Pioneer AVIC-F700BT In-Dash Navigation Audio Receiver with CD Playback and Advanced Voice Controls
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In-dash navigation audio/video receiver with CD playback and advanced voice controls.
Features
- In-Dash Navigation AV Receiver with CD Player and Built-In Bluetooth
- Use your voice to make calls and control your iPod
- USB Direct Control for portable media
- Built-In SD Card Slot
- Approximately 12 million pre-programmed POIs make it easy to find gas stations, restaurants, ATMs, coffee and more.
- Dimensions (W x H x L): 10 x 9 x 11 inches
- Weight: 7 pounds
Basically A Good Unit, But With Quirks That Might Drive You Insane – Read the Reviews Carefully Before You Buy
First, understand this is not a car stereo/GPS unit. It’s a computer with audio and GPS capabilities, meaning that it has to boot before it works. With the latest firmware upgrade, mine boots in 45-60 seconds.
Highs
Awesome sound.
Excellent GPS (if antenna installed properly).
– I’ve been especially pleased with the “you need to be in one of these lanes” feature at freeway interchanges.
Excellent Bluetooth Phone Operation.
Media Flexibility – CD, SD, USB, Radio including SAT or HD if you buy the add on module.
Extensive controls over sound, with some shortcomings (see Lows).
Lows
Glacial boot time, albeit evidently not as glacial as with the previous firmware.
– Note that the CD or radio (AM/FM/XM that I know of) begins playing immediately, though you can’t control volume or change the station/track until well into the boot process.
Nearly all controls require use of the touchscreen.
Inexplicably, no BT audio (you can use your BT phone to talk – if you thought you were going to use it to play music, think again).
Inexplicably, no DVD capability, audio or video.
Ridiculously excessive GPS voice instructions.
– you can kind of rid of them by turning the voice command volume all the way down and making some other adjustments, but honestly, whoever programmed the voice instructions on this thing belongs in a mental hospital.
Complicated, multi-layer menus.
Voice controls are useless.
– among other things, voice commands don’t work with the GPS functions.
3 band parametric equalizer, rather than a real equalizer.
No remote control.
Re the subject of remote controls, this unit requires you to use the touchscreen for most functions, and it’s simple – use of a touchscreen requires that you devote a level of attention to the screen that is simply not safe when you’re driving. If you’re buying one of these, get the steering wheel interface for your car (installation was $50), or one of the wired remotes available.
I’ve been reasonably satisfied, but if I knew then what I know now, there’s no way I would have bought this unit. For a lot less money, you can buy a very good car stereo and a portable GPS. Still, it’s a good unit. If you are insistent on buying one (or any other AVIC series unit), make sure you visit the AVIC forum (Google it) for lots of good advice, hacks, and rescue procedures (I’ve had to reinstall the operating system on mine once).
Several issues – No maps from outside US
The product functionality is great. The concept, the value for the money. But the unit has several quality issues. My bluetooth stopped working after a year use and had to send it for service cause it started to boot over and over. Hope pioneer improves these products. Honestly I would think twice after buting another unit from them.
wasted my time
Don’t buy this if you ever listen to sports or talk radio on AM. There is no reception. I spent a week in and out of the shop with no results.
Good Overall
Once you update to FW 3.0 the system is great. My only complaint is that each time you turn on the car it takes like 2 minutes to read and generate a listing for all your songs off your ipod (only if you are using the ipod cable)
Avoid this product AVIC-F700BT if you can
I have not found other in-car product as annoying to use as this one. The GPS features are much inferior to other products such as Magellan. The audio sound quality is bad. You can’t turn off the radio with a single click anywhere. This is especially annoying during the period when the system is slowly starting up. The bluetooth annoys your listener even more than it does to you. The GPS navigation is way too chatty, speaking 5 phrases every single turn. It pronounces “156th Ave” as “one fifty six tee ay-ch avenue” (what an idiot!). The iPod player cannot display non-alphnumeric characters for song titles and I was told Pioneer would never support such feature. You cannot select a routing algorithm by trip. You cannot mute or change the volume of the GPS sound without parking your car first. Even when you are not using the GPS, you will get a loud “GPS signal lost” warning occasionally. The UI (user interface) is obviously designed by programmers who have no clue about what a basic tolerable user experience should be. I wished I had tried the product before paying for the installation. I thought all such in-car products should have passed some basic usability check and boy was I wrong.
I already upgraded to the latest firmware, hoping for improvements but had seen none. I would not buy another Pioneer product even if they pay me.
Terribke Product
This system is garbage after 1 yr and 5 months the system started to just restart itself over and over again. They tried to blame it on the install which was done professionally, but I have looked it up and this is a common problem of course they want you to pay $200 to fix it after I paid $850. The software they have is garbage and even trying to do the updates is a challenge. Do yourself a favor buy anything but a pioneer NAVI system, or use your money to go on a nice vacation. I just through a lot of money out the window for this terrible product.
Good system for the money
I have owned this for a little over a year now (it was a Christmas gift in 2008). I love fact that it is all in one, and most of the time, moving between features (XM to maps to GPS) is fairly straightforward. I also like that the XM info is so detailed, much more so than with the portable unit I used before. On the whole, I am happy I bought it, though I have a few “wish list” things I wish it did (or didn’t do).
Issues I have with it:
The GPS system talks too much. It tells you to “turn left in ### miles, quarter miles, and feet” multiple times. I haven’t figured out a way to shut it up, so if someone else who owns it has, please share.
When trying to use the Point of Interest search feature or directly looking for a business, the system is very slow, sometimes to the point that I think it’s frozen up. I have seen friends’ Garmins and they do have a better system than this one. I just didn’t like it enough to be willing to have that, the portable XM unit, AND a normal in-dash radio/CD player.
The preset keys for the radio are not easy to use when driving. So pick a station and hope you don’t get a lot of songs you hate. I did get the addon that allows me to use my steering wheel controls while driving and it was well worth the money. If you have that option in your car now, I would recommend getting it.
It is hard to keep this thing clean. It bugs me (probably the most of anything about it), so if you’re really fastidious and you get this, be prepared to either clean it constantly or be annoyed with fingerprints.
I did not pay for the connectors for iPod, because I swore I would never own one… then six months later the iPhone 3GS came out and I ate my words. And I regret not having it installed. It will now cost me a lot more for the installation to be done separately.
In spite of all my grumps, I really do like the system. I’ve seen a couple I like more, but they also cost about 4-6 times what this one did.
a very big disappointment!
This unit was a very big disappointment. I did not know when I bought this unit that it was so complicated that it would require a car audio specialist to install costing me Ugh! $250 to install! The installers, A&S of Allentown told me that this was a refurbished unit even though it was listed as new from this seller on Amazon. Most important to me when I am driving to work is to be able to see the time to know if I should drive faster, if I’m running late… And the time display on both the map and the music is no bigger than this type- impossible to see while driving! Also, another stupid thing about the design of this unit is no “off” button! I had to go through several menus to get to the “off” selection on the touch screen, definitely not something I could do while driving nor would want to do just to turn the damn thing off if I need to concentrate on something else and want to turn the music off! I was very disappointed that there is no such thing as a security device with this unit.. It was suggested I also purchase an obnoxious car alarm to prevent a thief from breaking into my car for it. At the very least you’d think the morons that designed this unit could’ve built some false front to it to make it look like a cheap generic stereo to foil the thieves but no… I was also very disappointed with the sound. Too much Bass! There is nothing worse than listening to my favorite Sarah McLachlan and hearing a bass (that is supposed to be a very subtle background sound)drowning out her beautiful voice! I am not one of those morons who wants a car vibrating with the bass as I thump down the block. This system did have the option to make adjustments to the sound but the only option I could find that would reduce the obnoxious bass was called “flat” which in fact did sound “flat” as it eliminated the high notes as well. I plan to resell this unit to someone who likes a lot of bass… I cannot comment on the blue tooth as I only use my cell phone for emergencies and never tried the GPS. I had the unit replaced with a Clarion which cost me only $140 and the sound is absolutely phenomenal! I love my Clarion! The sound is sublime(: And the display defaults to the time in Large letters! AND it has a detachable faceplate to foil thieves! Thank you Clarion(:
Good product but..
Good product, but it has a lot of bugs and you have to wait at least one minute after you turn it on. It is slow, and the upgrades and support is not good. Sound great, the ipod works great, video looks nice.
The best option for price and features!
Bottom line up front: Get this unit!! Its cheaper than the F900bt and it has literally all of the same features! Initially, the unit suffers from some buggy software but Pioneer really pulled it together and released software upgrades that made this unit FAST, ACCURATE, and EXCELLENT! The unit connects flawlessly to HD radio, Satellite radio, and plays the standard formats very well. The unit accepts a wide variety of media including SD cards, USB thumb drives, and CDs. There is no stopping this unit and it sounds incredible. If you are debating on getting this unit, you cannot go wrong. Just make sure you install the software updates. It makes all the difference. [...]
Nice unit but it has ongoing problems
I’ve had it back to the dealer where I bought it due to speakers cutting out when the I-POD is running . This has been an ongoing problem and the dealer has no idea how to fix it , they say pioneer is working to correct the problem but my car has been back to the dealer 4 times in about a year .
Pioneer AVIC-F700BT
Have used GPS devices for years and this is by far to poorest performer. You can pay considerably less and get much better performance, accuracy, and ease of use in a Garmin handheld. I thought I was purchasing a quality product because of Pioneer’s reputation in mobile audio. I was mistaken. Recommend Kenwood – I owned one previously and while the audio was mediocre the Garmin based GPS was superior.
Slow until you update the firmware – then it’s AWESOME!
This unit was SLOW until we updated the firmware to the 2.0. After that, this unit became MUCH faster (don’t believe all the other reviews that say this unit is still slow and takes 2 min to start-up). I love this unit. You can pick these up cheap now, because people think they are too slow, then just update the firmware and you’re good to go!
This is the best money I have ever spent on a head unit. I highly recommend it.
PS: Get the correct wiring harness for your vehicle and this thing is a breeze to install!
Great unit
I have had this unit installed in my Silverado now for 6 months and have had no problems at all. The GPS works great; yes it takes 30 seconds or so to boot up, but with all the systems to load the time seems reasonable. I have also added a back-up camera to it and it works flawlessly.
Bluetooth with my ATT phone works great both incoming and outgoing calls.
Sound quality for the CD, radio (and my favorite, the USB connection for flash drive) is excellent. The USB software isn’t as fancy as a IPod however I don’t own an IPod so this is a very economical way to have a large amount of music on a small device.
All in all, a wonderful product.
great deck
great deck. GPS is excellent on this unit. it does everything i need it to do. extremely easy to update the firmware. ipod function took a long time to get vr. you can turn this function off so you have instant menu.
Didn’t expect to like it so much
I am a long-time user of GPS navigation systems, MP3 players, and cell phone bluetooth, and didn’t expect an all-in-one system to impress me much, but one test drive after installing it in my wife’s car, and I wanted one of my own.
The main appeal of this system for us was an end to the cable clutter on road trips. We would have our GPS plugged into one power socket, our MP3 player into another, with another cable carrying the audio signal from the MP3 to the car stereo. The suction cup on our GPS kept coming loose, and its battery ceased to work after only 6 months, which we found out later is because it doesn’t tolerate heat well, which is ridiculous for a device you expect to leave in your car.
The AVIC-F700BT solved all these problems for us. The navigation works great, and it will not only charge our MP3 player while it plays, it will also play directly off a flash memory card, which is the route we decided to take. It has plenty of presets for AM and FM radio, and can play sources like satellite radio which we haven’t even considered getting yet.
For us, the handsfree cell phone connections was not a feature we needed, but we certainly enjoy it since it was included in the package. Echo cancellation works great, sound quality is great, and voice dialing is much more reliable at picking the right number than we anticipated.
There are a few drawbacks. First of all, it does take quite a while to start up. I anticipated this for the first time after installation, but it seems excessive for every time you go out. If you have multiple numbers for a person, like cell, home, and work, it doesn’t differentiate them well, at least for our phone, but it does at least present a list to the screen for you to choose from. I’ve also had at least one instance where it didn’t connect to my cell phone and I didn’t notice until I tried to make a call. This might have been because I am not the one who usually drives that vehicle, and my wife’s phone was still in range when I started the car. There is a relatively easy way to manually specify which phone to connect to in that circumstance. Installation is also more difficult than the average car stereo, due to sensors on the parking brake and a microphone (that’s not even including options we don’t use like a backup camera), but the instructions are well-written and it’s nothing an average enthusiast couldn’t handle. Also, the screen is a bit dim in bright sunlight, but has never been unreadable.
In summary, it is well worth it even if you only use some of the features.
To many Issues
So I installed my 700BT about a 2 months ago and let me tell you that this is the last Pioneer Navigation I will EVER buy.
Where to start with the issues…………..there are so many lol.
After I installed the unit I did the 2.0 update and went out to test how the GPS worked so I punched in a buddys address and off I went. About a half mile down the road it resets, I’m thinking this isnt normal so I continue on my way. After it FINALLY boots back up it keeps saying Satellite lost……….how is that possible when there is not a cloud in the sky, no trees or houses around me…..its an open area AND the antenna is on the roof. I get home and recheck all my connections and very thing is fine, I put it all back together and give it another shot………….wouldnt you know it the thing worked lol.
On to about a week later, the same thing starts happening this time it just kept rebooting. I figure the antenna might be bad so I ordered a new one, but no go…issue even with the new antenna. I go on here and learn that this is a common issue and I deleted a few files as stated in a few threads…………..BAM it worked, for about 2 days before it started AGAIN! Now it will navigate for all of a few minutes before it stops responding.
On to issue #2……….Thumbdrives and hard drives are like Kryptonite. I plug in a thumbdrive and it works until I shutoff the car and restart it. When I shut the car off and turn it back on it does not recognize the drives, I have to unplug and replug it in for it to be recognized. I have tried all my thumbdrives which are Sony, Kingston, and Sandisk all different sizes, all of em do it.
Issue #3, I turn the car on let the system boot and guess what………………NO SOUND lol, not even the touch tone sounds, no music from CD’s or from drives, but wait it gets better…. the AM/FM radio work fine lol. I have to shut the car off and restart it for the unit to fully work.
Here is a funny side note, my neighbor bought the 900 and it is doing the same thing with thumb drives, not having sound, but now it wont even stay on for more than 10 minutes when the GPS is on all it does is reboot.
I called Pioneer and they tell me to send the unit in for repair, well wouldnt you know it they could not duplicate the problems, figures . They reset it to factory and sent it back to me………….do I even have to say what happened when I got it back? The same issues, I called Pioneer yet AGAIN and I was not nice this time because I spent good money on this unit and it does not work even AFTER sending it out to them. The Customer service rep told me it was an installation issue…….ummmm NO, I know for a fact that it is not an installation issue, the symptoms do not fit their diagnosis. I have been installing car audio for over 10 years and I had 3 other installed check it and all is good and I’m also MECP certified and do this for a living. The unit is not hacked in anyway not hardware or software. So they wanted me to send it out for repair again, which I refused to do, at this point if I cant get this fixed on my own I will just chuck it. I heard rumbling about how bad Pioneer units are, but this is my first one for personal use, I have installed many of them and honestly alot of them came back with similar issues but I figured it was a bad batch or something so I went against my better judgment and picked one up……………big mistake, I should have stayed with the Kenwood. Never in my life did I think Pioneer would release such a inferior product.
I’m hoping someone on here can shine some light on how to fix these issues, because Pioneer has been ZERO help.
Overstated
If you are looking for a serious MP3 SD card car audio system, I would not recommend this.
Basically it does not operate with my flip phone.
1) It is the first car audio system I have owned that takes 2 minutes to start playing. I am typically a mile or two from home before it starts up. This is the (fast) Version 2 software!
2) Sometimes it starts playing. Other times it shows a disclaimer and switches to map view and starts playing when prompted.
3) Sometimes it restarts at the same song it was playing when you had turned off the engine. Sometimes.
4) Although it advertizes iPod compatibility, it does not have iTunes compatibility. The ID3 tags generated by iTunes do not work in the player, so no song details.
5) The Bluetooth will let me dial out, but my Motorola phone will not be answered properly by it. Instead the person calling me hears the music I am listening to, nothing else.
6) The voice recognition system does not. I state a telephone number; it misses the last digit, consistently. Even if you speak another phrase, like `please’, it does not get them all.
7) My address book would not transfer from my phone?
9) It says it will work with 8GB SD cards – eventually. One time I left work (silently – no tunes yet), was about three miles down the highway when it eventually presented me with my Password screen. It would not let me enter anything until I had pulled into a parking lot and put on the foot brake. Then I was able to start the machine again. I was about five miles down the road before a first tune started. I stopped off to pick up something from the store. Big mistake. It never recovered. I have gone back to using 1GB SD cards; that it can manage.
10) The map lost its view a couple of times, the cursor just walks off a static screen. None too helpful.
11) It entertains me by behaving differently every time I power it up.
12) I tried the help desk. Six menus later, it tells me that there is a training session and should call back. I did, and waded through the same six menus before speaking to a person.
13) I found out they cannot upgrade the system with ID3, said it was a hardware shortfall, and oh yes, let me know it is one of the slower models to start up. I know ID3 is not hardware, it maybe is firmware, and they probably cannot access it from the USB port.
14) It sounds OK, except when you run it hard for a while. Then it is distorted until the unit cools down again.
15) You cannot turn off the `beep’ every time you press a button on the steering column control.
16) It lags badly at times. You end up touching a button multiple times and toggling it (a few seconds later…..)
This proved hard work for me. Too hard.
LOVE THIS PRODUCT
My husband and I love the GPS System and I use it all the time when going yardsaling around the area. So much better than trying to look at a map. The bluetooth is an awesome add on as well.
Absolutely perfect
The perfect addition to my interior. I couldn’t be happier. I’ve had it for about 6 months and have enjoyed every second of it. The functionality of this unit is amazing and the graphical display is superb. iPod function is extremely impressive – I’ll never listen to the radio again. Navigation is wonderful and always up to date. Great sound boost when installed. A true five star product.