[Adamxa]

i have been looking at in-dash navigation systems for the past few days, and just really want to get one in my element .
so i was wanting to see what other element drivers recommend the best fit.

 

[willhaven]

My friend has one of the slightly older Pioneer touchscreen units in his Element and it looks great.

I'm still trying to decide between Kenwood and Pioneer, but I think the Pioneer has better iPhone 3G/voice support and the Kenwood has garmin-based NAV I think.

Both will import phonebooks for dialing. The Alpine and Eclipse units don't support that or the iPhone very well from what I've read.

 

[box-E]

I have the last gen Pioneer in my E and love it. It has ipod interface, sirius, bluetooth,and steering wheel control. Drew

 

[Element5]

Adamxa....and Drew here's my reply...

Just had a Pioneer AVIC-F700BT installed by Best Buy. They had a deal on with installation free ($100.) Interfaced to my Sirius Sportster 5 with two interface parts. I wanted to keep the Sirius portable so it docks in the tray where the power out is. You can get Sirius built-in but your subscription stays in one car. I got them to take out the aux port and feed the USB and rear-view camera cables out the empty port. There is an aux port on the front of the head unit anyway. The Sirius antenna is on the roof and the GPS antenna is in the centre of the dash at the windshield.....works fine there. Check out the Pioneer website for the details. The Sirius display is great with the logos, channel number and artist/song displayed in colour. All the Sirius buttons are there. My cell paired ok and my phonebook transfered in a minute. 8GB SD card in front slot holds music, wallpaper pic, POI info loaded from the free AVIC FEEDS program on the Pioneer site. Another site, POIfriend.com, has the Pioneer F-series download format for all it's POI's.....it's really slick. The audio has loads of controls. I'm easy to please sound-wise as I have state-of-the-art hearing aids. The mic for the phone may be a little weak. Mine is mounted at the top of the front pillar......I may move it to the front dash closer to me. Took a trip this weekend and tried it all out. The GPS worked fine.....a few things to get used to but the same logic as my hand-held. My unit looks the same as Drew's pics. Oh ya.....you'll also need an adaptor to go from aftermarket radio antenna to Honda antenna. The free install was well worth the price....$599. Canadian for the head unit. Interfaces and other parts were about $220. The F700BT is CD only.....the more expensive units play DVD's if you want to watch movies while driving ???????? There are rumours of another software upgrade coming from Pioneer and another NAV update from Tele-Atlas. There are some small things that could be improved but I'm overjoyed with my system as it is.....fast startup....fast GPS.

That's all for now.....hope this helps

Bob in Kanata

 

[ElementaryEd]

Kenwood DNX 8120 here

I have the Kenwood touch screen DNX 8120 that I absolutly love. Bluetooth, Nav, Ipod interface, DVD all the goodies in one place. Looked at Pioneer as well and they make very good units. Just fell in love with the Kenwood screen on the 8120.

I have not taken pics yet but need to do that soon.

.02

 

[willhaven]

I have the last gen Pioneer in my E and love it. It has ipod interface, sirius, bluetooth,and steering wheel control. Drew

What do the steering wheel controls do with the Pioneer? Of course the volume is self explanatory. The other two?

 

[box-E]

On the steering wheel controls I get vol. up and down, channel up only (this also changes tracks on CD and ipod), and mode change which cycles through all the things the head unit supports. Drew

 

[willhaven]

So it's basically the same as the CD function on the regular radio. Cool. Thanks.

 

[ElementaryEd]

On the steering wheel controls I get vol. up and down, channel up only (this also changes tracks on CD and ipod), and mode change which cycles through all the things the head unit supports. Drew

Same thing on the Kenwood.

 

[Adamxa]

well i went up and asked my car tech guy i use and he said he could sell me a AVIC-F700BTand install it and everything for $980.
and want to know if that is a good price?
or should i buy one online for a cheaper price and just pay installation to him?
if online where can a get on for a cheap price new?

played around with the display model he had, and it was pretty sweet.

Edit:i put the wrong model number in the first time, the correct model number is AVIC-F900bt