A physical CD, or smartphone packed with MP3’s? Chunky Garmin GPS, or Google Maps?
Now that an increasing number of drivers are replacing the whole of in-car entertainment for a smartphone tacked to the dash, Pioneer looking to ride this transition – rather than loosing the market. Enter the AppRadio.Announced at CES 2011, the Pioneer AppRadio combines a double-din capacitive touchscreen with an iPhone dock, and not much more. As a mech-less unit, the Pioneer relies on your connected iPhone to power all of its services. While looking for an upgrade for my factory stereo, to add iPod control, the AppRadio looked to be a no brainer – so in the dash it went.
Hardware and Software
As the name suggests, the AppRadio is capable of running supported apps from your iDevice. These apps include Pandora, MotionX GPS Drive, and roughly a half dozen others. The hardware itself may be its best feature. The 6.1” capacitive touchscreen has a moderately dense 800×480 resolution. Graphics and interface on the unit are some of the best among in-car head stereos. After docking my compatible iPhone 4 however, things get a bit less impressive with how the unit handles app support. A number of the app limitation the unit experience are not the fault of Pioneer per-se, but pop-up because the disjointed developer support of the iPod/iPhone out functionality the unit uses to mirror its apps. Pandora is a good example of this, the application itself does not support full integration with the AppRadio controller application – so once entering the app, you cannot return to the AppRadio app interface without manually relaunching the app from your phone. Luckily, most other apps the units support will indeed reopen the AppRadio controller app once your exit them on the head unit. Outside of app support, the unit supports the expected iPod control with full menus, and bluetooth hands-free calling. Bluetooth streaming support is omitted in this case – since a direct connection to a docked iPhone is required for any app support.
Performance
The shining gen among applications looks to be the support of MotionX GPS Drive. While this application does limit your ability the manipulate addresses from the unit – it does output the maps to the screen with corresponding audio prompts. For the $350 street price of the unit, this suboptimal experience is still miles beyond traditional units in the price class. The unit even includes an external GPS antenna, so signal performance with the phone in a glove box was never an issue.
Audio performance was also terrific on the unit. The system only includes a 3-band equilizer, but it allows the user to control which frequency to modify in each band, meaning you can specify that the 1k frequency is boosted, while curving up other mid-range frequencies to blend to the peak. At 14w RMS per channel, the unit is not a powerhouse of amplification, but audio performance when compared to the factory stereo is night and day. Bluetooth calling on the unit was average, with both ends coming through without significant distortion. The included microphone is a single unit that does not include a noise cancelling array.
Conclusion
A one-word summary of the AppRadio unit could be: “compromised”. The unit has some hits (audio), and misses (app integration) – but overall is still a bargain at its price. For the iPhone user who runs Pandora and navigation, while hoping noone calls in the middle of “turn left at Belmont” – the AppRadio is an easy recommend. For everyone else, better to keep looking…
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