Double din GPS options?
 

I am thinking of buying a 7" double din GPS/DVD/SD unit for my 97 Boxster.

After a lot of research I have three main candidates, in order of preference they are
1) JVC KW-NX7000BT
2) Alpine IVA-W505
3) Clarion NX509

The Clarion unit looks promising but has not been released yet so I guess it is out of the game.

Has anyone any experience and maybe photos with the other two systems?

I will purchase the double din kit off ebay for a nicer look but photos of the two systems installed and experience of their use would be very helpful

George

why not the Pioneer AVIC-F series?
I have it and it's great (and pretty cheap on eBay).

See complete thread here:
http://986forum.com/forums/boxster-general-discussions/19599-avic-f700bt-installed.html

Some of the Benzworld folks installed players from Qualir and were happy, once they worked through the language translation issues with the manual.

Here's a link to their DoubleDin models:
http://www.autodvdgps.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=11

As far as I can gather, these guys manufacture units for some of the major players and these are their in-house branded units.

Why not Pioneer and Kenwwod?

Of course these were the fist I checked.

Both are quite slow at start-up, Pioneer F series has a smaller screen. I do not like the extra buttons and I love the clean look of a 7" screen. I also prefer the piano black color for the unit over the mate black (commonly used in Kenwood's, which I find overpriced).

Generally, there is no in-dash GPS unit that satisfies all my preferences. My "research" have found the JVC unit a good overall unit and the Alpine a very good music player with not amazing GPS features.

I have all my music in SD cards (there are good and bad things about that, but this is how it is now) so I do not really care about ipod connectivity (a minus with the JVC unit and a big plus with Pioneer units).

Anyways, I have decided not to follow the two big players (Pioneer and Kenwood). What I am looking for is a "clean", piano lack (or shiny black), 7" GPS unit, with an SD music player option, descent and fast GPS functionality and a speaker amp that (hopefully) can power my rear speakers without changing the amp for a 6 channel one. I may be mistaken but the JVC does all these flawlessly. However, I am not sure how it would look like when installed in the Boxster.

I am open for new ideas though :-)

Well, let's see compared to the Qualir 7" I posted a link to, the JVC has...4x50w (versus 4x45w) and a subwoofer out but no direct iPOD support. And they both appear to be fully buzzword compliant. Then again, street price for the JVC is almost 3 times that of the Qualir...

I just installed a Kenwood 7140 and am quite pleased with it. It's got the fully adjustable color which is nice to match everything exactly and the full 7" screen is nice too. Kenwood is offering a rebate on most of their units from 6/1 to 8/1 so that didn't hurt either. I had a portable Garmin I really liked and so the transition to the Kenwood (Garmin based) GPS made things easy.

Installing a Qualir in a Porsche is somewhat oxymoron. You can find the JVC for 700-800$ so the price is double not triple.

Despite being "snob," :cool: , my personal experience with "no name" brands is that I eventually end up buying the expensive unit, because I am not satisfied with actual every day operation.

On the other hand I see the Kenwood DNX7140 at 1499$ after rebates and I wonder what is so much better with the Kenwood that justifies the double price. Reviews of the unit do not describe a wow experience, so why not keeping the extra $$$ for some other upgrade?

I can't really help you with the wow experience as I don't have too much of a basis of comparison. I can tell you my friend who has a Pioneer AVIC unit in his Boxster was favorably impressed with my Kenwood DNX7140. The main reason I went with the Kenwood is it was highly recommended by my local high-end stereo place (they've been around for 20+ years and I trust them). Since they were doing the install (since I had to deal with the MOST-BUS issues on my car) and they seemed to think it compared very favorably to other lines they carry (Including Alpine and JVC), that was good enough for me.

I can't argue with the logic of going more cost effective and saving some cash though. Makes sense to me.

Of course, like you, 90% of the time I end up regretting not buying the higher end product at the end of the day though.

Good luck!

Not trying to pitch the AVIC (I don't work for Pioneer :rolleyes:

But what I like very much on the AVIC-F is that it has on "old style" knob to adjust volume and not these stupid pain-in-the-ass "+" and "-" buttons.
Also have a look at the pictures in my post and look at the piano black bezel around the unit...
I agree with other posters that I would shy away from no-name units.
And yes I also agree that I should have gone for the top of the line AVIC-F 900 instead of the cheaper 700 that the "Scrooge" inside me convinced me to get :rolleyes: