Pioneer Avh-P3100Dvd 5.8-Inch In-Dash Touchscreen Double-Din Dvd Multimedia A/V Receiver Order Now

I bought the Pioneer AVH-P3100DVD to replace my week-old Jensen VM8023HD which I was extremely disappointed with. [Sidebar on the Jensen: The user interface on the Jensen is /terrible/. It is slow, buggy, and crash-prone. It is also very haphazard in terms of what button to push in any given mode. Sometimes it's the rotary encoder (volume knob), sometimes it's up/down, sometimes it's another button entirely. Totally violates the principal of least surprise. Seems like it was designed and implemented by some poor intern in 2 weeks. Nice feature set, but completely ruined by the interface. So I quickly ordered the Pioneer to replace the junky Jensen.]

Overall the Pioneer is great! It is orders of magnitude better than the Jensen in terms of interface and reliability. Sound quality is better, too, in my opinion. (The Jensen seemed to insert some digital-sounding "gunk" between MP3s; the Pioneer does not.)

- Menus are very intuitive and easy to navigate.

- It works well with MP3s on a USB stick. Navigation between folders (including nested folders) is easy. You can touch-drag to scroll quickly down a long list or to move the current playback position within a song. You can see 4 track names per screen (I think...it might be 5 or 6) which is adequate. (The Jensen only showed 2!)

- Touching a song name starts it playing but does not exit the menu so you can touch another song if you change your mind. This is great when searching for one specific song that you can't quite remember the name of.

The whole experience is better than the Jensen in almost every way. However, there are some things which could be improved (nothing is perfect!):

- The 'hard' buttons on the unit (volume +/-, track +/-, mute, source, and display off) require too much force to press in my opinion. I would prefer a softer feel. You really have to press the button like you mean it. I also would prefer a rotary knob for the volume control.

- The location of the USB and Aux ports (lower left corner) is poor because a USB stick poking out of the port can easily be hit by my hand when moving the shifter on the steering column. These would be better off on the lower right instead of lower left corner. Depending on the setup in your car that might not be a problem for you.

- It throws up a warning screen which you must acknowledge the first time you switch to a video source (DVD or AUX in) even if you're already parked with the parking brake on. I find this behavior really annoying. If you're already parked it should not give you the warning.

- I'm using a SWI-PS steering wheel interface and the 'mute' function of the interface causes the Pioneer to go into "Attenuation" mode where it lowers the volume but does not mute it completely. I'd much prefer it actually mute. I think this is a Pioneer issue, not a SWI-PS one since the SWI-PS muted the Jensen correctly. I have to contact the PAC folks and see if there is a workaround on the SWI-PS for this issue.
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