
on the $300 piece was probably the best throughout. Let's talk about features. So we do have Bluetooth here. This also has Apple CarPlay
and Android Auto, wired, you know, you got to be
plugged into your phone, in my opinion, that's the biggest leap. User interface on the head unit
overall, was also very good. It was very easy to use
connecting my phone was very easy. Everything was pretty intuitive. This one, this $300 unit
was the loudest of the three and that's really what I'm looking for. I want as much noise out of
the speakers as I can get so I can hear them over all the wind. So I think Nolan gave me what
an 8.5 on call quality on this and I gotta tell you,
8.5, that's pretty good. Now let's talk about the big
daddy, the 700 plus dollar head unit from Kenwood. The screen looks very nice
that clickability is very good, you know, swiping I had some
issues every now and then but overall it was pretty good. However, there wasn't
much of a leap upwards over the middle of the
road one in terms of feel. So now, features, this
thing is pretty loaded. I honestly didn't even
know how many features I had when I bought it because I was still
combing through features when I'm swiping through the menus, stuff that's not even listed
on the box or the website. Like you can add gauges to this somehow, you can add a radar detector
to this thing somehow. The biggest feature in my opinion is that you get to move up
to wireless Apple CarPlay and wireless Android Auto,
which is really cool. It's a little bit fiddly
to get it figured out. But once it's figured out, it's done and that's very convenient. Now lets talk about sound. Sounded great at a normal listening level. At max volume it was a little
bit quieter than the Pioneer. So the last thing that we
got to talk about on this was the Bluetooth sound quality. And I went out, I drove, I called Nolan and he said it sounded worse than the middle of the road one, said he heard more buffeting. And this one also has
a Bluetooth microphone that you can put wherever you want it. And I put it in the same
exact spot as this one. And I drove the same
route at the same speeds. So with all that said, all that taken into account
for me and the Miata, the head unit that it's
going to have to be is of course, the middle one. It does what I want for the
cheapest amount of money. That's exactly what I'm looking for. Okay, so now that we
finally got our decision, and I mean, come on, let's be honest, we knew it was gonna
be this one all along. But now that we've
actually made the decision, we've done the work
we've made the decision, the only thing left to do is to permanently install it in the car, but you've seen me do that. And if you don't remember how to solder, check that video out in the link, wherever it decides to put it. If you wanna know more
about how we ended up with music in our cars, then go check out this, my favorite episode of
wheelhouse of all time, trust me, you will not regret doing it. Thank you so much for watching. Make sure you subscribe to the channel and you have the notification bell rung 'cause we're putting out
shows every single day. If you want more meat, you can
get it @zachjobe on Instagram and make sure you're
following Donut, @Donutmedia. I almost forgot to say, you know the sweet, awesome
song I've been playing all day. Did you love it? Of course you did. We're also making a
full length music video. So if you have any footage that you think belongs in a pop-up, up and down the headlights music video, then send it to us and we'll put it in.
ATOTO A6: $250(ish) on Amazon. Look for the Toyota specific unit (205mm x 104mm). Fits the factory mounts without having to buy a cheap install unit to fill the side gaps, plugs directly into the factory harness, works with steering controls, Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS, has an Apple car play module, multiple USB ports, AUX input, two video inputs, micro SD slot, AirPlay, preamp outputs, etc. It has a few quarks, and you’ll need to do your research to make sure you’re buying the right size, but hard to beat the functions and price point.
ATOTO
I'm not going to click on the video... but I will say I did buy a Jensen CarPlay receiver on amazon for $250, installed it myself and wish I had done it years ago (although obviously is was more expensive years ago) Worth noting you have to buy a separate toyota harness and an adapter for the steering controls... still, a game changer.
I emailed ATOTO to get some help. They replied (below). If you can find the Toyota Pro version then for ease I’d go with that. But if you can’t, you can get the latest version on Amazon and a dash kit from somewhere else (I don’t know yet how to order the right one or where to get it). What I’d like to know is if the Toyota version also has the wiring harness for Toyota. I’m going to see if I can get a good answer and order one. I like the idea of having a tablet on my dash which is different than most head units. You can download any android app from google play and run it. For that reason I’m thinking I’ll go for the latest version with the IPS screen and buy the kit.
—— Dear Customer,
Good day.
You can purchase A6Y27 universal double din car radios. You may need below parts to complete installation. 1. dash kit http://www.metraonline.com/part/99-8300 2. wiring harness http://www.metraonline.com/part/70-1761 3. You may still need this wiring harness if you need to retain factory steering weel control. http://www.metraonline.com/part/70-8114 Please search them with the part number on online stores and the seller to confirm whether they can fit your car before purchase.
Sheila LI
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