Great price, great sound, attractive face
Written: Jun 17 '03 (Updated Jun 23 '03)
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Pros: Great sound
MP3 playback
Color change faceplate
Cons: Glare on head unit
The big "Z" on the left of the display
The Bottom Line: I'd recommend it or the DXZ-835 MP with full dot matrix display, more power, motorized fold down faceplate, and blue back lighting along with red and green for ~$50 more.
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| ahsparks's Full Review: Clarion Sirius DXZ-735MP Car CD/ MP3 Player |
I finally decided to purchase an mp3 player for my car, a 1999 VW Golf TDI which I've also reviewed here.
I have a 1.5 hour commute so the possibility of extended play time appealed to me. After considering the VW Phatbox and Kenwood's music keg among other things I decided just burning mp3 encoded CD's would be good enough. I started ripping my own CD collection and converting to mp3 and looking for a good head unit. This way I upgraded my sound quality as well, Phatbox wouldn't and cost 4X as much to buy! Other head units considered were Kenwood's KDC-MPV7019 and its current replacement: KDC-MPV6022. I decided against them for two reasons, the silver face plates and lack of rotary knob on the 7019. The Kenwoods did appeal to me me in that the display was back lit like my stock VW and looking in the store it would be fairly easy to match the colors to my stock blue and red lighting. But the silver face plate, I just couldn't get past that and I just felt the Clarion was more attractive. So I bought it on looks and past experience with Clarion equipment. Albeit not my own equipment though.
I have appreciated Clarion's quality and sound for several years now but never owned one. Finally! I found it on E-bay for $189. In the box was the head unit, remote and wiring harness. The harness adapter and antenna adapter necessary for my car I purchased separately from Crutchfield.
Basic specs of the unit:
Single disk, in dash CD/MP3/WMA playback with color changing back lighting.
CeNET TV/DVD control equiped
Sirius capable
Remote included
Fold down aluminum face plate
Dual zone capability
Tuner/CD titling capability
Dimmer feature
First Impression
When it arrived I was extremely pleased with the BLACK not silver Aluminum face plate. Very classy looking, the head unit demands enough attention in my VW it doesn't need to stick out like a sore thumb IMO.
Upon installation I popped in my favorite CD, The Great Divide, "Goin' For Broke" and checked out "Alive and Well". Sounds good. Even without upgrading my stock VW speakers. I am fully aware that with the advertised wattage of 52x4 I could get much better sound with new speakers. Maybe later, we'll see. For now it sounds good, keeping the volume down to a reasonable level keeps the bass from bottoming out and is cleaner and more pronounced than the stock HU.
It does have a Sirius tuner and C-net capability with dual zone for the front passenger able to listen to AM/FM/CD and rear passengers listen to the audio track of a DVD or whatnot. Neither of these at present is being taken advantage of in my car. The Sirius maybe at a later date.
Update after using it one week:Ok, so it's only one week but still, it's more than enough time to get used to it IMO. I'm finding it easier to use, buttons are still small, but I can usually find them on the HU while driving. I programmed in the names of all the radio stations I listen to regularly, never had that capability before, cool. :) The tuner isn't any better or worse than my stock VW unit, shouldn't be surprising as what I've read indicates US bound VW's get a HU built by Clarion for VW. Though the quality of sound that it manages to produce using the tuner is amazing to me.
Favorites about the unit
Sounds great!
Looks nice.
Station titling for radio presets and ID3 tags are cool.
Dimmer switch, nice touch when the unit is off the display goes black and the buttons stay backlit like the stock HU.
Fun to use and listen to, makes my drive more enjoyable.
Setting the color "User" setting to [Red 2 Green 0] is pretty much dead on VW red with the dimmer hooked up.
Drawbacks to the unit:
The remote is bulky, not a credit card or steering wheel remote. Steering wheel remote may be a future purchase for me I'd guess at about $30.
Glare on the head unit why must the head unit be shiny? When driving in certain conditions all I see is my shift knob (while and attractive walnut knob it's not what I want to see in my HU) or my passenger side seat bottom cushion. I have this wonderful text scrolling along telling me the song name or a screensaver or whatnot and I can't read it!
SMALL buttons! There's plenty of room for more ergonomic buttons, small silver ones do nothing for me while I'm driving.
The big "Z" w/ the stuff running around it: Why does this take up so much real estate? It tells me nothing. I'd be much happier with that left side left for items such as the "mp3" or "m-bex" or other indicators there and two lines of text, artist and song title perhaps?
Update after using it one week:Random play function, this is a minor irritation. You can use a random function for the particular folder (mp3/wma playback) or random for the whole disk. I was using the random for the whole disk when I discovered that it seems to "forget" that setting after being powered off and back on. The indicators to the right of the display are still lit but it plays in normal mode. Easily fixed by pressing the random button once to turn it off and then holding down for a second to reset the disk random play.
Ahh, but it's not bad at all, they're just drawbacks, not major flaws. These really are minor complaints, obviously not enough to stop me from buying it or suggesting it.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 189.00
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Epinions.com ID:
ahsparks
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Reviews written: 2
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