after some helpful advice gained here from forum members (shout out to HeadphoneAddict and levander), two weeks ago, i had a Pioneer 4500NEX installed in my 2012 Subaru. it replaced a, for it's time, full featured head unit which had a CD player, HD radio, and USB iPod connected integration via a port in the arm-rest cubby.
all in all, i've been super pleased with the upgrade. here are some of the many highlights:
THE GOOD:
- Wireless Carplay is a game changer, IMHO. while i have enjoyed wired CarPlay in a rental car and a 2019 Subaru loaner which actually nudged me in this upgrade direction, wireless CarPlay is a whole different animal. i love not having to pull my phone from my pocket to set up navigation, especially when i decide i need to look at the maps and consult traffic issues in the middle of driving. Of course, there have been a couple hiccups (see below), but when it works, it's awesome.
- Eyes-free Siri, to me is a big deal. there are two other great ways to activate siri: the bluetooth button on my steering wheel, the microphone button on the head unit. however, just saying "Hey Siri" to initiate a call, or navigate and jump to Maps is fantastic. it sounds like a small upgrade over the 4400 (which i am told did not have it), but to me, it's a notable upgrade.
- it took me a while, but i have put together a 256gb SD card (using NTFS file system which was a little bit of a trick) of FLAC music for use in the car. i had to perform some trickery to get the head unit to playback tracks in the correct order (it doesn't respect track number TAGs), but in the end, i have about 70% of my music library in lossless format in the car. i do acknowledge that FLAC is overkill for this application since the Subaru isn't particularly quiet and is prone to tire noise, but nevertheless, when on a quiet street or when parked, the sound quality over my previous 192 kbps tracks is noticeable.
- the sound quality improvement over the factory head unit is also noticeable. less muddy bass, and more transparent midrange. (keeping the same Kicker upgraded speakers from Subaru)
- iPod integration is fantastic using my old 3rd generation iPod touch. with the SD card mentioned above, i can, in parallel, have 64gb of ALAC tracks organized by playlists for my listening pleasure.
- HD radio was a must have for me after having it in my prior head unit. it works as it should.
- i had my unit installed with the idatalink Maestro. steering wheel controls work as expected, and i also get OBD2 vehicle information -- not essential, but a nice bonus, nevertheless.
- as trivial as it sounds, i like the ability to customize the illumination of the buttons to match the lighting of my Subaru dash lights.
- boot up time is much faster than i expected or was concerned about. i've always had the ability to use my backup camera, even if i'm brisk in getting in the car, putting on my seatbelt, turning the ignition, and backing up. (the camera works even if the warning screen is on the display)
- iPhone battery usage for maps is about 4% per hour on my iPhone XS (compared with about 10% when using iPhone in car mount and screen is on).
THE BAD
- day 2 of ownership, i experience a random freeze up after driving away from a friend's house a night. the screen went black and i couldn't unfreeze it with any combination of button pushes. the only ultimate remedy was to pull to the side of the road and restart the car. thankfully, i haven't had to do this again. i will actually visit this friend's house again in the coming week, so hopefully it won't repeat itself (Pioneer tech support suggested that the 4500NEX may have randomly connected to a wifi network and then couldn't reconnect properly to my phone)
- i knew this going in, but i still find it lame that with two USB ports, one supports Carplay/apple iPods and the other supports Android Auto. not a showstopper for our family, but it would be nice to use the passenger's iPhone for music (as an iPod -- noting the Ugly situation of iPod playlists being alphabetical (see below)). my installer put the second USB port (and AUX jack) in my glove box so i can be used to charge any USB device or be used for a USB flash drive which might be nice should i want to add another large music storage device there. (i have one wild idea of buying a cheap Android Auto device so that i would have better navigation of music than the SD card, but that's really a dream because i'm too cheap to spend more money to minimally upgrade something that is already working really well for me)
- while the 4500/8500 have parking guidelines that can be adjusted, there is no way to have them on by "default." i rely on these regularly for parallel parking and judging distance to the curb. it's a pain to have to activate them when i go into reverse. Pioneer claims this is due to some NHSA regulation which seems nonsensical to me. it's a small feature that i took for granted with my factory head unit. i'm sure some people don't like lines, but i use them often.
THE UGLY (mostly resolved, some slightly unresolved issues)
- after much research and help by HeadphoneAddict, a friend who also owned a 4500NEXT, as well as Pioneer tech support, i learned that the current NEX receivers only properly playback playlists on older iPods. for iPod touches, this is 4th generation or earlier (30-pin connector). if one attaches a newer iPod touch or iPhone to the USB port, it will force playback of playlists in alphabetical order. thankfully, i still had my old 3rd generation iPod touch to use. but that meant taking it away from our other car rather than use our old iPhone SE.
- this alphabetical bug also presents itself with USB flash drives and SD cards. when viewing by TAG (rather than FILE), the Pioneer doesn't respect the TAG track numbers for a particular album and will only playback tracks in alphabetical order. i ultimately circumvented this problem by using MP3TAG (a windows program that runs fine with WINE on a Mac) to rename all tracks to start with their track number (e.g., 01-Track1Name)...this works well, but the only problem is if you want to search for song by name, the alphabetical shortcuts on the Pioneer won't work since every song/track starts with a number. for me, that's not an issue. i intend to search music on the SD card by Album and Artist, not song.
- i have had a couple of occasions where wireless CarPlay did not connect. i have troubleshooted it to situations where my iPhone prioritizes the wifi network it is leaving (e.g., my house, or my in-laws) and doesn't connect to the 4500NEX. this has never happened when my phone is on LTE service. i have been able to fix it, for the case of our house at least, by manually (using the phone) connecting to the 4500 network immediately upon entering the car. after doing this a few times, it seems, for now, that my phone prioritizes the 4500 network. i hope this remains the case. i wish Apple had a way of letting us manually sort network priority on the iPhone, but that feature disappeared a few iOS versions ago.
- i've had a couple of times where Carplay won't show maps in "Night mode" even though it's past sunset. in both cases, it corrected itself after about 10 minutes of driving.
the Goods, outweigh the Bad and Ugly. if i can avoid freeze-ups like the one i've encountered, and can manage to get around this wifi network preference issue (for the most part, i have), i'd give this upgrade an A grade.
highly recommended for those of you out there with older cars. i can only hope that more car manufacturers will jump on board with wireless CarPlay so that my next new car will have it too. it would be hard to go back to wired CarPlay after having had it wireless.
all in all, i've been super pleased with the upgrade. here are some of the many highlights:
THE GOOD:
- Wireless Carplay is a game changer, IMHO. while i have enjoyed wired CarPlay in a rental car and a 2019 Subaru loaner which actually nudged me in this upgrade direction, wireless CarPlay is a whole different animal. i love not having to pull my phone from my pocket to set up navigation, especially when i decide i need to look at the maps and consult traffic issues in the middle of driving. Of course, there have been a couple hiccups (see below), but when it works, it's awesome.
- Eyes-free Siri, to me is a big deal. there are two other great ways to activate siri: the bluetooth button on my steering wheel, the microphone button on the head unit. however, just saying "Hey Siri" to initiate a call, or navigate and jump to Maps is fantastic. it sounds like a small upgrade over the 4400 (which i am told did not have it), but to me, it's a notable upgrade.
- it took me a while, but i have put together a 256gb SD card (using NTFS file system which was a little bit of a trick) of FLAC music for use in the car. i had to perform some trickery to get the head unit to playback tracks in the correct order (it doesn't respect track number TAGs), but in the end, i have about 70% of my music library in lossless format in the car. i do acknowledge that FLAC is overkill for this application since the Subaru isn't particularly quiet and is prone to tire noise, but nevertheless, when on a quiet street or when parked, the sound quality over my previous 192 kbps tracks is noticeable.
- the sound quality improvement over the factory head unit is also noticeable. less muddy bass, and more transparent midrange. (keeping the same Kicker upgraded speakers from Subaru)
- iPod integration is fantastic using my old 3rd generation iPod touch. with the SD card mentioned above, i can, in parallel, have 64gb of ALAC tracks organized by playlists for my listening pleasure.
- HD radio was a must have for me after having it in my prior head unit. it works as it should.
- i had my unit installed with the idatalink Maestro. steering wheel controls work as expected, and i also get OBD2 vehicle information -- not essential, but a nice bonus, nevertheless.
- as trivial as it sounds, i like the ability to customize the illumination of the buttons to match the lighting of my Subaru dash lights.
- boot up time is much faster than i expected or was concerned about. i've always had the ability to use my backup camera, even if i'm brisk in getting in the car, putting on my seatbelt, turning the ignition, and backing up. (the camera works even if the warning screen is on the display)
- iPhone battery usage for maps is about 4% per hour on my iPhone XS (compared with about 10% when using iPhone in car mount and screen is on).
THE BAD
- day 2 of ownership, i experience a random freeze up after driving away from a friend's house a night. the screen went black and i couldn't unfreeze it with any combination of button pushes. the only ultimate remedy was to pull to the side of the road and restart the car. thankfully, i haven't had to do this again. i will actually visit this friend's house again in the coming week, so hopefully it won't repeat itself (Pioneer tech support suggested that the 4500NEX may have randomly connected to a wifi network and then couldn't reconnect properly to my phone)
- i knew this going in, but i still find it lame that with two USB ports, one supports Carplay/apple iPods and the other supports Android Auto. not a showstopper for our family, but it would be nice to use the passenger's iPhone for music (as an iPod -- noting the Ugly situation of iPod playlists being alphabetical (see below)). my installer put the second USB port (and AUX jack) in my glove box so i can be used to charge any USB device or be used for a USB flash drive which might be nice should i want to add another large music storage device there. (i have one wild idea of buying a cheap Android Auto device so that i would have better navigation of music than the SD card, but that's really a dream because i'm too cheap to spend more money to minimally upgrade something that is already working really well for me)
- while the 4500/8500 have parking guidelines that can be adjusted, there is no way to have them on by "default." i rely on these regularly for parallel parking and judging distance to the curb. it's a pain to have to activate them when i go into reverse. Pioneer claims this is due to some NHSA regulation which seems nonsensical to me. it's a small feature that i took for granted with my factory head unit. i'm sure some people don't like lines, but i use them often.
THE UGLY (mostly resolved, some slightly unresolved issues)
- after much research and help by HeadphoneAddict, a friend who also owned a 4500NEXT, as well as Pioneer tech support, i learned that the current NEX receivers only properly playback playlists on older iPods. for iPod touches, this is 4th generation or earlier (30-pin connector). if one attaches a newer iPod touch or iPhone to the USB port, it will force playback of playlists in alphabetical order. thankfully, i still had my old 3rd generation iPod touch to use. but that meant taking it away from our other car rather than use our old iPhone SE.
- this alphabetical bug also presents itself with USB flash drives and SD cards. when viewing by TAG (rather than FILE), the Pioneer doesn't respect the TAG track numbers for a particular album and will only playback tracks in alphabetical order. i ultimately circumvented this problem by using MP3TAG (a windows program that runs fine with WINE on a Mac) to rename all tracks to start with their track number (e.g., 01-Track1Name)...this works well, but the only problem is if you want to search for song by name, the alphabetical shortcuts on the Pioneer won't work since every song/track starts with a number. for me, that's not an issue. i intend to search music on the SD card by Album and Artist, not song.
- i have had a couple of occasions where wireless CarPlay did not connect. i have troubleshooted it to situations where my iPhone prioritizes the wifi network it is leaving (e.g., my house, or my in-laws) and doesn't connect to the 4500NEX. this has never happened when my phone is on LTE service. i have been able to fix it, for the case of our house at least, by manually (using the phone) connecting to the 4500 network immediately upon entering the car. after doing this a few times, it seems, for now, that my phone prioritizes the 4500 network. i hope this remains the case. i wish Apple had a way of letting us manually sort network priority on the iPhone, but that feature disappeared a few iOS versions ago.
- i've had a couple of times where Carplay won't show maps in "Night mode" even though it's past sunset. in both cases, it corrected itself after about 10 minutes of driving.
the Goods, outweigh the Bad and Ugly. if i can avoid freeze-ups like the one i've encountered, and can manage to get around this wifi network preference issue (for the most part, i have), i'd give this upgrade an A grade.
highly recommended for those of you out there with older cars. i can only hope that more car manufacturers will jump on board with wireless CarPlay so that my next new car will have it too. it would be hard to go back to wired CarPlay after having had it wireless.
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