Pioneer FH-P8000BT Double-Din In-Dash CD/MP3/WMA/AAC Receiver with Built-In Bluetooth, iPod Control, and Rear USB Input Buy Now

I've had this unit for almost a year now. I primarily purchased this head unit to use its bluetooth features. Unfortunately, the built-in stereo bluetooth does not work very well. The mono bluetooth works fine, but the stereo portion is not able to consistently connect to my stereo bluetooth-enabled smartphone (BlackBerry Storm 9530). If I had the input (on the Pioneer head unit) on anything other than stereo bluetooth when my car starts up, it would not connect to my smartphone via stereo bluetooth (A2DP). This is odd because the mono bluetooth would connect just fine regardless of the input I had the head unit on. The only way to get the stereo bluetooth to connect is to have the input already on stereo bluetooth (on the Pioneer) when I start my car. Otherwise, I'd have to change the input to stereo bluetooth on the head unit and then restart my car. This is extremely aggravating after extended use--I can't be start and stopping my car in traffic. Now you may think the issue is with my phone but my phone works with every other A2DP (stereo bluetooth) device I own just fine (pairs with 3 different devices perfectly), and I also had a BlackBerry Curve 8310 that behaved the same with with this head unit.

I tried calling Pioneer tech support and they were completely useless. The tech I spoke to said that the way it's malfunctioning is "impossible." What do you mean it's impossible? It's happening with my unit!

So if you're buying this to use with your stereo bluetooth device, be aware that this unit is not fully compatible with all A2DP devices, especially with BlackBerry devices (I have tried with Tour 9630 and Storm 9530). This is a shame since BlackBerrys are very popular. I also checked with Pioneer before I posted this review to see if they had a firmware update after all this time, but to no avail.

The USB feature is also very limited. There is a bug where it will play only one folder over and over though it's set to shuffle the entire volume. The USB port is also very picky as to what type of device it will support. It won't support most USB hard drives, even the smallest ones. I tried 6 different types. The only USB devices it seems to support are media cards like SD connected with a USB to SD card reader. And even then, the GUI for navigating the SD card is archaic.

However, if the A2DP/stereo bluetooth feature had worked correctly, I would have been really happy with this unit since the sound quality is pretty nice. With the way it's behaving badly, it's quite frustrating.

Edit: Oh, also the navigation knob does indeed get scratched very easily, and it's sometimes not the easiest thing to use.

Update: Since switch to the Motorola Droid, I have a lot less problems with Bluetooth, perhaps because of the Bluetooth version 2.1 support on the Droid. Though it still has occasional BT connection issues, I have update the rating to reflect it's better performance with other handsets.Get more detail about Pioneer FH-P8000BT Double-Din In-Dash CD/MP3/WMA/AAC Receiver with Built-In Bluetooth, iPod Control, and Rear USB Input.