Quote:
Originally Posted by JayG
How do you like the Parrot Asteroid Smart? I currently have a stock CDR23 with base audio (no door speakers, amp or CD changer) and will be upgrading my system soon. I will be changing out the dash speakers and adding the rear speakers. I am trying to figure out if I can fit a powered sub under the passenger seat.
The Parrot is one I am considering very seriously.
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I'll preface my answer with saying that I am not much of an audiophile (more of a tech geek). don't care about thumping bass etc... so my main concerns were with the features.
this unit doesn't have a CD/DVD player, which didn't phase me, but may some. it does a great job of playing off ipods/iPhones, thumb drives, SD cards and, from what I understand, just about any device.
decent Radio with song artist info (forget what the technical name for that is).
most importantly to me though was the blue tooth and apps.
the BT hands free is by far the best I have seen. top down at 45 mph and my wife could hear me perfectly (thought I was at home in the living room). the BT audio streaming is excellent as is the playback of a iPhone or even USB drive with loose mp3s plugged in. if you give it an internet connection (via your phones hotspot for example) it will scrub the files and give you actual info rather than just file name. the internet connection also comes in handy for apps like Waze (better than a radar detector).
there are also tons of apps for various things. Parrot has its own app store or you can install the android store (and some others I think). basically you can run just about anything that you can run on an Android phone or tablet.
my only complaints about it is the lack of physical volume and mute buttons, although if you are on a source screen (i.e. tuner, connected USB drive etc..) you can simply swipe up or down to control volume and tap to mute. I like having the Waze app running so, it is inconvenient when I need to mute or adjust the volume.
also, when it boots, it always goes to the home screen, rather than back to the radio screen or whatever you were on when you shut down. it is also pretty slow to boot. in the morning I am usually out of my driveway before it has started playing music.
As a tech guy this is annoying to me because I know the reason for it and I think their implementation is dumb. basically this thing is like a android tablet. with a tablet or smart phone, when you "turn it off" you are actually just putting into sleep mode. so when you unlock it, it is on and ready to go virtually instantly. with the Parrot, it goes into that sleep mode for 30 minutes. so if you are just running into the store and come back it will be booted and ready when you start the car. longer than 30 minutes it powers off and has to cold boot when you start the car. their reason for doing this is to prevent it from draining your cars battery. I have been arguing with Parrot Tech support about this for a while. by my calculations a decent car battery would be able to run the Parrot in sleep mode for about 3 weeks before it drained the battery enough to make starting the car an issue. they retorted that some people may have cars that they don'e drive very often. I think they should give that option to the user. i.e a setting that allows you to adjust the time to power down. for me, I would probably set it to 24 hours.
they do do a pretty cool thing where they use the accelerometer in the unit to detect vibration (car door closing etc..) to start it booting. if you give it power within 30 seconds, it is already "pre-booted". otherwise it goes back to power off some people have added a cheap relay on the back of the unit and wired it into the keyless entry. being a cheap relay, it "thumps" enough to trigger the pre-boot. too much trouble for me for something that can be fixed in software.
for is few faults though, it is still an excellent unit and I would recommend it if you are looking for lots of cool features.