- AM/FM radio, DVD, SVCD, VCD, CD, CD-R/RW, WMA/MP4/MP3 receiver
- 4 x 80 Watts maximum power with front/rear, subwoofer preamp outputs
- 3.2-inch TFT LCD display with 1440 x 234 pixel resolution
- Includes front panel auxiliary input, USB port, SD card slot, wireless remote
- One-year limited warranty
- AM/FM radio, DVD, SVCD, VCD, CD, CD-R/RW, WMA/MP4/MP3 receiver with 3.2 Inch TFT LCD display
- 4 x 80 Watts maximum power with front/rear, subwoofer preamp outputs
- 3.2-inch TFT LCD display with 1440 x 234 pixel resolution
- Includes front panel auxiliary input, USB port, SD card slot, wireless remote
- One-year limited warranty
bottom! I'll cover the packaging, installation, initial impressions, what works well, what doesn't,
predicted reliability and any tips or tricks that I have learned.
Let's start with the packaging, nothing fancy and if I recall it comes with the metal sleeve, a
couple of 'keys' to remove the radio from the sleeve, a short metal strap to mount it and two wiring
harnesses that plug into the back of the radio. One harness is for power, ground, remote turn on, etc. and
the other is the speaker outputs. Directly connected to the back of the radio (no harness) are all the
inputs and outputs. It also has a manual, the exact same one you can get from the bossaudio web site. Upon
unboxing I looked over the radio and you can tell the Quality Control is not really A+. It works fine and was
not broken in any way but the back side of the screen had a smudge on it and the corner of the front bezel
still had plastic 'flashing' sticking out a little bit. Not a highly polished product that is for sure but I
am not going to be super picky at this price.
Next, installation was fairly easy with this unit. You can wire both wiring harnesses before you put
the radio in since they are modular, leave enough slack to plug them into the radio, plug in the RCAs then
you slide the radio into the sleeve in whatever opening you put it in. Perhaps this is me but there are two
stages of insertion of the radio into the sleeve. The first stage 'clicks' once you get it in a certain
amount. If you push it in really snug it will click into the two small holes right near the front of the
radio on the sides. I was not able to get it to click into the tighter set of holes and also get the
faceplate and trim frame onto the radio. I had to slide it in the first set of holes which leaves about a 1
to 2mm gap between the radio and the sleeve, which looks a little cheesy from the side if you look closely.
The silver metal sleeve really is noticable in that little gap. I painted my metal sleeve black since it
bothered me.
My impressions and observations about this unit have come over the last couple months. The features
that I have used have been AM and FM radio, front USB, SD Card, picture viewing, mp4 playback, DVD playback,
front RCA out, internal amp, and subwoofer out. I'll go over each one by one.
AM Radio: reception is pretty good and sound quality is nice. One problem that I have had is that
when I go over bumps sometimes the AM (FM also but not as bad) radio will sound like the reception is
dropping. I don't know if the electronics for the radio are in the detachable panel but if I shift the front
panel around and tap it lightly it tends to go away. It seems the worst on cold mornings. Not a big deal
now that I know what it is but if you don't know it almost sounds like you wired something incorrectly. I
wonder if the front panel is just a little flimsy which causes this problem. I would suggest not removing
the detachable front panel. I used to do it a lot when I first got it (paranoid I guess!) and I wonder if
that caused stress on the front panel.
FM Radio: again, reception is pretty good and the number of presets is nice (18). THe LOC function,
like just about every other radio I have ever had, doesn't seem to do a darn thing. What's nice about the
radio is that if you press "clock" you can read the time quite clearly. The same cannot be said in the other
modes.
Front USB: pretty much functions like the SD card. Plug it in and it will read your files and start
playing. If you leave it in the next time you turn it on it will start at the same place you left off which
is nice. SD card does the same thing.
Picture viewing: Not much to see here. Maybe a nice feature if you want to show someone something or
look at a slideshow. Just jpg I think is compatible. Big (3GB or more) pictures do take a while to render.
It would be nice if you could make a picture your wallpaper but I do not think you can.
MP4 playback. OK, I wish more info were published about this but I can say that you can't go wrong
if your video file is encoded with Xvid for video and mp3 as audio. The manual doesn't say what kind of .mp4
files work but I suspect only divx/xvid. I can say that I have not had a single .mp4/x264 video play. I
don't think it has the horsepower anyway. The framerate can be pretty much anything 25/30 fps but it did
start to choke on 50/60 fps video. Not sure the max bitrate but I used up to 2400kbps and it played fine.
Just make sure your largest dimension is at least 640 on the width or 480 on the height. You definitely
cannot throw an HD file at it. I hope this helps someone. I wish I had known.
DVD playback. In a word, nice. I did not try PAL DVD but they probably play fine as well which is
nice. The audio along with it is nice. I almost like watching DVDs in the car better because I have a
better dynamic range and frequency response in my car than in my house. Some 4 x 3 stuff is stretched to 16 x
9 which might bother some but I guess it's OK. YOu cannot resize the aspect ratio.
RCA out: Levels seem to be fine. The pre-amp outs didn't have quite enough juice and I had a little
bit of hiss at low volume when I cranked up the sensitivity on my equalizer. I backed that off and set the
gain on my amp instead so it seems to be pretty good now. The volume is certainly electronically controlled
and not analog as the volume goes up in 'steps' when starting at low volume. This is a little annoying and I
would prefer infinite gain but not a big deal breaker.
Internal amp: I ran this before I got my external amp hooked up and I'll be darned if it isn't half
bad. If you are on a budget (like me!) this really is not a bad amp. Not nearly as good as a component amp
but it sure isn't bad. If you are running the internal amp I highly recommend very good power cabling (at
least 8 AWG if not 4) and good speaker wire (minimum 14 AWG). I ran the factory wiring and the display would
dim pretty bad when I turned it up loud. I would bet that would go away with good cabling.
Subwoofer out: Used this today for the first time. It's a mono out. I am not sure what the db/octave
is and the crossover frequency and I do not remember seeing it in the manual but if I had to guess I would
say 80Hz at maybe 18db / octave. That is a wild guess though. Seems to work fine. After testing many features
along with my observations about the radio dropping out over bumps I don't really predict this radio will last forever
but for now it works fine and it should keep on chugging for a few years.
Finally here are all the little niggles and observations I have about the radio. Yes the front panel
does feel a little sketchy and it is a little tough to pop in and out without feeling like you might break
it. It has been fine though. The volume knob is just doggone slippery and sometimes hard to turn up and
down with confidence. It is slightly annoying to have to always toggle through the "AV" (rear view camera) mode every time I
switch from radio to USB or SD Card, etc. I don't have anything hooked to the video in. The options/setup menu is pretty
nice and I accidentally set something that I shouldn't and the audio was really choppy. I changed some sort of setting for
dynamic range it went back to normal. Fit and finish are kinda bad. The clock is hard to read on the SD Card/USB screen
since it is bright green on top of fairly bright gray with lots of letters. Some people complain about the interface and
indeed it is bare bones and not very flashy but it gets the job done just fine and I am sure its simplicity (linux perhaps?)
probaby allows them to offer such a versatile product at such a great price. Also, some have complained about how bright
the display is. I don't really have a problem with it personally. I think I need to mention the fan in the back. It does not run when using the radio but if you use the memory card / DVD / USB it will spin up. I am guessing it is a CPU fan. Mine spins up pretty loud at first, especially when it is cold. If you are listening to music at a relatively low level the fan sound is kinda loud.
If you look back 10 or 20 years on what radios used to do this thing does a ton and does them well.
It's fairly unobtrusive / not a real looker (i.emight not be that interesting to potential thieves)
does a ton of stuff and rocks the house. I can't give it 5 stars because it isn't perfect but for the price
I have to give it 5 stars. Bluetooth would have been nice but oh well...Installed this the other day in my pontoon boat.
The sound is much better than expected very happy.
The screen is very clear and more than acceptable.
This stereo also had two additional Video-Outputs. I connected one to a dash mounted 7" Legacy Monitor and it looks great. Note the Video-Outputs DO NOT show output when in "Radio Mode". But do show output when a CD/MP3/DVD Movie are inserted.
Tested Terminator 2 in DVD Mode Looked and sounded great!
Camera Input which works as expected.
Tested a purchased DVD movie, three different Home-Made DVD Movies, DVD with MP3's, CD & CD with MP3's, ALL worked with NO Problem!
For the "Parking Break Safety Feature", just Ground the Green wire to any ground to bypass.
Note The reason for a "4-Star" rating and not 5 The Product Description makes it sound like a "Touch-Screen", it is NOT a Touchscreen, it is Touch "Controls" only. This is mostly my mistake, should have read the description closer and then contacted the seller, but would be nice if said something like "Touch-Controls Only, not a Touch-Screen".
I would buy this item again for sure!I purchased this radio for my 1991 Ford Explorer. I will admit a was a little iffy about this radio but so far it has worked perfectly. The radio works fine its very easy to install and the cd/dvd player works great. To make the dvd player work you have to plug the parking brake green wire to the parking break system but if your like myself you have no idea what that is. I just went online and searched for a bypass for boss radio parking brake wire and it simply told me the answer, went outside and tried it worked great. :) So thankful for technology and blogs! Other then that one thing that bugged me is the when you turn up the radio there is a clicking noise which is quite loud. If you like myself I hate the clicking noise, but you get used to it. The screen for movies is very good quality! When you plug in the ipod through USB it syncs with the deck but the letters are very small, its a little difficult to read but if your like myself once again I just go through the folders not knowing whats going to play and just listen to what song comes on. Its kinda fun :) Overall radio works perfectly have had no problems and would definitely suggest this to anyone, you definitely get more for your money!I purchased this unit for my wife's car. Its a decent unit with a nice sound that brought the factory speakers to life. The video is nice and clear. The downfalls with this unit is CD's take a while to read, the aux. port always says no signal, the usb doesn't work with anything (Ipod or cell phone) other then a flash drive and the bluetooth is very "iffy". It will sync and unsync at will and thats if it even syncs in the first place. Cell phones seem to sync better than Ipods. Also, there are no graphics while a CD or SD card plays music and the music shuffle feature doesn't do a good job of shuffling. But the unit isn't too bad for $150.00. After all, you get what you pay for.
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After reading some of the reviews and seeing the sheer number of people who bought this stereo I decided to take a chance on it. My requirements are very basic, I just wanted a car stereo that can play from SD Card and USB. I decided on this one because I figured a high-res screen would make it easier to browse through all the folders of MP3s on the SD card. A lot of similarly inexpensive units have the basic 8-character display which I know from past experience is just not cutting it when you want to see the name of the song playing or the folder it's in, let alone being able to browse through folders effectively.What I found after a week of using this product is that even with my basic expectations it just has too many fatal and disappointing flaws. One or two annoyances I could live with but after a week I was ready to return it, even given the hassle and expense. Unfortunately amazon has a 50% restocking fee for opened items on top of paying for return shipping. I would have maybe gotten $30 or $40 back which is pointless, I'm sure I could get more just selling it used. I am writing this review in the hopes that it will save other buyers the hassle, cost and disappointment that comes with this stereo.
Here are the main flaws that make what should have been a great stereo into a tragic waste of time and money:
* The display is next to useless. It has an incredible resolution for its size and price but all of those pixels are wasted because of poor software design. The text is white on light blue in an extremely tiny font, it can't be read at all unless you get your face right down to within a few inches of it. It is 100% impossible to read anything on the display while driving, I've even tried leaning down (very dangerously) and still wasn't able to read it.
* Even if you could see the text, all file and folder names are truncated to 6 characters so if you're listening to, for example, a song called "06 All That We Perceive.mp3" in a folder called "Thievery Corporation The Richest Man in Babylon", what you will see on screen is that your song is called "06 A~1" and the folder is called "THIEVE~1". Not that it really matters because the text is impossible to read while driving anyway.
* The display is blindingly bright at night. Not a little bit bright, REALLY REALLY BRIGHT. Bright enough that just trying to ignore it is not even an option. There is no way to turn it down. Your only option is to flip open the detachable face, which means that you can no longer adjust volume, skip a song, or use any other controls. I had no idea how often I tend to make little volume adjustments and skip songs until faced with this inconvenience.
* Just to make it that much worse, if you do try to flip the faceplate back into place to adjust the volume or hit skip, it takes a few seconds for the controls to become active. A few seconds may not sound like a long time but in this context it seems like an eternity. Forget ever being able to drive around and enjoy your music without having this thing testing your patience. Turning it on also takes a long time.
* As other reviews mentioned this stereo makes loud clicking noises in your speakers for no particular reason. I saw that other reviewers mentioned this and figured they must have installed it incorrectly and were getting alternator interference. Nope, this stereo just sends clicks down the wire and there is nothing you can do to stop it.
* The buttons do not respond unless pushed very hard. You pretty much have to be pushing the entire faceplate into the deck before a button responds. Again it sounds like a minor thing but its hugely annoying.
* I thought it was weird that other reviewers said the Random feature wasn't really random but after using it I see exactly what they mean. It tends to favor certain songs over others. I've had it play the same song twice with only 1 other song in between, and it's played that same song a disproportionately large number of times over the last week.
* As another viewer mentioned the "Aux" port (the small hole where you would typically plug in your iPod, cell phone or other device to play music through) only works if you are using an audio-video plug. It looks similar to the iPod plug but is different and thus you will only get music playing out of the left speaker if you try to connect an audio device through it.
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