I'm jumping ship, too

[norwestie]

After all I have read and experienced with my F90BT, I have had enough. I cannot believe that Pioneer would sell a product so buggy. I am selling my pos and getting something that works as it was designed.

[jeffricks2051]

did you put 3.0 in there?

 

You got me nervous--I'm about to buy an f90bt.

 

how long have you had your unit, and what is it doing that is making you so mad?

 

edit: I just read your posts about the scan, volume, etc buttons staying down and that you did the 3.0 update.

 

People, are these kinda problems typical for these units after the 3.0 update? I'm focusted on getting the f90 or f900, but I don't want a stereo that will drive me crazy and get me killed.

 

anyone share their honest opinions on problems (especially people plan to keep theirs, but will admit any short commings)?

 

I'm a bit scared suddenly

[jeffricks2051]

I haven't bought my F series unit yet. I was just about to finally order a refurbished F90bt moments before saw his post and got a large spike of buyers anxiety. I love these F Series and Don't trust them. These fit the profile of a pain in the arse hackable device, much like a vx6700 wince phone I had a few years ago.. it could do everything.. really slowly and entirely unreliable.

 

At point blank: Are these units an unreliable pain in the ass if you don't hack them? Cause I could live with that and back off the hacking if needed be.

 

Anyone?? I really want to get one. I'd like to know what I need to know first though.

[wmitch927]

To be totally honest, I didn't find this forum until after I had already bought my F700BT and after reading about all the problems people are having I thought, what in the world did I get myself into. Now that I've been using it since January of this year, (installed it myself by the way) I really like it a lot. The only trouble I had with my unit was kinda self inflicted. I had an accident a week after I installed it and removed the amp so it wouldn't get stolen while at the body shop, but didn't disconnect the power wire from the battery. When I got the truck back and reinstalled the amp, it wouldn't go past the splash screen. All I did was go into test mode and made no changes and it started running fine again. Not a problem since though. I installed a Boyo reverse camera about a month ago and it works perfectly. I don't know if some of the problems people are having are self inflicted also (maybe hacking or modding), but I haven't done a single hack or mod to my unit, excluding the 3.0 upgrade and reverse camera. I didn't even do the parking brake bypass. I'm completely content with pulling over and setting the parking brake to access the navi settings. I just upgraded to 3.0 (legit) a couple weeks ago and my unit went from good to great. I finally got a blue tooth phone last week (LG CF360) and now I'm having an issue with voice recognition and my contacts, but after reading some posts in the forum it's more an issue with the phone than with the HU. My contacts aren't being synced to the F700 in the correct format. Overall, I'm very happy with the way the unit works. Sure the bootup time is a little slow, but if you look at it like it's a PC booting up (which essentially it is), it's not so bad. I always leave my FM radio as the last selected source and I'm listening to music within about ten seconds and the reverse camera is functional within about 15 seconds after starting the truck. It connects to my BT phone within 2 blocks of leaving my house so I'm ok with that too. Playing music from a SD card is working perfectly. I don't know about the iPod because I can't justify the cost. I'm gonna be 50 this month so maybe that has something to do with it. ...lol I know the people that bought these units when they first came out have a totally legit bitch, but now that we're up to version 3.0 it's a good purchase as far as I'm concerned. Hope this helps in your decision to purchase or not.

[norcalmike]

To me its a tradeoff. I'm happy with my F90BT running 3.0

Some of the shortcomings are minor annoyances, but to get one that doe's everything perfectly I would have to spend twice as much which I dont want to do. I got my F90BT for $400 after the 30% Live search cash back last year

[Riverman]

T...but to get one that doe's everything perfectly I would have to spend twice as much which I dont want to do.

That's my feeling too. My only real complaints with my F700BT are the lack of speed-dependent volume, a preset turn-on volume level (both features my old Blaupunkt had), and the constant "GPS signal lost" message every time I go in a parking garage or tunnel, but for something that had those and had as nice of an interface as the Pioneer, I'd have to pay much more than I'd ever be willing to spend on a head unit. Since installing 3.0, it's plenty fast and hasn't ever had a single problem, even with 2.0.

[cranbers]

I am extremely happy with my f 900bt. I bought a top of the line kenwood dnx 9140 and I returned it in 2 weeks. You want to talk about a buggy product that has a lot to be desired? I went back to my f900bt and I haven't regretted it.

 

I have seen the other side, and its not great let me tell you.

 

The price, no voice recognition for songs or phone contacts. It was buggy as hell with pac steering wheel controls, want to fast forward with it? good luck. The interface was confusing as hell, things were buried all over the place and there were several different control panel areas. And garmin navigation? ha, I never knew how great igo was until I tried using that thing. No lane assist, little map detail.

 

About the only thing I did like was the voice activation button you could mount anywhere, great spot was wiper signal controls. It was nice to put in an address by speaking, and yes it did have voice recognition for just about everything else, but not for songs or bluetooth? WTF?

 

Anyway, you go ahead and move on to whoever else you want to try out. But I have come to realization, NOTHING in this market is perfect. And from what i've seen, the pioneer f series with 3.0 is about as good as it gets. The new pioneer z series absolutely blows away the 9140, and its cheaper? Can't beat that.

 

3.0 fixed so many issues, the touch response, the lag in steering wheel controls, and the updates maps with sign boards have kept me around and not even interested in looking around or upgrading. Maybe to a z series but whats the point? So you can save yourself some finger typing?

 

My two cents. By all means get this thing if your planning on it. YOu can't go wrong with the x series, we all beta tested the thing for a year. So yeah, its good to go now with 3.0.

[hanibal]

What still pisses me off is screen freeze still with sd card and mp3!! Sometime screen will freeze and no buttons works. If i hit the menu button then the song appears and i have to go back. No probs in 2.06, installed legit update.

[carcass]

Bye Bye.

[scooterinmn]

Sweet!

How much are you asking for it?

[timg]

I've gotta say, I love my F90BT. 3.0 has straightened out the annoying bugs (bluetooth connectivity). The information displayed isn't perfect (I like the stock iGo 8.3 better), but it's easy to hack and change. I looked at all of the other in-dash monitors. Only Kenwood seemed to come close and they cost dramatically more. I think that when you google the other in-dash navigation systems, you will find that they're just as buggy or even worse than the 2.0 F series. Most are also much less capable.

 

Tim

[Jeffs64]

Hey there I have F900BT is a refurb, It works just great. I am still running 2.0 but I just purchased 3.0 I have not recived it yet. I am looking at getting a 900 for my wife car (Joan) I think the valvue you get from the Pioneer unit is far past what the others have to offer. The only thing that does not work wright is the MSN-Direct. I am hoping that 3.0 will fix that problem. Well worth the money. I work in auto parts and sensors, computers, starters, alternators, switches all can be defective wright out the box. The defective rate is about 5% So stuff happens.