I just bought an Alpine deck and the Alpine iPod interface that they sell and thought others would like to hear my thoughts on it.
First off, I have been very frustrated with most stores that sell car audio. Most of them sell the iPod interfaces made by Kenwood, Pioneer, and Alpine, but NONE have had one on display to see how it works. I finally found a place that had one set up and allowed me to use my iPod with it. I didnt like the Kenwood one because neither I nor the sales rep could figure out how to make it play playlists. It seems to only play by Album or artist. Anyway on to the Alpine:
Pros: The sound is much better than any other option I have tried.
I love that the ipod is charged while playing (my old 3G is down to about 30 seconds of battery life)
The controls on the deck were easy to figure out, even without reading the instructions.
The interface is much more snappy than the Kenwood.
It is a more elegant solution than having wires sticking out everywhere for power and audio (everything is in the glove box.)
Cons:
When scrolling through some of my hundreds of artists/albums or thousands of songs it is MUCH slower than using the ipod itself. (scrolling playlists is easy though although I only have about 30 of those)
when the ipod is totally dead (i.e. been sitting around for a few days without being used) the deck dosent seem to be able to find the ipod until it has been charged in some other way for a few seconds.
Makes me want to steal the car from my wife so I dont have to go back to the inferior system in our other car!
First off, I have been very frustrated with most stores that sell car audio. Most of them sell the iPod interfaces made by Kenwood, Pioneer, and Alpine, but NONE have had one on display to see how it works. I finally found a place that had one set up and allowed me to use my iPod with it. I didnt like the Kenwood one because neither I nor the sales rep could figure out how to make it play playlists. It seems to only play by Album or artist. Anyway on to the Alpine:
Pros: The sound is much better than any other option I have tried.
I love that the ipod is charged while playing (my old 3G is down to about 30 seconds of battery life)
The controls on the deck were easy to figure out, even without reading the instructions.
The interface is much more snappy than the Kenwood.
It is a more elegant solution than having wires sticking out everywhere for power and audio (everything is in the glove box.)
Cons:
When scrolling through some of my hundreds of artists/albums or thousands of songs it is MUCH slower than using the ipod itself. (scrolling playlists is easy though although I only have about 30 of those)
when the ipod is totally dead (i.e. been sitting around for a few days without being used) the deck dosent seem to be able to find the ipod until it has been charged in some other way for a few seconds.
Makes me want to steal the car from my wife so I dont have to go back to the inferior system in our other car!
