Weird. Is there a dimmer setting like the other AVICs have?

somebody else posted that he had the brightness cranked

Wow, after reading the things around here, I'm thinking at this point the 8120 is the way to go........ I'm sure Pioneer will fix what they can, but I'm going to purchase this now, and I dont want to have a goofy unit that will get updated at some point.....

I don't get it, the video review by JasonH showed how clear & beautiful

the f90bt screen was. But your pics showed otherwise.

How many of you have this problem?

I've been waiting for the f-series, and now I"m not so sure I want one.

Dimmer and brightness are two completely different settings on the other avics

somebody else posted that he had the brightness cranked

I agree; I thought the F90BT unit featured in Jason's video looked great. Just a thought - I wonder if Mikeinnj's vehicle has DRLs and he wired illumination wire into that circuit - thus the unit thinks the headlights are on in daytime?

Maybe the low contrast display has something to do with daytime/nightime modes?

day/night only changes the map, not the rest of the screens.

Its usable even now. If there are some color choices added we'll be great. It may just be me but the overall speed of the unit seems better with it bypassed.

I have a canbus adapter, the illumination is not the problem. The DRLs have nothing to do with the illumination feed that it gets from the canbus.

I have had two other units that dimmed properly off the same feed when the head lights are on. When you go into the video settings to adjust the brightness on the F series, if I turn my headlights on, the brightness setting goes from 10 to 8. That is how you adjust for each setting. Turn headlights off, adjust for day viewing, turn headlights on and the setting for night time can be changed. Well, I'll post pics on Thursday to compare to when my 8120 comes in.

With the 700BT, when I drive with my sunglasses on (most of the time), the screen looks like its ALMOST off.

This is very disappointing.

Is the official resolution on the 8120 as good?

Has anyone reported this brightness issue on the F90/F900?

How is the outbound BT audio on the Kenwoods?

The resolution of the Kenwood is less at 480x234 vs 800x480. But at these tiny screen sizes, there's no noticeable difference for interfaces, menus, maps, etc but is more noticeable with DVDs. Dvds have resolution of 720x480 which is damn close to the F series native resolution.

However, though the resolution on the Kenwood is lower, the screen is much more vibrant and bright, even in direct sunlight. I had the 5120 and could see it clearly even on the brightest of conditions.

Rdkl talked out the issue of screen brightness yesterday when he had the same problem of not being able see the screen with sunglasses on. He has 90BTs. All the units have the same screen so I can only assume that all would be somewhat hard to read in ambient daylight.

I never had problems or complaints of the outgoing phone audio quality on my 5120 with the bluebooth box. People were not able to tell that I was on a speaker phone.

mikeinnj - Thanks for the feedback.

I am really on the fence. I don't believe that the 8120 has any of the MSN Direct stuff like showtimes, gas preices, traffic, etc or does it?

I also read that the F does not allow you to say "call Jill" like the cheeseball actor did in the pioneer traffic video (at least with an Iphone).

Now the screen looks like a washed out has been? If this is confrimed in other installs - there are going to be many unhappy F owners.

Is the NAV routing inferior to the 8120. Which unit did I see options to select from: shortest vs. fastest vs most economical ??

Garmin beats the crap out of the Pioneer nav hands down. Mainly due to it not crashing when searching POI and text to speech actually working for street names. The only thing that I wish the Garmin had was to be able to direct dial the POI via bluetooth like the F series can. But when the POI search crashes damn near every time, and the outgoing Bluetooth sounds terrible.. well its not very much fun.

With the Kenwood you can get the GXM 30 XM Radio tuner that gets XM Radio, NavTraffic as well as NavWeather and puts it all through the nice looking Garmin interface. It will overlay weather conditions on the map just like the weather channel.

Sorry if I am sounding like a broken record regarding the F series, it's just that from the looks of it, there ARE going to be a lot of pissed off people in the next couple of weeks. I just want to help other people wait off on these for a bit and see what happens. Many of the people here are buying online and will not be able to easily return these units (if able to at all) like I was with my local shop. I have heavily anticipated these units since the day they were announced and so far have been a huge let down in EVERY respect. Most of the issues could be fixed via firmware, but I know that only the major bugs will be fixed eventually.

I was on the fence the whole week about what to do, should I return it?, etc. Every time I got in the car and used the unit some more, my answer became clearer as I found something else wrong with the unit and pushed me closer to the edge of getting rid of it. Like this morning, I found that you have to press the XM presets twice every time to get it to register. Press presets button, presets menu comes up, press preset #1, the chime sounds, but nothing happens, then I have to press it again to get it to go. Minor annoyance, but it worked better on the D3 and most likely will not get fixed on this. Too small of a bug. What pushed me over the edge was this afternoon, I was navigating home, I got a phone call, the guy could not hear me, and while trying to yell into the mic and shield it from any possible background noise, the nav would not shut up (You are over the speed limit, recalculating route, turn around, recalculating route, turn right in 400 feet, you are over the speed limit). The thing was going berserk. Like I said, I just want to warn all the other early adopters of the F series as these things in their current state are not where they should be software wise.

Garmin beats the crap out of the Pioneer nav hands down. Mainly due to it not crashing when searching POI and text to speech actually working for street names. The only thing that I wish the Garmin had was to be able to direct dial the POI via bluetooth like the F series can. But when the POI search crashes damn near every time, and the outgoing Bluetooth sounds terrible.. well its not very much fun.

 

With the Kenwood you can get the GXM 30 XM Radio tuner that gets XM Radio, NavTraffic as well as NavWeather and puts it all through the nice looking Garmin interface. It will overlay weather conditions on the map just like the weather channel.

My Garmin nuvi 360 with bluetooth will direct dial POI's Are you sure the 8120 won't do this?

Yeah, the bluetooth in this unit is done by parrot and not through the Garmin interface. Check out the Navi portion of the user manual here: http://akamaipix.crutchfield.com/Manuals/113/113DNX8120.PDF

The navi part is at the bottom portion of the PDF. As you can see, the Navtraffic/Weather is beautifully integrated to the Nav software with the ability to check the weather near the POI and much more.

mikeinnj, it sounds like you had a good experience with the 5120, so what made you decide to get rid of it?

I got rid of it about a month or so before I got the 700BT. The ONLY, and I mean ONLY thing that made me get rid of it was that the F series had voice control and loved that idea. Other than that I had no stability problems with the 5120. Great sound, wicked fast iPod control, great bluetooth, and a VERY sensitive touch screen (Or more responsive interface). Way, way more responsive than my D3 and much more than the F700. I never, ever had to press the same spot twice to get things to register.

What is the point of iPod voice control if everything else makes me take my eyes off the road every two seconds.

Though, one very positive thing about the voice control for the bluetooth. I was messing around with it the other day, I made a farting noise into the mic and it called my exgirlfriend. That was quite funny to me and my fellow occupants.

It looks like he thought the F was going to be a better unit, but got disappointed instead. I too am starting to get worried and my F90 is paid in full, just waiting for it to ship.

Though, one very positive thing about the voice control the for the bluetooth. I was messing around with it the other day, I made a farting noise into the mic and it called my exgirlfriend. That was quite funny to me and my fellow occupants.

The thing is, I KNEW there were going to be bugs. But more minor bugs. Things like the bluetooth dropping the phone, or the voice control being a bit off, or the "Menu" button not working on the iPod screen like on the D3. Little things. I was prepared to see some glitches and weird stuff.

Freezing, restarting, and error messages due to finding POI, taking 3 minutes to start up, and the bluetooth being pretty much totally useless for talking to others are not things that I would expect to have gone wrong out of the box. I did not have any issues like this with the D3 or the 5120.

Yeah, the bluetooth in this unit is done by parrot and not through the Garmin interface. Check out the Navi portion of the user manual here: http://akamaipix.crutchfield.com/Manuals/113/113DNX8120.PDF

 

The navi part is at the bottom portion of the PDF. As you can see, the Navtraffic/Weather is beautifully integrated to the Nav software with the ability to check the weather near the POI and much more.

Thanks Mike, everyday I am getting closer to a kenwood. I am still hoping a miracle comes through with the Pioneer though, I just need to make a decision before the al-eds deal goes away.

This info is invaluable. The lack of BT dialling of POI's on the 8120 is a bummer, but like you said if the BT outgoing audio is so bad and the NAV won't shut up - it mine as well not be on the Pioneer.

There have been several posts that just showed up overnight Tuesday of new installs and most of them are pretty negative. In fact, the only good news has been the that bypass has been worked out, but otherwise, no on has refuted anything Mike has said, specifically:

-ultra slow booting

-poor outgoing BT audio

-poor touch screen performance (tiny buttons, having to double tap)

-Ipod crashing the unit

-poor display in daytime (still waiting for more, but I don't know why)

Has anybody even seen the swirlly yellow fairy dust coming out of the unit when you talk to it that was featured so promimantly on the Pioneer videos???

I swear, no fairy dust = NO f-series for me - that's the last straw.

I probably would have tried an 8120 months ago if it had a volume knob. That is my main reason for waiting for the 90.

mike, I assume you had the bluetooh add-on for your 5120? Frankly if you think the ipod control of the kenwood is acceptable (obviously lacking voice control) I will probably get a 5120 or 8120 instead. Remind me what else the 5120 is lacking in comparison to an 8120 (or 90 for that matter since this is the avic site)

Andrew

If you like the 90 I'd go that route. The 8120 had issues when it first came out. I am sure there will be firmware soon that will resolve some of these minor issues.

The screen isnt much worse than the 8120. I had a chance to ride with a coworker today and noticed it wasnt a whole lot better.

I'd like the F90 if it worked as spec'd and didn't take 2 years to start up. the F90 units folks seem to be getting don't live up to that.

I don't see startup time being able to be sped up much with firmware and aren't there D3 users still waiting for new firmware to address issues?

If I was confident Pioneer continuously ship out updated firmware I would be much more comfortable.