Cingular Go Phone: JVC KW-AVX800 7-inch In-dash Multimedia System Review

I purchased this unit specifically because I wanted certain functions.After extensive research, I found that this device said in the product specs that it would do everything I wanted.While technically true, it performed so poorly in some areas that I in the end was disappointed.I have now tried several units trying to get these functions, including this unit.Ultimately, I returned this unit, though because it was not good enough at all of the things I wanted it to do. If you do not care about some of the things I do (or you care about other things - for example, for me DVD playback was irrelevant, so I did not even try this out), the unit might be fine for you.

Keep in mind, in order to do a lot of these things, you need to buy a separate breakout box or adapter that is not included in the price.Here is a list of what I wanted it to do & how it did:

1.Bluetooth integration.Fantastic.Best voice dial integration on any product I tried. There is a dedicated hard button to turn on voice dial that can be accessed no matter what mode the unit is in. Call quality was also good.It also accessed and played in a very good quality my music on my bluetooth smartphone.Truly, best in breed, and if all you care about is bluetooth integration, then this unit is for you.
2.Ipod integration.Not so good.Although the unit is touch screen, instead of listing items on the screen and letting you touch them to select, it instead only goes through one item in a menu tree at a time & then you have to hit an "enter" button that is not marked as enter.It looks like they took a non-touch screen interface & used it in this unit instead of writing one to take advantage of the touch screen capabilities.Worse, it sometimes looses time scyc with my latest generation ipod (I tried both a new 8 gb nano and a new 80 gb classic & had the same problems). Basically, the time would come up with "00:00" quite often, and then stay there.Because the unit continually thinks you are at the beginning of a track, it will not let you rewind.This can be a problem with books on tape or podcasts.This happened at least a few times per week.My installer said JVC was aware of this problem.
3.XM integration.OK but not great.It suffers from the same annoying lack full touch screen integration that exists for ipod, albeit to a much lesser extent.You can, for example, select a preset by touching the channel.However, my xm presets would often disappear from the preset list.What I mean is that the slot for the preset would be there, but the channel name would be missing.This happened almost daily.My installer said JVC was aware of this problem.
4.Control of unit from factory redundant controls on steering wheel.Poor.I wanted to be able to control basic functions on the unit from the factory steering wheel controls so I would not have to take my eyes off the road.Sometimes it worked, sometimes (often) it did not.Volume down refused to work most of the time.

In the end, item 1 was great, item 2 was below average, item 3 was OK, and item 4 was poor.On balance, not good enough for me to keep.

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Product Description:
7" TFT LCD Touch screen, SD card slot, MP3/WMA/ DVD/DivX Playback, Dual zone capability, Sateliite Radio / Bluetooth / iPod® ready, Rear USB input, wireless remote