Pioneer AVIC-X910BT 5.8-Inch In-Dash Navigation A/V Receiver with DVD Playback and Bluetooth
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Pioneer Avic-X910Bt 5.8-Inch In-Dash Navigation A/V Receiver With Dvd Playback & Bluetooth
Features
- AM/FM radio, DVD, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, CD, CD-R/RW, MP3/WMA/WAV/AAC, DivX/MPEG4 receiver with GPS navigation and MSN Direct
- 4 x 50 Watts maximum power with front/rear and three sets of preamp outputs
- 5.8-inch widescreen TFT LCD touchscreen with 800 x 480 resolution
- Includes auxiliary input, USB port, SD card slot, iPod direct control; add optional tuners for SAT/HD radio
- On-board Bluetooth for hands-free calls, on-screen dialing and more
- Dimensions (W x H x L): 10 x 10 x 11 inches
- Weight: 7 pounds
pioneer customer service BAD
I bought this unit in March and called Pioneer customer service several times now and they are either not informed about the product or just lying to me to run the warranty past its limit..The clock on the unit due to a software problem displays the wrong time. I have called customer service and they kept telling me that the engineers were working on it..that is until last time. This tech must not be a happy employee because he really treated me like I was a pain in the you know what. The maps on the display are pretty lean on info. The graphics are washed out and boring. Also if you add the sirius radio option good luck on guessing what your presets are as it does not display the info, It just says preset 1,2, etc. Also you will be half way to wherever you are going before the unit is fully booted up.It can take anywhere from 2 minutes to 6 minutes for the unit to be fully operational on start up. About one out of every 10 times the unit will also hang on boot up so if you want to listen to music or see where you are, you had better find a parking lot so you can shut your car off and restart it.
When the unit works, it works almost satisfactorily, but its always a crap shoot and if you want to know what time it is you had better be wearing a watch because the clock is not correct and apparently Pioneer doesn’t know how to fix it. On the plus side the sound quality is really quite good. You may be better off buying just a stereo and a portable GPS. I had a lowrance portable gps that was far superior to this and it was 3 years old. Good luck if you buy it and it doesn’t work getting pioneer to do anything about it! I think they are selling them with defective software so when the map upgrade comes out they can put the fix in the new maps and charge you! Having purchased Pioneer products in the past I was expecting a better product than this! Quite disappointing
Not so super tuner
I bought this deck and have spent 3 trips to the installer changing converters and the antenna. They even tried to add on the HD radio instead. It’s pretty bad when the stock Mercedes stereo delivered a basic service like FM than the Pioneer. If FM is a consideration for you i would suggest getting another manufacture’s system.
Better than the stock radio
I have a new smart fortwo convertible, and so couldn’t realistically use my windshield mounted Garmin anymore since the windshield is so far forward, out of reach. I do a lot of running to unfamiliar areas for work, and definitely wanted GPS in the new car. Dug around and was looking at the Kenwood units and the Pioneers, and the features made me pick the Pioneer.
Removal of the old one was a piece of cake, and the wiring harness adapter I got for my car made the wiring for this very easy, but there are so many cables needed for things, the microphone, the GPS, the AV cables for the Ipod, and of course they all have to be 15 feet long in case you are locating things far away. And none of them can be cut to be shortened without possibly impairing functionality. So there’s all this extra wiring that you have to wind up and find a place to store where your feet won’t knock it or pull it out again.
Other than that, once it was in place, it worked well. It takes a bit to boot, but fortunately the last audio source you had playing will start up within a few seconds of starting your car, so at least you have whatever you had been listening to playing again while you wait for the ability to navigate the touchscreen.
GPS was accurate, but I pretty much expected that on anything purchased at this point in time.
My unit came with the newest firmware, so the response of the display and controls is quite good. I do have an issue with the calibration so will have to try to recalibrate it again since sometimes it takes a couple pushes to get the control to read my input. Could just be the angle I’m sitting at so I’ll adjust the calibration some and see if that helps.
There’s a choice of I think 6 or 8 colors for the LED’s for the buttons and such to be changed to, so that’s a nice feature.
Volume is a bit frustrating though, since it has such a large range of numbers to go through (haven’t dialed it up past 60 or so yet, so don’t know but could go all the way to 100) so changing volume levels takes more spinning of the control than I’d care for. I don’t need THAT much granularity in my volume levels, would have preferred something that went maybe just 0 to 30 or 40 so it didn’t take so many revolutions to go from top down at highway speeds to off the highway levels that won’t annoy everyone around me… That’s my biggest complaint about the unit.
DVD playback is easy, but screen was a little disappointing for clarity, but it’s not a very high resolution so not a surprise there.
Ipod navigation works well, but the album art display is considerably smaller than one would expect they could do on a screen this size. But after having used the integration I had on my 2010 Kia Soul that I just traded in, it’s lightyears better. On the Kia, I’d have to keep spinning the selector knob to scroll through artists, and when you have a couple thousand artists, it just got too frustrating to move from someone at the other end of the alphabet. This gives you an initial letter selection, so you can quickly jump to the letter the name would start with, then select it, and have it present you then with all those artists, with an easy to navigate up/down slider to scroll through the names. This will make my music listening MUCH more enjoyable than it was in the Soul since now I’ll actually be able to play what I want, when I want it. In the Soul, I usually just let it play all random since that was less frustrating than trying to spin that little knob hundreds of revolutions.
Someone in another forum complained about the knob, and I was a little leery about it, but it works well, I’ve had no incorrect inputs by accidentally pushing it in or side to side / up or down. It *IS* shorter than they should have made it though, so grasping it is a little tougher than it probably needed to be, as it’s so close to the flush face of the unit. It has detent positions so you feel it clicking as you rotate it.
My phone (Verizon Imagio) paired up with it instantly, no muss, no fuss. Address books downloaded, and showed me it was time to clean up my address book since I had multiple numbers for some things, and they show up kind of obscurely then. For example, I had a main number for my office, then secondary and tertiary numbers for if our internet is down (use VOIP) and I need to dial a hard line. So I had multiple entries for “office” but no way to know which was which number, as the moment you push one, it starts to dial. That could’ve been better planned out.
Have yet to use the voice control, will edit this when I do to comment on that.
All in all, a good unit though, the few minor irritations I have are far less impacting to me than what I was using in the Kia, so I’m a happy customer.
Great Head Unit
Really good sound, great options, responsive screen, very easy to use, crisp display, wide viewing angle, and very little washout in sunlight.
I have this mounted in an 07 Eclipse, mids and highs are 2 pair alpine SPR-17S, powered by an alpine 120×4 amp, lows are one 12″ sub powered by an alpine 350 mono-block.
I’m somewhat of an audiophile, even though what I have is limited to what I’m willing to spend.
The EQ is a little goofy. It’s 3 bands, with three frequencies per band. You can set the *center* frequency and then adjust the gain curve, “Q”, for the band based on what was set as the center frequency, but no way to adjust the individual frequencies. A nine band could not have been any harder to implement and certainly would have been nice to have. Still though, the sound is good, and with any boost it easily becomes too bright at high volumes.
I’m a storm2 owner, so no iPhone or iPod here. I have the aux cable for hooking up to pandora and the music on my phone. The sound is decent at best, but with the ability to load up to 8 gig of music though USB or SD, and data DVD’s, I just don’t see myself using the phone that much.
Pairing was easy, and my phone book loaded correctly, including all entries for people with multiple phones in one phone book entry..i.e. Dad Work, Dad Home, Dad Cell.
The hands free worked. People said I sounded good, but when they talked it hurt my ears. It might have to do with the rest of my equipment.
Boot times are fickle, more on that later, but if you don’t have a USB device or SD card in boot times are quick.
I live in the San Diego area and the navi has been good, admittedly I haven’t really put it through the motions yet. Address entry is easy, the guidance is good because the entry method is not standard. There is a gentle tone, followed by an attenuation before the voice comes on. With how loud I listen to my music, this was pretty big, I didn’t want a computerized female scaring the crap out of me while I’m jamming out.
About 1 in 20 boots, the OS thinks it’s on the audio source screen, but the display is a navi screen. Tapping the screen will perform the audio source function that is at that location, and not the navi function it looked like you just hit. This is my only true complaint about the deck itself.
The AVIC Feeds App for the desktop…it’s the right thing done the wrongest way possible.
It has a pretty slick UI.
To start with it saves in C:Users%CurrentUser%AppDataRoamingAVICFeeds*
AppData is normally a hidden folder, so I don’t expect most people to know where to begin to look to find their custom icons, new splash screens, or anything else they have saved.
Boot times…When a disc is burnt a Table Of Contents is created to tell the reading device where things are on the disc, how big they are, and what order they are in. When a flash device is loaded with data there is no TOC created, so the unit scans the ENTIRE thing looking for file data before it finishes booting. This can take upwards of 5 minutes on a full 8 gig USB drive, during this time even volume control can be unresponsive. A TOC task would have been great to see in AVIC Feeds, but with the boot times flash discs are not an acceptable option. I haven’t spent more than 5 minutes working on it, but I still haven’t figured out how to create my own POI with that app either.
I really do like this deck, and would recommend it to anyone looking for a navi deck around the [...] mark.
Nice Unit But Major Issues With Important Features
Very cool unit with lots of potential. However Pioneer really just dropped the ball on some major things.
If you plan to use the USB feature, just pretend it doesn’t exist. It is so heavily riddled with bugs that you pretty much can’t use it at all. It rarely ever detects your USB stick. And if it does, it takes a loooooong time for it to load it. As in multiple minutes. It’s not a defective unit either or an incompatible USB stick. Check out the website forum at AVIC411 and you’ll realize that it’s like this for everyone. I haven’t tested SD cards, but it seems that SD cards are the same way. iPods I think work more reliably but I haven’t tested it out. The interface for the USB/SD cards is pathetic too; like the first generation of MP3 players. Very limited.
Also, Sirius is poorly implemented. You only get one line of text at a time. And you have to choose one thing for it to display. Either station name, or artist, or song…but it can’t show them all. You have to choose. If you want to see the others you have to tap the buttons to you get to the one you want. Very annoying. No station icons either. Also the Presets won’t save the station name…it’ll just say “Preset 1″ or “Preset 2″… Supposedly XM is better with the unit, but I haven’t tested it. One other thing. People complain that the sound quality of Sirius on the unit isn’t great. I never had Sirius before so I can’t compare, but I will say that it’s not CD or MP3 quality. It is a step up in sound quality compared to FM, but not by too much.
FM doesn’t display the artist/song name like I’ve seen in other units, but that could just be a limitation of my vehicle?
Having said that, there are positives. Number one…it is a cool unit. It’s literally like having a PC in your car. The navigation works great and your location is very accurate. MSN Direct is also cool, but know that MSN Direct is going away in Jan 2012. Watching DVD movies is also cool.
Pretty much if you plan to use the iPod connectivity and the XM connectivity (rather than USB/SD and Sirius), then the unit is awesome and you’ll love it. Otherwise only get it if you’re getting a sweet deal.
Not a bad GPS, iPhone integration & good sounding stereo
Like most of you, I have done my research to which GPS stereo to add in my car. This is not exactly a “bug free” unit, and like Alpine, it comes with its share of problems. Having the AVIC-X910BT for about a month of daily use in the LA Traffic, I’ll give you my honest opinion about the product.
The system itself: I ended up selecting this unit because small enough to fit in my double din factory replacement unit. I like the knob as well on the left side since it is easy to reach. I installed Sirius, iPhone (USB) adapter, steering wheel capability, MSN Direct and rear camera option. I did not opt for the HD Radio this time as I believe the Sirius satellite is enough for my daily commute of channel selections.
Navigation: The navi is small to read compared to Garmin. The 3D/2D options available is mediocre. I set the navi to Smart Zoom and settled for the 300ft distance, which I find more suitable to read at a distance. The street names are sometimes hard to read if you set it the zoom from 500ft and above. I did not like that color selections limitation available (red or blue). I think the blue is dull and so I kept it at red. The POI within the map is average, but you can include your personalized POI which I like. It does not come with lifetime traffic subscription like Garmin. I ended up purchasing MSN Direct, which I find the integration of traffic within the map not available. Also, you have to play around with the settings on routing – I had set it on Fast, but driving around Pasadena to cut across the city when routing Fast will always point you out to the Freeway. I thought Fast meant I want to get there fast, I think it meant using more freeways. I finally set it up to Easy. The screens are hard to read too during the day. You also have one voice selection for the navigation (male voice), while voice command uses female voice.
Bluetooth: I think this unit got it right. I had bluetooth in my other car and people tell me I sounded better with the Pioneer. Also, attaching to the iPhone is simple. Forget about the Call by Name function for iPhone – this does not work. It can call by number though CALL 2135551212.
Stereo: The installed the simplest DSP sounding EQ for this unit. You are quite limited and I suggest you install a subwoofer. I ended up replacing my amp unit with 5×250w. Setup the EQ under Powerful, and adjusted the HF ranges to 125 Hz. The Custom EQ is hard to adjust, so once you are happy with your setting (you get 2 customizable one), hope that you will never change it again.
Sirius: There are problems with Sirius with this unit. The Preset (you can save 18 channels) does not save the name of the Satellite channel. Also, when you display detail – it only displays one line, so you have to toggle between channel #, channel name, artist name, song, composer. There are 3 available lines and yet they only display one. When driving, I don’t have time to toggle between information. I had XM on my other car, and I never heard of XM problem with this unit. Select XM for this unit.
iPhone Capability: You can download your contact, but make sure you have the latest version of iPhone installed. I am able to download all my contacts to the Pioneer, but when someone calls you – the Pioneer will not display the Caller ID, but the number only. This has something to do with the different formats used by iPhone & Pioneer and the unit only recognizes and matches to the contact list if incoming calls do not have the brackets. I think this is a bug on Pioneer’s part. Also, the voice call by name will not be available for the iPhone. Another bug that must be fixed. One the positive note, the pioneer plays my music, Pandora Bluetooth, Music Video and Movies from my iPhone. And yes, while the car is in motion (check with your installer – but not advisable of course to watch & drive).
Other Features: Rear view camera works on reverse (make sure your installer knows how to do this). My steering wheel for my car is not fully compatible – it only adjust volumes (check the year, make & model of your car that are compatible for the steering unit). MSN Direct is a good value for $29.95, good up til Jan. 2012. Most of the information like news, weather, stock, traffic you can get from your iPhone, but it does have Gas prices.
Other glitches: Startup time takes awhile. My advise, before you turn your car off, set the radio to AM or FM. When playing music from iPhone (USB), it has a tendency to freeze – one way I fixed this was to press the Eject button, somehow it resets it – Other I heard require turning the car off & on.
Sweet unit!
This is a great unit for the price. Easy and perfect iPhone and iPod intergration. Load times can be slow but other than that no complants. The screen looks great and the navigation is better than the one in my wifes 50,000.00 Acura.
Not bad but there are better out there
Dont get me wrong I love my pioneer. For $530 it does a good job. There are couple things i wish it could have done.
1- It is kind a slow on start up. Wish it was improved via firmware.
2- It doesnt have voice activated gps. I wish when you say italian restaurant it would find you the nearest but it doesnt you need to go and search for it. I mean my $400 phone does it. Come on pioneer.
Other than that I am really happy with my device.
Mostly good, but still needs improvement!
The pros outweigh the cons on this Pioneer unit. The tuner/amp is very good – with generally clear reception and excellent control over sound quality. The navigation is generally accurate and relatively easy to use. The screen, however, uses too many light colors that are easily washed out in sunlight. Lots of street names are grayed, making it hard to see at a glance. There is no user control over display colors or contrast. The knob is a complete joke – had to buy a new one on [...]. Much too small for easy use while driving. It compounds the crazy decision to make “mute” accessible by pushing on the knob and holding it perfectly still for about 3 seconds – all while driving. Any slippage and you will be dumped into the voice recognition system. The latter works somewhat, but does have trouble recognizing names on my phone book. It works for simple things like “change source to fm” so it’s not a complete flop, but it is slow. Bluetooth works pretty well, but make sure that the mic is put as close as possible to your mouth for improved sound quality for the caller on the other end. I implemented the bypass – the installer knew how to do this, but [...] has instructions. The last point is that the unit is supposed to show text messages as these arrive – I’ve never gotten it to do so. I suppose it could be my phone, but it’s a very recent vintage so I doubt it. All in all, at under $600 (plus installation cost me $175; the knob $22), it’s not perfect, but not bad…
Overall Good with some drawbacks
Overall very impressive unit.
Things I like
* iPhone integration excellent
* Navigation unit works well
* Bluetooth phone works well
A few drawbacks
* Screen brightness
Cannot read the screen with sun glare
* Contact Favorites
Contacts from iPhone import cannot set-up favorites. Cannot replace head icon with picture or have a detail view.
* Sirius Preset
Sirius preset do not display name like XM presets. WHY?
* Long start-up time
Takes too long to start up
Better than I expected….
the in-dash works great no problems what so ever. pretty user friendly once u get to know the system. ipod control is the best. works flawlessly. Bluetooth is excellent transfer all ur contact to the in dash. the only bad thing about it is that it has an external mic but not a big deal. the navi works great re routes pretty fast. to this point i have no issues or complaint. acutally one complaint msn direct service is going away 01/01/2012. other than that great unit.
When it works its great.
I had the 910bt installed for less than 24 hours and the unit died on me because I installed the update that came off of Pioneers website. I had to have it removed and sent it in to Pioneers customer service. Their service took awhile but now that I have everything properly working its great. The two things I would recommend is 1. Make sure you purchase it from an authorized dealer otherwise your warrantee through Pioneer does not exist and 2. If you have the older version of the Pioneer firmware and everything works normally I would NOT update it to the latest even though Pioneer recommends it.
NICE
It’s a nice unit and I would recommend it for anybody who wants all the features. Works well!!
Wish I can personalize the device more and is little slow loading…..
Best bargain and head unit ever!
I was on the fence for a while as far as getting a replacement head unit (my old one was bought in 2003) so that I could play my iPod in my 1999 Altima, as well as have Bluetooth for my phones. Just before I pulled the trigger to order a JVC unit, this Pioneer goes on sale for more than half off ($565 versus $1200!), reducing it to a price less than the JVC which did not have navigation or voice command! I now have the unit installed, and other than a few minor quirks, I love it! The only thing I wish it had that the JVC does is screen tilt – glare is a pain and does wash out the screen in direct daylight.
Using the iPod interface is a snap, since it emulates the normal operation completely – even the control layout mimics the iPod. Cover art is clear, even in a tiny thumbnail you can see while in Map mode. If you touch the album art it expands to fill the entire box that also displays title, artist, and album. Text for the song information is clear and has a relatively long character length. Voice command of the iPod interface is pretty good as well – DO NOT expect to be able to say “Play Song
Buy it,Great unit!!
Man this unit is so nice,you can change the color of it,built in Nav that is SWEET and the bluetooth is awesome too…The unit is user friendly,I mean Real easy..They have the touch scrren setup better than any other unit and ive had many including the pioneer z3….If you have the money and want to save time learning something and want all the features,this is the unit you want!!
certainly looks cool!
this may seem like a good deal, but this unit is pretty frustrating to use. it is very slow to boot up. most of the time i have already driven to my destination by the time this thing finally starts up. it is not very responsive to touch commands. takes a couple seconds for the screen to change or for the volume to change. if you’re listening to the radio and have a USB device hooked up, it will sometimes automatically switch over to USB mode. GPS is slow and takes about 10 minutes for street names to appear.
all the specs surely look pretty cool, but i would not recommend this to anyone. this unit also freezes a lot. if you take the USB device out it will freeze.
worth more than enough
Bought this unit in November along with the IPOD interface and the sterring wheel interface. I love it. It was well worth the purchase and I recommend to anyone looking for a indash navigation unit. I love the touch screen response along with the voice control. The bluetooth is awesome, don’t have to do any thing but answer you calls and keep going. The navigation is update and haven’t had any problems with it at all. Go get one!!!
Pioneer AvicX910BT Rocks
I recently purchase the pioneer avic x910bt to be honest this thing is better than any factory navigation out on the market today, the only issue i have its with boot time and usb flash take
long time to starts
Three and a half stars.
Works well does what advertised with the exception of VR (voice recognition) reason for 3 1/2 stars out of 5. Hard to get it to recognize commands every time. I was told the more that it is used the better it will work. As the two I purchased were for my wife and daughter, I do not use enough to say if it has improved. They have yet to get used to the FACT that they can press and talk to change the source or make a call. My daughter will press contact on her phone and then realize as the phone rings through her speakers. My wife, well she is hopeless. But they both are extremely pleased that they have the 910BT when on the road.
I on the other hand am happy that they have the bluetooth and navigation when they are traveling… PEACE OF MIND!
When I did use the VR and it worked correctly, with contacts, source change, XM, ipod, and my Cowon S9 it was smooth. I will install Z110BT after my Sirius trail expires.
Bottom line, even with the learning curve very good nav head unit. Pleased with purchase.
Love the X910BT, but it has a few quirks…..
Bought the X910BT for my car, we enjoy traveling the back roads of Arizona and the southwest. Having the Nav system installed in the car makes things very easy – no hassle connecting the various devices, cables running all over, taking it down and putting it back up when making stops, and little “suction circles” on the windshield that thieves look for. Now I only have to fuss with the radar detector. Startup time on the unit is really not a problem, my Garmin would often take several minutes to startup, the AVIC is typically ready to go in about 1 minute. The bluetooth connection takes a little longer and the unit is very sluggish until the bluetooth connects. After the bluetooth is connected, the X910BT is very responsive.
It’s a very easy unit to operate after you get used to it. My previous GPS was a Garmin unit, and I really got spoiled by their features. A few things I can complain about with the X910BT:
- Voice recognition on bluetooth – just doesn’t seem to understand what I’m saying, either by name or number. I usually end up selecting the contact off the screen instead of telling it who to call. After the call has started, it works great, incoming sound is loud and clear. One person told me I sounded kind of muffled on their end, but they did not have any problem understanding me.
- Route planning is a bit of a pain if you’re like me and like to take the back roads. When we travel, we like to stay off the interstate as much as possible. Disabling the Highway option makes for some very long trips as it will try to route you way out of the way to avoid highways. The AVICFeeds software is ok and I have used it to generate POIs for route planning, but it is tedious and not as easy to use as Garmin’s MapSource. AVICFeeds also has a 300 item limit on POIs it can import, which means getting creative if your have a file with a large number of locations, such as those found on POI-Factory.com.
- The volume knob is really small and hard to grasp. I picked up a press on knob from a guy on AVIC411.com and it works great, easy to grasp and works the way it should have from the factory.
- The maps are very limited in the speed limit data they have. One a recent trip Southern California, we were being tailed by a CHP on one of the backroads. We were doing a reasonable speed, but the AVIC did not have any speed information for the road we were on. Additionally, many of the major surface streets in the Phoenix metro area also do not have any speed limit info available. It was very rare for the Garmin to not have speed limit data available.
I have the Sirius option installed, it works great and I listen to it more often than FM or my SD Card. I used the factory installed Sirius antenna lead to connect to the X910BT with no problem. I was able to transfer my new car subscription over and they even waived the $15 transfer fee. I also found a nice flat spot under the dash to put the GPS antenna where it is hidden and out of sight. I do not have any extra objects laying on my dash or on my roof as giveaways to what I have in my car. I ran the microphone up inside the front pillar, under the roof liner and used velcro strips to attach it to the rear view mirror. It’s almost completely out of sight unless you know what to look for.
I really like he X910BT and would not go back to the portable Garmin GPS, though we still have it for use in our other vehicles and when we are hanging around planning a trip. It’s great having the GPS built-in, many times we are out running around and decide to go someplace, we can enter whatever we want to find right in the GPS and it tells us where it’s at.