- In-dash AM/FM/MW/RDS, CD/CD-R/CD-RW MP3, WMA Receiver with remote
- Built-in Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR. Supports HFP and A2DP audio streaming. Pairs up to 5 phones. Accept calls, reject calls and redialing.
- 4 x 45 watts maximum power with two-channel 2V preamp outputs
- One-line 9 digit dot matrix display
- Front panel USB and Auxillary inputs
First, the good. The 420BT maintains the same exact wiring harness that they have always had, and which is fully compatable with the stock VW wiring harness for the 2003 Eurovan (and probably for all VWs and Audis of that vintage.) So, installing it was extremely simple again--just plug and play, and the standard DIN size fits the dash opening perfectly. The drawback for styling on the 420BT is that the front bezel trim ring and the radio face changed from a subdued black finish to a gloss black finish that seems to be made of much thinner plastic. So, while the radio fits well, it now stands out a little more from the other dashboard controls, looking a little more aftermarket than like original equipment. However, Blaupunkt did stick with the same red and blue light combination on the 420BT, so at least that aspect matches our VW motiv well.
The 420BT features that will take some getting used to are the controls. There is a lot of scrolling through menus using the dials to get to functions for bluetooth and audio controls like the fader (which we use a lot in the van for the kids). Even the equalizer functions setup is not all that intuitive. And to go along with all those menus, there is a very prominent (loud) confirmation beep for each button press or scroll dial. Very annoying. The phone pairing and playback setup is also not very intuitive either. And there are some features lacking on the phone and streaming that would be nice, like the ability to control the gain (volume) on the bluetooth device input.
The 420BT's other features will also take some getting used to. The built-in microphone does not have an adjustment for gain volume. It doesn't do very well in picking up voices, and it also doesn't reject car noises very well. It is difficult to hear the driver on a phone call. There is a 2.5mm jack on the rear for an external condensor mic. Apparently, it's not yet being distributed through Blaupunkt as of yet. But when it is available, I think the external Mic will be a necessary upgrade, installed on the driver's sunvisor, and hopefully would improve the telephone sound quality. One other fature I'm not sure of yet is the front USB connection. It has a nice rubberized dust cover, but I fear with repeated use, the cover will break off. What I may do instead is route a USB extension cable through the ashtray to connect to the stereo's rear USB connector, and just not use the front USB connector at all.
There is also a SD card slot for music behind the faceplate. We have not used that, and probably won't use it. But it does seem to be a good feature to have available just in case we ever have a SD card device in the future. I believe that the unit will also control satellite radio unit through the back connectors, though I'm not sure. And, sadly, Blaupunkt deleated the CD changer control inputs on the back, which would have been a very welcome feature for our keeping our venerable old changer going.
Bottom Line, There are some good features on the 420BT and many that will take some getting used to, and also some features that I wish it had. However for a one hundred fifty dollar price point, I would say it is good value for money and does primarily what we intended for it to do as an upgrade with Bluetooth functionality. If it grows on us as we become more familiar with it, we may improve the rating.
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I've owned and have been around Blaupunkt radios for 40 years being in the Porsche and Mercedes business. I was excited to upgrade my old Blaupunkt unit for one with all the latest goodies. The tuner on this unit is horrible, very poor FM reception and no AM. I waited writing this because the only thing worse than the reception is Blaupunkt customer service. I've been waiting two weeks for them to respond to my problem. I reinstalled my old one and am now looking for something else. Oh, if you really must have one I'll sell you this one.I bought this particular model because of Blaupunkt's reputation (I've always wanted one) and it seemed it would be compatible with the Harmon Kardon factory system of my 1995 Saab. The Bluetooth connectivity to my phone and the ability to play from a USB stick were also great features to modernize the Saab.Things did not turn out quite as well as I hoped. In short, yeah, it's working fine on radio and USB, but connectivity to my phone is entirely random and it doesn't turn off when the ignition is off, as the manual claims it should. It also took me a couple weeks to get it installed. Very frustrating.
The mechanical aspects of installation were great the DIN-standard slide mount fitted easily where my old radio came out, the sockets for power and speakers matched my harness almost exactly. I had to bridge the Saab amplifier power-on wire to the antenna power output of the Toronto and that's where the installation problems started. After bridging the amplifier and antenna together, I found that the Toronto was not capable of powering both of them.
Hours of testing and research later, I ended up building a dumb little power reduction circuit so that the Toronto could drive the antenna and amp turn-on circuits. While figuring this out with the Toronto on a bench, I did a little testing to see what it was capable of driving. Not much as it turns out. The antenna and amp turn on circuits together turned out to need about 80ma. The Toronto manual claimed it could handle 150ma, but when I went to see how much it really could take I found that the voltage dropped when it faced a 40ma drain.
Once past the power issues, I looked forward to getting music from a USB drive and so copied a few GB onto a stick and tried it out. "USB ERROR". Dug into the manual. Reformatted drive to FAT32, loaded a few GB. "USB ERROR". Formatted a different stick to FAT32, loaded a few GB. "USB ERROR". Tried a smaller USB stick. Reformatted. Loaded half a GB. "USB ERROR". Eventually, after a second unit gave the same result, I realized that I was loading MP4a from iTunes and the Toronto could only accept MP3. Sure, that's in the manual, on the specifications/features pages, but not on the operation page. And it might be nice to give something more informative than "USB ERROR" since that's simply a lie there's nothing wrong with the USB stick, its just that there's nothing on it that the Toronto can play. "No MP3" or "USB EMPTY" or even no error would be better than "USB ERROR".
My phone is an old Treo 650, solid and reliable, that I've used with Bluetooth headsets and sync to my PC frequently. After pairing with the Toronto, I was able to make one test call and was told that it sounded great on the other end nice though admittedly I was stationary in my driveway. But I've never been able to take a call through it since. It connects and disconnects at random and there's no easy way to prompt it to connect again. There may still be something I'm missing, but it's not documented in the manual and the factory website has nothing to help.
According to the manual, if the car's harness provides an ignition wire that is on only when the car is running, the Toronto will use that as a signal to turn off when the car is off. Never happened yet.
The user interface two knobs, a row of presets/function buttons is adequate. The interaction design button push, knob turning and pushing is straightforward but nothing innovatively intuitive or easy to use when driving. Blue highlights, red buttons, white lettering doesn't really match the decor of my car. Plus the font is just ugly.
So, overall, I'm not super pleased. It works fine in the core areas radio, music but the features around it just don't seem to be ready for prime time. Let's hope they run a rev on the firmware.
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I was looking for a car radio to replace the garish CD player in our '79 Porsche 911. For many years, Porsche used Blaupunkt radios as their original equipment car audio supplier. I was glad to find that Blaupunkt radios are still available, and still look great in a Porsche dashboard. It even has two "knobs" that approximate the Blaupunkt radios of the '60's.It's icing on the cake that the radio not only works well, but it offers current features like Bluetooth and USB audio streaming and telephone connectivity. Both features work well with my iPhone 4, and were easy to set up. I was also pleasantly surprised that the price was so low, as I was expecting to pay quite a bit more for this brand.
Only downside to this radio was that the Blaupunkt-supplied image of the faceplate doesn't really show the finishes accurately. I was expecting an all-black faceplate, but the actual finish is mostly black with a lighter metallic trim piece that surrounds the central display area. I'm getting used to it, but would have preferred all black. Given that this lighter trim fingerprints easily, it's not the best finish for the bottom row of buttons that get used often.
All in all, a great upgrade to our classic car!
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This a very good system, I like the Bluetooth streaming with my Phone 5. I could also plug my iPhone 5 to the available usb port it comes with and have full control of my music. You can also save your music on an SD card chip very cool!!! Many more features to long to list but I would recommend this system.
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