Disillusioned with X910BT - venting + request for feedback

[talkin73]

I've had my X910BT for about 6 weeks now and find myself very unimpressed overall. Truthfully, I wish I could return it. Often with electronics, operator-error plays a big role so I'm gonna post a few of the bigger frustrations in the hopes that I can eat humble pie when someone actually knows how to fix them I upgraded to the most recent firmware from Pioneer's site in late September with no issues.

 

1. Backup camera - I have the NB-PA Pioneer model which has a cartoonish picture of low quality at its best and every 2nd or 3rd use it will complete distort the image with wavy lines and a chopped picture. Recently even when putting it back in drive from reverse, the screen just hung with the bad image on it for over a minute and then the unit randomly rebooted itself and went through "startup process". When putting in reverse, the image often takes several seconds to appear unless I'm already driving and getting ready to back into a space or parallel park. It takes so long to get the image up after turning the car on that I'm already out of the space and generally back into drive before it ever even appear. Nearly useless and often a problem because of the stall issues its causing with the screen. Currently feels like my driving experience would be better WITHOUT it installed.

 

2. Weird Sound Level changes - I use radio and iPhone to play music. With the iPhone, I can simply be driving along and for no reason that I can determine, the sound will basically fade out somewhat and become more hollow. I thought that a speaker went out initially because the sound lost it richness and diminished. Later in the drive it sort of just "came back to life". This happens intermittently and is not related to receiving calls, speed of car or any action I have performed with the unit.

 

3. Navigation doesn't follow me - When I leave my home (a wooded area) the nav will not follow me but just shows a greyed x or arrow. Occasionally it will follow me but generally not. Sometimes the system seems to just pick up the signal a few minutes into my drive but often I have to hit the MAP button to make it "kick into gear" and then it totally reloads and finds my location. As it just went to sleep and it unaware of the fact that it is not getting a signal or following. Why do I have to tell the unit to wake up and get to the business of being a navigation system? Shouldn't it know its not getting a signal and do this on its own?

 

4. Nav is slow and laggy - Nav is also slow to turn, make changes, and sometimes kinda jumpy in how it follows me... or doesn't follow me FYI, I have my antenna mounted on front dash in the center. It often got no signal at all when installed on top of the HU inside the dash on my 2008 Nissan Altima.

 

5. No phone number indicated when getting calls - Even my $40 bluetooth headset can tell me what number is calling on my iPhone... why this $1200 unit cannot receive and display that info from the same phone is baffling to me. This seems inexcusable and numbers should not have to be "loaded" into the HU for it to know who is calling. Which brings me to the next issue...

 

6. 400 number limit to contacts with no way to do partial uploads - I don't know of any other aftermarket HU that restricts you to 400 numbers to upload. Even after pairing down my list, I can't get it under 500... not between work, friends, family, other numbers... and I did a lot of deleting just trying to make it work with this HU restriction which is absurd to begin with. My wife's stock nav system has 1000 contact limit and the car is a year old. The 400 limit is just ridiculous. What makes it worse is that there is no way to partially load numbers from the HU. This might be an option on other phones and my iPhone 3GS just doesn't do it, but the HU doesn't even have a way to manually add a number yourself so you load ALL numbers from your phone or you have NO numbers available... nothing in between! Again, wife's nav system has a way to manually type in numbers for a frequently called list in case you don't want to sync all your contacts. It's not that complicated, Pioneer! I'm really hoping someone corrects me here because its a significant functionality limitation at this point.

 

7. No usable mute button - I know how to mute the sound and I don't use this often, but having to press and hold that insanely sensitive multi-direction knob to make the sound mute and then do the same to make it unmute is an exercise in madness. Just doesn't work for me and it's easier, though more annoying to just turn the knob all the way down. So many HUs on the market, both stock and aftermarket have an easy button to push for this. Again, nuts to have this feature designed like this.

 

8. VR totally non-functional - I've read every post and complaint about the VR on this unit and couldn't agree more. My phone numbers are free of accent characters and even when spoken exactly, just don't register. iPod commands never work and always result in the wrong song playing or action occurring. Makes me wonder if the designers actually tried this themselves before sending out the door.

 

9. Overall slowness - button pushing, system response all reflect the worst aspects of speed with flash based media vs hard drive. My wife's nav unit is clearly HD based because it turns on immediately (mine takes 10-30 seconds), backup camera available instantly when turned on and in reverse (mine takes 5-10 seconds), phone pairs in less than 3 seconds (mine takes 30-60 seconds), follows her exactly as she's driving (laggy and jumpy with mine) and without any signal or reception issues and mean NOT EVEN ONCE in our neighborhood or anywhere else (routine signal issues in my neighborhood and random other connection/following problems elsewhere).

 

10. MSN Direct is junk - Not sure who to blame for this, probably MSN, but this app is crap. I got a 90 day free trial (glad I did instead of purchasing) because it virtually never offers any traffic info (states "no events or flow info") despite the fact that I can be sitting in a huge accident backup on the 495 around Washington DC or any other time for that matter. Gas stations list their distance but virtually never list a price... useful! All I get is weather (sometimes) and movie info (who cares). Traffic is time saving, gas is cost saving and neither work. For me, useless.

 

So, a huge proportion of advertised features work with severe limitation or not at all on my unit. It's fun to look at and since I got it at a pretty good price I don't feel totally ripped off but I am disappointed. My wife's stock nav system blows my aftermarket away in every conceivable aspect... when did stock stuff start becoming so much better than aftermarket?!?!?

[lindsey09]

Wow, I couldnt have said it better... I am very dissapointed with my x910bt as well. I too got a decent price but still with todays technology I would have thought Pioneer could have come up with a better unit for the money.

[LagunaAvic]

I largely agree. I am experiencing the terrible general slowness, VERY doubtful quality if the MSN direct information and confusing and outright misleading route guidance. Had I known then what I know now, I would not have bought the X910.

 

Here are the things that frustrates me to no end:

 

1: Slow The unit is terribly slow in general. This shows mostly during startup where the unit remains so slow that it is near impossible to use the UI for 5 - 10 minutes after start. Answering an incoming call is always an act of faith: The call will come in, the X910 will play the "ringer" in the speaker and after 5 or so seconds display the button to answer the call. Once I have pressed the "answer" button, it is hard to tell if I REALLY hit the button, because the little blue shade painted over the button takes several seconds to appear.

 

2: Poor integration: The bluetooth phone controls are poorly integrated. Why do I have to take my eyes off the road and look at the screen in order to VERY CAREFULLY place a finger on the "volume up" or "volume down" button while on a call? Why can I not use the "real" volume knob for that?

 

3: Route guidance: I have several times been routed off the highway by the X910 only to be routed right back on it on the next onramp. This happens regardless of traffic. This is probably the most disappointing issue. I could live with the other annoyances if the most basic function (route guidance) was flawless. It isn't. It's hard to have confidence in a system that makes obvious mistakes like this. Also, I always experience the problem of much too frequent route guidance messages as described in this thread: http://avic411.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=29264

 

4: UI layout: The UI is too cluttered. It attempts to display too much information at one time. It is, for example, impossible to see what time it is while the unit is showing street signs in the upper portion of the UI. When I am on the iPod or radio screen, the clock is so tiny it is very difficult to see what's displayed.

 

At this point, I am finding myself using Navigon in my iPhone for navigation and use the X910 as a _VERY_ expensive iPod controller.

[06sti_guy]

I really wish you guys would have made this post 3 months ago when I bought mine , you are right on the money. The nav takes me on strange backroads for no reason (is there a map update??) the nav is all around very slow (updates my route because I make wrong turns because it is so far behind where I am actually at). I still have not got the VR to work at all. The only thing it really excells at is IPod controll and playing music, I could have bought something cheaper to do that.