This bugs me. The factory radio's display tracks with the dimmer control in the E. All of the after market head units I've looked at are either fixed brightness or, in the best case, have 2 user selectable brightness levels. Great, I turn the lights on and the radio goes from BRIGHT to Bright and doesn't follow the car's dimmer control changes.

It's got to be easy to build the circuitry that brings the radio lights up & down as the dimmer is changed. Why aren't they doing this?

- Keith -

My 05 EX radio dims with the dash dimmer.

This bugs me. The factory radio's display tracks with the dimmer control in the E. All of the after market head units I've looked at are either fixed brightness or, in the best case, have 2 user selectable brightness levels. Great, I turn the lights on and the radio goes from BRIGHT to Bright and doesn't follow the car's dimmer control changes.

It's got to be easy to build the circuitry that brings the radio lights up & down as the dimmer is changed. Why aren't they doing this?

- Keith -

It was a piece of junk...but I had one of the first MP3 playing headunits made by AIWA...forgive me but I can't remember the model number...it had a dimmer wire and it did do exactly as you state...it got bright in the daytime...and darker at night...just as it should. (if it had only played mp3 cd's without skipping.)

The lack of brightness control in my AIWA HU (aftermarket in a DX) is one of its bad points. It can be changed between 2 levels with several button presses, but neither is vary satisfactory - either too bright or too dim. One thing that complicates HU lighting in the Element is its position, high on the dash and angled slightly upward. In the day, light reflects off it display. At night, the display can be overpowering, even on dim. I put some silver tape over a decorative lighted bar on the HU. For the most part I just leave it on dim, and make do with a limited visibility during the day. And sometimes at night I will turn the HU so I can focus more on my driving.

On the other hand, I only spent $100 on the unit. If it would have been an expensive upgrade to a factory unit I would be more bothered about display.

Display color is potentially an issue as well. The majority of aftermarket units are blue. One that could change color would be nice.

A third issue with aftermarket units is the controls. The 2 large knobs of the stock EX unit match the style of the large AC controls. The multitude of silver buttons of an aftermarket unit don't fit so well. Alpine's use of angled lit buttons is a particularly glaring example of style that doesn't match the Element's dash.

paulj

Ok...I looked it up and I found this site here (http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/cdcmp3/) that has the AIWA that I used to have as well as a Kenwood that was out at the time. If you'll read about halfway down the page...you'll see that this guy lists the general features of the Kenwood headunit...notice that in addition to having a three-way dimmer it also lists an Auto-Dimmer wire (the Aiwa I had offered this wire as well). I had this hooked up correctly in my VW New Beetle and it worked perfectly...let me repeat...PERFECTLY. Just like a stock head unit would respond to headlight usage. In the beetle that particular unit also matched the lighting scheme quite well...but that's another story. Certainly there has to be a current, much better quality head unit that functions similarly.

I really like the way the OEM stuff blends in with the rest of the interior. As soon as one upgrades the head unit you end up with something that is obviously non-oem. They just don't integrate well. Buttons are not the same size, illumination color and level are wrong. I guess I can live with most of that but the illumination level is the one that bugs me.

I had a Blaupunkt in my Honda Civic. It was too bright at night (on low) and too dim in the day (on high). Sounded good though. I put a Pioneer in my truck and it had two fixed levels. Day was fine, night was too bright but the radio was enough off to the side that it wasn't a problem.

I notice Blaupunkt's offerings allow the user to specify the display color (RGB value). That sounds great as one can *finally* get the display color to be close to the color of the dash lights, but I don't think they offer continuously variable dimming, just 2 levels. And they don't support XM or Sirius.

*sigh*, nothing's perfect I guess.

- Keith -

I'm pretty happy with my Kenwood indash unit. It blends in nicely with the rest of the Element's interior colors and styling and the buttons can be switched to illuminate as either red or green, both matching the Element's existing dash lighting. Along with a brightness control of 11 settings it auto switches to "Night Mode" when you activate the parking/headlights. Tho that can be set manually also incase you need the "Day Mode" setting with your lights on on a rainy day.


FULL CENTER DASH VIEW ALSO SHOWING 6" PASSENGER SIDE INDASH MONITOR
http://img251.imageshack.us/img251/8721/dashscreen19by.jpg


DAY MODE
http://img251.imageshack.us/img251/2371/dashscreen29gm.jpg


NIGHT MODE
http://img251.imageshack.us/img251/2403/dashscreen34pa.jpg


ONSCREEN BRIGHTNESS, CONTRAST and BLACK CONTROLS
http://img251.imageshack.us/img251/4869/dashscreen45ps.jpg