might buy the AVIC-Z1 - I have questions

Posted Aug 09, 2006 · 03:48 UTC#1

Greetings folks,

Here is my story. I traded in my Dodge Ram for an FJ Cruiser. My Dodge had an OEM Alpine DVD Nav unit. I loved it! It was simple, clean, intuitive and fun! Since the FJ is made by Toyota, I thought, "Eclipse is owned by Toyota, I might as well buy an Eclipse for ease of installation!".

That was the worst mistake I could have made. Yes, it was easy to install and I didn't have to buy an extra device for the sterring wheel controls, but the Eclipse AVN5500 is horrible! It doesn't mute the speakers when the Nav voice comes on(The OEM Alpine did), It uses the left front speaker as a mono voice for the Nav(the Alpine unit used the entire system), The whole setup is counter intuitive and extremely hard to get used to. Even reading the manual made me cry. The screen doesn't look as good as I thought for what I paid for. DVD movies were stretched weird(probably due to a 6" or is 6.5"? screen), the rear camera had red and purple fringing where contrasting colors met. The lens is fisheye and the corners start to distort really soon! I could keep going! Anyway, enough of that unit. I bought it from Crutchfield and they have a 30 day return policy so no worries there. Here comes the problem....I can't decide between the Alpine Nav+IVA-W200 combo or the AVIC-Z1???

Both system are very capable, I think most will agree it probably comes down to personal taste. However, there are some things that makes one better than the other.

The Alpine allows USB connections of non-ipod MP3 players. I don't own an Ipod, I never plan to buy one. I don't like them. So I can connect my MP3 player(or any USB based flash drive) to the USB port and control my mp3 player with the on-screen controls. This is a HUGE plus for the Alpine!

On the other hand, the Alpine requires a seperate install of the nav unit and there really isn't a good place in my FJ. Without going into detail, under the seats is probably the best spot but even that has some major problems.

The Z1 is HDD based(faster) whereas the alpine is DVD based. Personally, I'm not really too concerned here and missing out on 2 million POI isn't going to kill me.

The alpine, from everything I've read has a better navigation system, but I couldn't tell you why other than it has something to do with gyros and 12 channel satellites and a few other things I forgot.

What about bluetooth? Which one is better?

How is the screen quality on the Z1?

Does the Z1 mute or lower your speakers when the nav voice comes on?

Is the nav voice through all speakers?

Is there echo with the bluetooth setup? I would think there would be and I think I remember reading something about that?

How is the interface? Is it clean and simple?

Can I turn on the rear camera manually?

Are the vehicle dynamic features just an after thought or are they actually cool and somewhat useful?

How si the voice recognition? Is it actualy useful? Do you find yourself not using it in favor of the buttons because it is "less hassle"?

How is the MP3 interface that get burned to the HDD? What about the bitrate? I'm assuming 128k, if so, that sucks.

How is the larning feature of the nav? Is it really useful? I drive this back ass way to work everyday to avoid traffic. It would be nice if the nav learned that!

Does the Pioneer use a 24bit DAC? How is the sound quality?

Has anybody used the RCA audio in for an mp3 player? If so, do you have any problems? The Eclipse has horrible line noise and it picks up the HDD off of my mp3 player!

Anything else I should know, good or bad? Anything anybody wants to tell me about the Alpine setup?

I actually love Alpine products and I have never owned Pioneer. I know I will be happy with the Alpine unit but it is $500 more at retail pricing. If it was in-dash nav, I would have probably already made the buy, but I am torn!!!!

Sorry for the long post. Oh and thanks for listening if you made it this far, LOL

Posted Aug 09, 2006 · 08:07 UTC#2

How is the screen quality on the Z1? Very Good. 1440 X 234 pixels

Does the Z1 mute or lower your speakers when the nav voice comes on?
Yes ...Can be muted down to -20db

Is the nav voice through all speakers? You can have to play through all the speakers or select the left or right.

Is there echo with the bluetooth setup? If you set the phone volume low and use the right speaker the echo is almost non exsistant.

Can I turn on the rear camera manually? Yes, to some extent. The mapping screen has a rear camera option where 2/3 of the screen is rear view from the camera and the other 1/3 is the map display. Very useful when your navigating and pulling a trailer.

Are the vehicle dynamic features just an after thought or are they actually cool and somewhat useful? Not a whole lot of info here...mostly from the gyro sensors as for slope and accelleration.

How si the voice recognition? Is it actualy useful? Do you find yourself not using it in favor of the buttons because it is "less hassle"? The voice recognition is pretty cool and one of the main reasons I went with the Z1. You can input an entire destination with ever touching the screen.

How is the MP3 interface that get burned to the HDD? What about the bitrate? I'm assuming 128k, if so, that sucks. The unit records CD's into mp3 at 160k which is pretty good but wont fill up the HDD as fast as 192k.

How is the larning feature of the nav? Is it really useful? I drive this back ass way to work everyday to avoid traffic. It would be nice if the nav learned that! Yes, the Z1 learns which way you like to travel and incorporates that into it's routing.

Has anybody used the RCA audio in for an mp3 player? If so, do you have any problems? The Eclipse has horrible line noise and it picks up the HDD off of my mp3 player! I use the AUX IN on my system and it sounds great. No poping or hissing.

I havent owned anything other than this unit but im pretty happy with it. Good luck with you decision.

Posted Aug 09, 2006 · 11:43 UTC#3

Wow, that was a long post. I made the same decision you did, but I chose between the Eclipse AVN 6600 and the Z1 and that Alpine. I only ever had the Z1, and I can say that I'm happy with it.

Right now, one of the big plusses with the z1 is that we found the back door to enable all features all the time. No stopping to enter in information or whatever. I don't know if the other 2 have motion lockouts, but I would think they might.

I don't know about the eclipse, but I think the alpine is probably a better unit, it's probably a better UI, faster ipod interface. I don't know about the bluetooth. But yes it's more expensive and it's not an all in one contained unit. Which was a huge minus for me as well.

I think the nav differences between the 2 might be down to the database they use. I know the Z1 uses Teleatlas, I think the alpine uses another one. Some like the alpine one better. I have had 0 problems with the nav on the z1.

The ui on the pioneer is a little weird at first. They put things in wierd places that should be in other places. The ui isn't bad, but I woudln't say it's intuitive. There is a lot of functionality to cram into that 7 inch screen. They do ok with getting it all in there. My wife didn't know how to change things without reading the manual or having me tell her. But I know how to do everything. It's not too bad.

One thing I really like is the sound processing. It has some sound field modes which I really like. I turn those on and crank the tunes though new speakers as well and I really like the sound of this. One of the best setups I have ever had in a car (if not the best).

Not owning or trying all 3, I can't give you too much of a side by side compare. But I would think from the reports I have seen that the Alpine is slightly better than the Z1 in a few respects. It's also more expensive and harder to install. If the Alpine was an all in one unit, I would have bought that as well.

The Z1 is very good. I don't regret my purchase at all.

Posted Aug 09, 2006 · 11:53 UTC#4

I think the navigation on the Z1 is outstanding and the sound quality of the unit is head-and-shoulders above the Alpine I replaced (I'm not sure why everyone seems to love Alpine, for me it was one of the worst radios I've ever owned).

The time and care spent on the navigation software for the Z1 is evident and was clearly the main focus of the unit but they seem to have let some junior programmers, or maybe some homeless guy they pulled off the street, handle everything else.

For instance:

[rant]
The iPod module is especially bad. This is partly poor hardware design in the way the iPod interface works (like a CD changer) and partly really, really, really bad programming. If you happen to be, oh I don't know, DRIVING and you're distracted in the middle of suffering through the painfully slow iPod browser it will forget where you are and take you back to the song display. You just spent the last 2 mins trying to get to the album you want to listen to and now you will have to start all over again. How is that helpful? If anything it seems unsafe.

You also can't drill up once you pick something to play. For example; you just spent 3 days browsing to an album and are playing it. After a few seconds it "forgets" that you were browsing and you can't go back to the list of tracks on that album. How is that helpful? Why would you even do that? It remembers it for a little while so this is clearly a programmer making it forget. Why? Does this programmer hate me?

If I were the lead programmer on that job I would immediately fire whomever was responsible for these insanely stupid decisions.

Also, the Sirius support looks like it was added as an after thought while the XM application looks pretty good and seems to be quite useful.

Unfortunately for some unfathomable reason they decided to display a huge Sirius logo instead of displaying something that would be useful like channel number and name, artist, and song title all at once. You can get that info by clicking the display button but why not just display it? Do we really need a Sirius logo that takes up half the display area? Even with the superfluous logo all that info would fit so why not display it?

This also makes the unit less safe as it causes the driver to be more distracted as they have to keep pressing the Display button to get all the info you want. I'm guessing Sirius support was added at the last minute so they didn't bother to do any kind of use cases or interface design review.

Oh, and a clarification on the "MP3" recording for the Z1. It doesn't record your songs as MP3's, it records them as ATRAC3's; a proprietary Sony file format. This also makes absolutely no sense. They already have the license to play MP3's, why spend more money to use a substandard, proprietary, format? This is probably an example of some management weenie flexing their muscle to make themselves feel like they contributed to the product when what they are really doing is damaging their own product.

You should also know that you can not just copy mp3's to the system. You have to burn them to an Audio CD and then let the Z1 rip them at 4x. This of course will, and does, make your songs sound horrible because you are recompressing already compressed data. I also got a lot of audio skipping when I tried this.

And finally; you can put in a data CD of mp3 songs and it will play them but you can't put in a data DVD of mp3s. This makes absolutely no sense and is simply another example of a company purposefully crippling their own product so they can sell you something else too (an iPod adapter most likely). For me this makes the library feature of the unit useless.
[/rant]

All that being said I love my Z1 but it's a love/hate relationship. The Z1 is fantastic at navigation but it has some serious flaws when it comes to letting you use your own library of music and Sirius support was added as an afterthought.

Posted Aug 09, 2006 · 12:41 UTC#5

My biggest disappointment with the Pioneer units, coming from an OEM navi, is the lack of a good antireflection coating. The screen is great on heavy overcast days and at night but in sunny conditions the screen totally washes out. Put someone with a white shirt on the passenger seat and your screen becomes white. The screen tilting helps a bit but if you have a light colored interior then you have no place to tilt to. My OEM Blaupunkt navis had good polarized coatings but I don't know about Alpine.
The other gripe that I have is the total lack of built in security. The hard drive can store personal info but you have no way of protecting that info from a car jockey or thief. If stolen (my Avic D1 was) there is no requirement for entering a pin to re-activate it. Don't know about the Alpine in that regard.

Voice commands are a great feature for picking a destination while driving :!: and except for the two issues above, I love my Z1.

Posted Aug 09, 2006 · 13:56 UTC#6

The nav on my Acura TL is Alpine. The VR is much better...but it's factory software so that doesn't surprise me. The Bluetooth on the TL is more of a hands free operation than the Z1. But you can buy the cheap steering wheel controller for the Z1 and fix most of that. Other than that, the Z1 in my wife's Aviator is far superior to the Alpine in the TL. Not even close in my opinion. The Z1 has much more information on the screen, is easier to read, is NOTICABLY faster than the DVD based Alpine, and it has XM Navtraffic....which the TL does not. I'm seriously considering replacing the factory nav in the TL with a Z1. But due to so many systems being integrated into it, that may not be possible.

Posted Aug 09, 2006 · 14:03 UTC#7

"I'm seriously considering replacing the factory nav in the TL with a Z1. But due to so many systems being integrated into it, that may not be possible."

I thought about doing that on my 2006 Toyota Avalon, cause that NAV system is the worse I've ever seen, but with all the intergration that would go on, I decided not to do that.

Posted Aug 09, 2006 · 17:19 UTC#8

Greetings again,

I reaally appreciate everyone's feedback. On my lunch hour today, I am going to a local car audio shop to check out both units. I will report back what I find.

Some things that popped into my head while reading all of your posts.

The alpine allows you to play mp3's off of a DVD-R/RW. That's a pretty nice feature.

I didn't realize that the Pioneer uses ATRAC rather than MP3's. My initial reaction was disappointment but then I realized that I've never actuallly heard ATRAC format before. I am a biased hater of Sony products :) Since the songs are locked down and you can't really do anything with the songs and you can't access the HDD easy, as long as the sound quality is good, I guess this doesn't matter.

I'm not worried about the slow album scrolling feature for IPODs as I don't own an Ipod and don't plan on buying one.

Is the anti-reflective screen that bad? The eclipse is pretty good actually.

Decisions decisions.... Thanks again for all of your comments!

Posted Aug 09, 2006 · 18:55 UTC#9

Helevitia said:
Is the anti-reflective screen that bad? The eclipse is pretty good actually.

Decisions decisions.... Thanks again for all of your comments!

I didn't think it was all that bad. I actually didn't notice it.

And you are welcome.

Posted Aug 09, 2006 · 23:46 UTC#10

Passat 05 said:
My biggest disappointment with the Pioneer units, coming from an OEM navi, is the lack of a good antireflection coating. The screen is great on heavy overcast days and at night but in sunny conditions the screen totally washes out.

why dont u just get an antiglare sticky thingy and cut it to the size you need, heres a link

http://www.photodon.com/lcdprotect-sheet.htm#glare

This is just one manufacturer that i quickly found using google. i am sure there are a million other manufacturers.

Thanks for pointing this out though as Miami is known for very very bright days.

Posted Aug 10, 2006 · 06:03 UTC#11

I went and checked out both the Z1 and the IVA-W200 without the nav unit attached to it. Both systems are very nice.

I could honestly go either way. So basically all day long I was trying to figure out if MP3's burned to a DVD and playable by the Alpine unit and being able to connect my MP3 player via USB and controlled by the unit was worth the extra $500. The answer was finally no, it's not worth it. So I was all set on buying the Z1 when I happened upon the best factory authorized deal for the Alpine I've seen. I can get both the IVA-W200 and the Nav system for $2180! That sold me to go Alpine. But I wanted to atleast follow up this thread and thank everyone for their feedback, much appreciated! Since I can't seem to find any good info on the Alpine unit anywhere, I will gladly come back here and post my experiences if you so wish? I don't want to piss off the owner of this site or anything, so let me know if that is a problem.

Thanks,
Dave

Posted Aug 10, 2006 · 12:55 UTC#12

Thanks Dave, Would like to hear how your Alpine works out for you.The more info we can pass on about these units the better our chances of making the best decision on our next purchase.

Posted Aug 28, 2006 · 01:50 UTC#13

Cirbirus said:
I think the navigation on the Z1 is outstanding and the sound quality of the unit is head-and-shoulders above the Alpine I replaced (I'm not sure why everyone seems to love Alpine, for me it was one of the worst radios I've ever owned).

The time and care spent on the navigation software for the Z1 is evident and was clearly the main focus of the unit but they seem to have let some junior programmers, or maybe some homeless guy they pulled off the street, handle everything else.

For instance:

[rant]
The iPod module is especially bad. This is partly poor hardware design in the way the iPod interface works (like a CD changer) and partly really, really, really bad programming. If you happen to be, oh I don't know, DRIVING and you're distracted in the middle of suffering through the painfully slow iPod browser it will forget where you are and take you back to the song display. You just spent the last 2 mins trying to get to the album you want to listen to and now you will have to start all over again. How is that helpful? If anything it seems unsafe.

You also can't drill up once you pick something to play. For example; you just spent 3 days browsing to an album and are playing it. After a few seconds it "forgets" that you were browsing and you can't go back to the list of tracks on that album. How is that helpful? Why would you even do that? It remembers it for a little while so this is clearly a programmer making it forget. Why? Does this programmer hate me?

If I were the lead programmer on that job I would immediately fire whomever was responsible for these insanely stupid decisions.

Also, the Sirius support looks like it was added as an after thought while the XM application looks pretty good and seems to be quite useful.

Unfortunately for some unfathomable reason they decided to display a huge Sirius logo instead of displaying something that would be useful like channel number and name, artist, and song title all at once. You can get that info by clicking the display button but why not just display it? Do we really need a Sirius logo that takes up half the display area? Even with the superfluous logo all that info would fit so why not display it?

This also makes the unit less safe as it causes the driver to be more distracted as they have to keep pressing the Display button to get all the info you want. I'm guessing Sirius support was added at the last minute so they didn't bother to do any kind of use cases or interface design review.

Oh, and a clarification on the "MP3" recording for the Z1. It doesn't record your songs as MP3's, it records them as ATRAC3's; a proprietary Sony file format. This also makes absolutely no sense. They already have the license to play MP3's, why spend more money to use a substandard, proprietary, format? This is probably an example of some management weenie flexing their muscle to make themselves feel like they contributed to the product when what they are really doing is damaging their own product.

You should also know that you can not just copy mp3's to the system. You have to burn them to an Audio CD and then let the Z1 rip them at 4x. This of course will, and does, make your songs sound horrible because you are recompressing already compressed data. I also got a lot of audio skipping when I tried this.

And finally; you can put in a data CD of mp3 songs and it will play them but you can't put in a data DVD of mp3s. This makes absolutely no sense and is simply another example of a company purposefully crippling their own product so they can sell you something else too (an iPod adapter most likely). For me this makes the library feature of the unit useless.
[/rant]

All that being said I love my Z1 but it's a love/hate relationship. The Z1 is fantastic at navigation but it has some serious flaws when it comes to letting you use your own library of music and Sirius support was added as an afterthought.

I couldn't agree more regarding iPod and Sirius integration. It's pathetic, really. I just posted my review in the Z1 general area, but was blasted immediately by what could only be a Pioneer rep....

In my book, if you're paying more that $2k for a unit, and a major selling feature of that unit is iPod integration, it should hum. To me, the iPod feature is simply unusable due to the hopelessly slow search function. I've read rumor posts along the lines that Pioneer is planning on updating the iPod interface. Just a simple alpha selection range at the top for song/artist first letter selection would be a big damn improvement. :lol:

Posted Aug 31, 2006 · 00:31 UTC#14

Cirbirus said:
I think the navigation on the Z1 is outstanding and the sound quality of the unit is head-and-shoulders above the Alpine I replaced (I'm not sure why everyone seems to love Alpine, for me it was one of the worst radios I've ever owned).

Outstanding???! Have you ever used another GPS system? I had a Garmin 2720 before buying my new truck and installing the Z1 and the Garmin blew away the Pioneer in EVERY facet of navigation. It was faster, much more accurate, and gave much better, clearer directions. Since the voice was synthesized, not recorded, the directions were much better (I know the Z1 has voice synthesis, but I was VERY disappointed to find out that only the street name is synthesized, everything else is recorded, and they only say the street name once). The only advantage the Z1 has over the Garmin is that it is in the dash instead of on top.

Posted Aug 31, 2006 · 02:39 UTC#15

Helevitia said:
I can get both the IVA-W200 and the Nav system for $2180! That sold me to go Alpine.

Dave, what are you doing with the AVN5500 you bought.. if the price is right, I might be interested? (might be an option for the wife's car) if you know what I mean