This is the third head unit I've had in my 2003 Toyota Tacoma in about a year.
The Pioneer reviewed here gave me trouble with the USB hard disk.
The Clarion reviewed here drove me insane. The JVC KD-BT1 set out to make me happy. How did he do? Read on, traveler.
First the features (cut n' pasted from JVC's site):
* Power Output: 200 W. Max (MOSFET 50W X 4), 20W X 4 RMS
* Built-In Bluetooth® Wireless Technology
* Hands Free Calling
* Incoming Text Messaging Display
* Audio Control and Streaming
* Phonebook Transfer (Up to 5000 Numbers)
* Voice Recognition Dialing (Depends on Cell Phone)
* Rear USB Port for Connectiing USB Memory Drives, Digital Audio Players, or Portable HDD Devices up to 10 GB Capacity
* Front and Rear Preouts
* Subwoofer Output Terminals with Level/Frequency Control
* TI/Burr-Brown 24-Bit DAC
* 3-Band Parametric iEQ
* Ready for iPod*
* SAT Radio Ready**
* AAC/WAV Compatibility
* 3-D Variable Color Display
* MP3/WMA, CD/CD-R/CD-RW Compatible with ID3/WMA Tag
* Rotary Encoder Multi-Control
* Flip-Down Faceplace
* Detachable Flip-Down Faceplate
* Direct Track Access
* HS-IV Tuner
The built-in Bluetooth and USB support were the real selling points for me. The 3-D varibale color display looked like a lot of fun, too.
Installation
Straightforward, not much different from installing any other head unit. Solder the included harness to the harness adapter for your vehicle, then everything just snaps into the back of the unit.
The unit comes with a microphone for Bluetooth calls. The cable is sufficiently long enough to allow you to mount the mic anywhere in the vehicle. I ran the cable under the dash, to the driver's kickpanel, up the A-pillar and clipped it just to the left of my sun visor.
There is also a USB cable so you can attach your external hard disk or thumb drive. This I routed into my glove compartment. I attached it to my 60Gb Pinafarina USB-powered hard disk.
60Gb, I hear you ask? But it only supports 10Gb! When I asked JVC about this, I was told it's not a hard limit, but something marketing came up with so people wouldn't experience long load times with a larger drive. Dumb, in my humble opinion.
Setup and initial impressions
This head unit is very configurable. There are a lot of nice things you can change here that you can't on other head units. I'll talk about that later, but first I must talk about the user interface.
When you need to configure things, you press the M, SEL or LIST buttons. You're then presented with a series of options that you flip through with the number buttons, the prev/next buttons, the "rotary dial" or the up and down buttons depending on the situation.
There are some couple of problems with this interface. First of all, the text used to tell you which buttons do what is
TINY. It's absolutely impossible to read from a sitting position in the driver's seat, so don't expect to fiddle with settings while driving. If you accidentally change the EQ settings by hitting a button on the remote (more on that later) you can't see what mode you're currently in because the text is so tiny.
Another problem is the interface is not very intuitive, nor is it consistent. For example, to change settings like dimmer, etc, you first hold the "SEL" button. You're then presented with 3 teeny little bubbles across the bottom that say "Movie", "Clock", "Display". These correspond to the 3, 4, 5, 6 preset buttons. Once you choose one of those, you now use the prev/next buttons to select which item to edit. You then use the rotary dial to change it.
Now if you want to, say, set random play mode, you press the M button, and keep pressing '3' until you get to the play mode you want. Very confusing.
The display itself is beautiful. By default it cycles through all of the many colors it can reproduce. I've found that besides being pretty, this allows me to see the text clearly in any lighting situation. If I can't see it, I just wait a second and the color changes to something I can see.
In general, the faceplate is nicely laid out. There's not a lot of clutter. The rotary dial controls the volume and engages the ATTenuation when you press it. Although I must admit, most of the buttons are too small, and it's very hard to find what you want without looking at the face.
You can change the colors to whatever you want, set the dimmer to turn on and off with the headlights (if your vehicle supports it), set the dimmer to come on at a set hour, or always on/off. I was pleased to see the unit lets you choose between 2 fonts. I didn't like the default and found the other one to be much easier to read. Nice.
You can set the LCD to be positive, negative or auto with dimmer. Contrast, of course. You can also select whether to scroll the track information and whether or not to use the ID tags in MP3/WMA/AAC/WAV tracks.
A nice feature about the detachable faceplate is the fact that it's shorter than most faceplates. The up/down navigation buttons on the far right of the unit stay on the head unit when you remove the faceplate. This makes it that much easier to stash in your pocket.
And now my one giant peeve with the display: the current source (Tuner, USB, Bluetooth, CD, etc) is displayed on the left side of the screen. It takes up
over one-third of my beautiful screen! All of this goregous 3-D, colorful real estate and JVC decides to fill it with "USB"?!? What were you guys thinking? To add insult to injury, when you hit one of the menu buttons, the menu overlays
and takes up the whole screen!
There is a built-in crossover for the subwoofer output (configurable to 80/120/160Hz). I haven't hooked one up yet, but look forward to it.
Performance
The tuner doesn't seem as good as the one in the Pioneer linked above, but it's no worse than most others I've used.
Sound quality with the built-in amplifier is excellent. There is even an "Amp Gain" setting that will lower the power sent to the speakers in the event you're afraid of blowing your Radio Shack 5watt speakers.
The remote is small and has a nice shape. It also has a thoughtful lug that you can run a chain/lanyard through to help keep you from losing it. It's got buttons on the top for "On/Off/Att" on the left and "Sound" on the right (switches the EQ setting and is very easy to accidentally push).
The volume up/down is on the bottom, which leads me to another question: why put the most-used buttons in the hardest-to-get-to place? You have to shift the whole remote up in your hand to get to them. I usually drop it at this point and have to hunt around on the floor for it while trying not to drive into that semi I talked about in my Clarion review.
The redeeming feature of the remote is the 5-way button in the center. Pressing it changes the source mode. In the Tuner, Left/Right seek the stations, Down cycles among the presets, and Up changes the band. In CD/USB/iPod mode, Left/Right are previous/next. Up/Down changes folders in USB/iPod mode. I believe it skips 10 tracks in CD mode.
The CD player works as one might expect. The only thing I find odd is how long it takes to play the CD once you switch over to the CD input. There's easily a 5 second delay between the time I change the source to CD and I start hearing music. There is also a noticeable delay between tracks. Not usually a problem, but there are many CDs where the music runs across tracks without stopping, and it can be annoying.
The USB input is where I live 99% of the time. When I'm listening, I almost always have it set to "All Random". This way I can just skip past any song I don't feel like hearing by poking the 'next' button on the remote or faceplate.
The ID tag info is nice, but you can't configure the look of it. You always get:
Album Name / Artist
Track Name
So if you want to see the artist (because of the screen real estate taken up by the SRC name) you have to wait for the whole thing to scroll. If you miss it, sorry. You'll have to wait for the next scroll, and who knows when that will happen? There is also noticeable ghosting of the letters during scrolling.
If you want to listen to a specific folder or song, you're in a lot of trouble if you have a lot of music. Remember that display problem I've been talking about?
You press the M button to see your Mode choices, then press the 6 preset button, which has a teeny little "List" over it in the display. You choose to list by "Folder" or "Track".
You now get 2 columns of folder/track names. Unbelievably, JVC decided to stick the word "LIST" on the left side of the screen just to take up MORE real estate that could be used to display folder/track names. So you only get to see the first 8 characters of the folder name. Yes. The first 8. And they don't scroll.
To make things more of a nightmare, they don't appear to be in alphabetical order. The appear to be in whatever order they're found on the drive. So for me to find a folder I want to listen to, I may have to scroll through 200 folders to find it. And you can only scroll at max 10 at a time using the Up/Down buttons.
Bluetooth
Let's end this review on a positive note: the Bluetooth phone interface is awesome.
It's easy to get your phone connected to the head unit, and once you do it magically connects every time you turn the unit on. Be aware, Bluetooth eats up your phone's batteries, so have a charger handy.
The audio quality with the supplied mic has been exceptional - my callers report far better quality than with the headsets I used to have and the Clarion add-on system.
The interrupt works flawlessly - if I receive a call or dial out, whatever I'm listening to is muted and the call comes through the speaker. When I hang up, the music starts right back where I left off. Very, very convenient, and much safer for driving since I don't have to fumble with buttons. If I want to do the hanging-up I can hold down ANY button on the faceplate for 2 seconds. Cool.
If your phone is smart enough (mine is not) you can upload your phone book into the head unit as well as receive text messages on screen.
Wrap-up
I realize this review sounds a little harsh. Yes, the interface is awful, and yes, I'm picky. But if not for that, I would give the unit a 5-star review in a heartbeat. It's tremendously configurable, and the display really is beautiful and easy to see in most lighting conditions. The Bluetooth support is very convenient and works just as advertised. It's handled my 60Gb USB drive without a single complaint. If you don't tinker while driving, I'd highly recommend this one. If you're the type who must fiddle with settings while on the move, you may want to look elsewhere.
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