Sirius Radio Starmate 4 Provides Excellent Warranty Service
Written: Mar 12 '09 (Updated Mar 12 '09)
Product Rating:
Pros: Compact and modern design. Liberal warranty replacement practice.
Cons: Small screen size, poor FM transmission, awkward base mount removal process.
The Bottom Line: The Starmate 4 offers a relatively quick way to establish Sirius radio service but it can never duplicate the quality and convenience of factory installed satellite radio.
DGodesky's Full Review: Sirius Starmate 4 (ST4-TK1) Satellite Radio Receiv...
My Sirius satellite radio Starmate 4 unit has now been in use for a year, and has proven to be a convenient, relatively quick way to establish Sirius radio in your vehicle. But it will never live up to the convenience and quality of use that you can get from a factory installed satellite radio system.
Unit Base and Placement: The Starmate 4 can be placed with a windshield adhering suction cup, or a device that lets you mount it to an air vent. I do not like obstructions on my windshield, thus I use the air vent mounting system. The Starmate comes with a base mounting unit that you attach, and power and antenna run to the base. The Starmate itself then easily pops into the base, allowing you to easily insert and remove the main unit for theft protection. The base unit that mounts to the vents uses a claw-like, spring-loaded prong system that easily insert into the vent and snap the base securely in place. You can angle the base up / down and side-to-side, for maximum viewing angle. Again, since the main unit then snaps into the base unit, you can remove the main electronics easily anytime you need to.
The frustration occurs if you need to remove the mounting system; there are no instructions offered on how to un-mount the base unit mounting prongs, therefore, you have to carefully force the prongs to let loose of the vent – risking damage to the vehicle. I have twice removed the mount, but worried all the way since it takes a good bit of experimentation and force to get them to release. The good news is that it should be very rare to have to remove the mounting system because it is independent from the main Starmate electronics.
You can option to direct wire the base system to your radio, which eliminates the FM transmission issues (see below). However, this is labor intensive, and the kits they sell only address the wiring from Starmate to radio, they leave you stuck with power to the base coming from a cigarette lighter style power adaptor – direct wiring to the fuse block is easy, but they give no parts or instructions on how to do this – it’s easy but takes someone with some basic wiring knowledge, and the courage to cut the cord to the cigarette lighter power unit.
Presets: I use my Starmate 4’s 10 presets for my favorite stations, and nothing more. I have found that I enjoy 3 talk stations, 5 music stations, and need 2 traffic/weather alert stations, thus, the 10 buttons are all I need to quickly find what I enjoy on my commute. You can set 3 bands of 10 pre-sets for a total of 30, but I find the small size of the unit to be difficult to handle while driving – it is simply not safe and easy to have to hit more than one button quickly on such a small unit. 10 main (band A) presets is the fundamental functionality that this unit offers you.
Warranty Service: Over my factory 12 month warranty, two times the unit went bad and had to be exchanged. The good news is that there is pretty much a no questions asked return/exchange process. The first unit failure involved the unit simply with no warning, stopped working. The second, involved a drop to the ground that caused the LCD panel to give a fractured image. Both were exchanged no questions asked. I wouldn’t encourage anyone to be forthright if they dropped unit, since likely accidental damage is not covered; but my point here is, there was no questioning as to whether or not I had caused accidental damage, and no debate on the warranty replacement. Both times the unit was replaced with a refurbished unit that looked and performed factory new.
FM Link: The Starmate 4 works by putting out an FM signal to your radio, and you tune the radio to a frequency that picks up the signal from the Starmate. This works well about 20% of the time, with 80% of the time giving static and an variable quality. I have not directly wired the unit to my radio, a way too involved process that involves removing parts of my dashboard. But if you intended to use this type of system for long hours, I strongly recommend having the direct wiring installation done by a store that can warranty the installation and cover any damage they might do during installation.
Comparison to Factory Installed Sirius Radio: We own two other vehicles with factory installed Sirius radios. The convenience and clarity that you get from a factory system has no equal. Use of alternate systems like the Starmate 4 are adequate when you have no other choice, but far from ideal.
SIRIUS ST4TK1 SIRIUS™ STARMATE 4 WITH CAR KITSIRIUS™ PLUG-&-PLAY RADIO WITH UNIVERSAL DOCKING CAPABILITYPAUSES, REWINDS & REPLAYS 44 MINUTES OF LI...More at Cymax Stores
The ultra-slim Starmate 4 iss designed for optimal vehicle installations and includes Sirius Replay(tm), advanced sports features, and Sirius(tm) Univ...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
Feature-rich plug-and-play Sirius satellite radio receiver with bundled car kit Decodes digital-quality signals for more than 130 music, news, and spo...More at Amazon Marketplace
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2010 Shopping.com, Inc.