Pros: Great sound. High power. Ergonomic design. Powered Control/display tilt. Tasteful appearance. Fast MP3 selection.
Cons: May look too attractive to thieves.
The Bottom Line: I think this is the best car HU available for around $400. It sounds good, looks good, and is easy to use. Havent had long enough for durability opinion.
khammer's Full Review: Alpine CDA-9813 Car CD/ MP3 Player
I installed an Alpine CDA-9813 in my car today. I bought it in Ottawa Ontario for $550 Cdn, which is about $120 more than I had originally intended to spend. I looked at quite a few other decks before deciding that this one was the best for me. Some of the other decks that I considered were the Pioneer P7400MP and P5500MP, Sony M850MP and CDXMP80, Kenwood MPV619, and Alpine CDA-9807.
I decided on the Alpine CDA-9813 rather than the CDA-9807 because of the higher power output (I'm not using external amps right now), the tilt display, and the digital time correction feature included in the "Bass engine pro" function. I also think that the black faceplate/bezel and green buttons match my cars interior better than the silver/blue colours on the 9807. The price $425 Cdn price of the 9807 seemed like an excellent value though.
I didnt consider buying the CDA-9815 because it is very similar to the CDA-9813 except for a 2 line alphanumeric display (versus 1) and a computer/internet customization feature ("i-Personalize").
The Alpine HU's operation is pretty intuitive to use. I was able to set up most of it without reading the manual.
Some things are more complex, like the EQ and the time correction, but I was able to traverse MP3 folders, and play what I wanted immediatly.
The Alpines MP3 operations seems faultless as far as I can tell. It is fast to load, find, and play tracks. The artist/album/song title display and scroll is a joy. With 700 MB's of MP3's on a single disk, it feels much like a disk changer. Folders or tracks can be set to repeat. Folders can have random track selection. It also plays WMA files apparently, but I didnt try any. CD playback seems so boring now because the scrolling track title display is not present on most CD's.
The motorized display tilt is a very nice feature. It has 3 positions plus vertical. When powered off, it automatically returns to vertical. When powered back on, it remembers its last position. It will also resume CD/MP3 play from where it was prior to power down. The display can be set to dim automatically when the cars lights are turned on if the orange illumination lead is connected during the installation. The display's appearance is very attractive in my opinion. It is clear and easy to read. There are no animated 3D graphics, but I dont want that anyways. The control panel is easily removable, and comes with a hard shell carrying case. A small remote control is also supplied. I dont have much use for a remote, but it does seem ergonomically designed at least.
The FM radio can automatically activate a power antenna if connected. There are 2 settings for scan signal strength, local and DX, so that weak stations will be skipped during scan. There is also a feature to automatically populate the station presets with the first 6 stations encountered in a scan. There are 12 FM station presets.
I was going to have this stereo installed into my '95 Toyota Camry by an install shop for $50, but ended up doing it myself. When I arrived at my appointment time they told me to come back in an hour because they were way late. They said it would only take 20 minutes to install the Alpine into my car. I looked around at their dump and decided that it wasnt exactly going to be the finest 20 minutes that my car had ever seen, so I never went back. It took me about 3 hours, but I put it in better than they probably could ever imagine. What took the longest was the installation of a new 12 guage power wire connected directly to the battery (via a 20 amp inline fuse). The V-drive Alpine models (9815/9813) specify a power connection to either the battery or the fuse block because they use more power than most HU's. This is because they have an internal power converter to convert 12 volts to 17 volts for the power amps. The inline fuse is 20A, whereas the radio fuse is only 15A on my Camry.
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