I just installed a 5000NEX yesterday and played with it a bit last night.

My initial thoughts are that car play rocks. When it works. Unfortunately, In the hour or so I played with it, spotify would sometimes play and car play itself would sometimes just disengage completely. The only way to get it back was to turn off the car and then it back on the reset the 5000.

Is this generally how car play is behaving at this point?

Is it better in the higher end units (7000 or 8000)?

Does anyone have any insight if the x100 (ie, 5100NEX) units will be better?

I bought it knowing it was probably going to be buggy, but didn't realize how much I would actually use it. Now that I have played with it, I can see using it all of the time. If it works.

i use Car Play all the time, and I have found some issues as well. But for me, the gain outweighs the pain. I use apple maps, music, beats, messages, phone and podcasts on Apple TV, and Sirius Radio and some FM on the NEX. For the most part, it works well, but at times it can be maddening. Here are some of my thoughts on using CarPlay for the past few months...

Make sure the Lightning cable is seated firmly, and the iPhone Lightning socket is free from lint.

I plug my iPhone in right after I start the car, but after the NEX boot up.

I unplug the iPhone before I shut off the car, and pause anything playing on the iPhone

If a CarPlay app does not play properly, I double click and swip up the app on the iPhone. Sometimes I have to reboot my iPhone for the app to work. I also have had to turn the car off and restart the NEX for proper functionality.

I was having a lot of trouble with overcast and Sticher, so I started using the Apple Podcast app, and seems to work the best.

I use Spotify and Beats. Both work well, but Beats does not yet have an icon on CapPlay so it needs to be launched from the iPhone.

The biggest issues I have has is when switching between audio sources. Sometimes the source I am switching to will not play. An iPhone reboot tends to fix this.

For some reason, using Siri to switch sources works much better than using the icons on Apple Play. Don't know why, but it has me using Siri more than I thought I would.

Which NEX unit do you have?

Spotify's carplay implementation is incredibly buggy. I use Rdio. I'm much happier with it and its app performance. Also, whenever there is an issue, their tech support has very quick response times. 

Make sure to turn on the reduce motion setting in the accessibility settings. It makes carplay faster. 

We are all waiting to see how carplay evolves over time. It runs completely from the phone, so the entire interface could change for the better in the future. 

There are several threads on the front page of this forum alluding to Carplay issues, one of them is mine.  It is unfortumate and hopefully it will get better.  But for me, sometimes I can make call, sometimes I cannot.  Sometimes I can do texts, sometimes I cannot.  Sometimes Siri, plays, sometimes not.  Generally  I need to do a reset of my phone just to get it "mostly" working.

I'm probably one of the few here that think CP isn't worth much. The only music I listen to is Pandora and there is no app for that via CP. The Pioneer app works very well with Pandora. Voice control of texting is pretty cool but the rest of it I just don't use. Apple maps are horrible for traffic display. And like you have already discovered most everything is buggy. I'm pissed I wasted so much loot on a head unit because it had CP. YMMV.

Which NEX unit do you have?

8000

... well 8.2 came out and one of the things it fixes is,

"Resolves an issue that could prevent call audio from routing to car speakers while using Siri Eyes Free"

... this seems related to the problems I have been having with Siri/Carplay etc.,

I am going to download and give it a go.

Has anyone had any luck with MLB?  the icon doesn't appear on the screen

I'm probably one of the few here that think CP isn't worth much. The only music I listen to is Pandora and there is no app for that via CP. The Pioneer app works very well with Pandora. Voice control of texting is pretty cool but the rest of it I just don't use. Apple maps are horrible for traffic display. And like you have already discovered most everything is buggy. I'm pissed I wasted so much loot on a head unit because it had CP. YMMV.

I am also one of the few. I tried it and was not impressed. Besides, I have my 2 and 4 year old girls in the vehicle at all times, and they are watching videos on the headrest monitors. I am not as distraught as some here are, because I received the 4000nex as an alternative to the 2013 model(which was not available anymore). I paid 550.00 shipped and I had never even looked at the Nex. Only after I got it and installed it, did i learn about CarPlay and AppRadio. I was excited about CarPlay, but after seeing it had only audio and not video, and the call quality was not as good as the bluetooth quality, I disabled it and carried on. My phone is not my source for music or video,(iphone6), My music is on a 128gb SDCard, and my girls movies are all on a 480 gb SSD. I have Sirius/XM, but will probably just deactivate it, because I only occasionally have listened to it. 

I have a 5000NEX , and Carplay works, but traffic doesn't show or reroute in Maps. 

I just installed a 5000nex. I am running ios8.3. I don't use spotify but I have not had one issue that's been mentioned and no bugs to mention. It's a bit underwhelming and I definitely don't feel like I can't live without it but I look forward to its evolution.
Pros: runs smooth. Nice interface. Very "clean"
Cons. Not much 3rd party app integration. The audio on calls is absolutely terrible!

I have been using CarPlay via an 8000NEX headunit since 12/14 and unfortunately CarPlay has been the buggiest software I have EVER used. 

I use CarPlay for everything except directions and when CarPlay works it's a thing of beauty - a clean and elegant extension of iOS on the Pioneer headunit.  But for whatever reasons apps and Siri constantly stop working, or work erratically, and more often than not the only way to fix this is by restarting the phone and/or restarting the car (as the Pioneer doesn't have a reset feature).  To give you an example I'll share what happened just last night - I was listening to music via Pioneer's Pandora interface, switched over to CarPlay and everything just stopped working.  Restarted the phone and CarPlay still wouldn't work.  I literally had to pull over, turn off my car, and then turn the car back on to get CarPlay to work again.  I have noticed apps getting better as updates have come out but if you're a longtime user of Apple products that has become spoiled by things working as they should out of the box, you will find CarPlay to be a very un-Apple like experience.

I have been using CarPlay via an 8000NEX headunit since 12/14 and unfortunately CarPlay has been the buggiest software I have EVER used. 

 

I use CarPlay for everything except directions and when CarPlay works it's a thing of beauty - a clean and elegant extension of iOS on the Pioneer headunit.  But for whatever reasons apps and Siri constantly stop working, or work erratically, and more often than not the only way to fix this is by restarting the phone and/or restarting the car (as the Pioneer doesn't have a reset feature).  To give you an example I'll share what happened just last night - I was listening to music via Pioneer's Pandora interface, switched over to CarPlay and everything just stopped working.  Restarted the phone and CarPlay still wouldn't work.  I literally had to pull over, turn off my car, and then turn the car back on to get CarPlay to work again.  I have noticed apps getting better as updates have come out but if you're a longtime user of Apple products that has become spoiled by things working as they should out of the box, you will find CarPlay to be a very un-Apple like experience.

What version of ios are you running?

8.3. And I also use Apple's lightning cable. Found it to work better than the Pioneer one I was using. CarPlay has definitely gotten better since I first started using it but it's just not there yet.

I have enjoyed using CarPlay. It has been bug free for me but AppLive doesn't work since I did the 1.08 firmware upgrade. I'm using a 4000NEX.

I have been using CarPlay via an 8000NEX headunit since 12/14 and unfortunately CarPlay has been the buggiest software I have EVER used. 

 

I use CarPlay for everything except directions and when CarPlay works it's a thing of beauty - a clean and elegant extension of iOS on the Pioneer headunit.  But for whatever reasons apps and Siri constantly stop working, or work erratically, and more often than not the only way to fix this is by restarting the phone and/or restarting the car (as the Pioneer doesn't have a reset feature).  To give you an example I'll share what happened just last night - I was listening to music via Pioneer's Pandora interface, switched over to CarPlay and everything just stopped working.  Restarted the phone and CarPlay still wouldn't work.  I literally had to pull over, turn off my car, and then turn the car back on to get CarPlay to work again.  I have noticed apps getting better as updates have come out but if you're a longtime user of Apple products that has become spoiled by things working as they should out of the box, you will find CarPlay to be a very un-Apple like experience.

This has been my experience exactly.  Sometimes it works, most the time it does not even when I turn car off, reset the Pioneer unit, turn carplay off and on via the unit, and the phone, even restoring iPhone seems useless etc. etc.,  I have a iPhone 6 running 8.3 with the NEX 4000.   

I have a 2014 Honda CR-V and a Pioneer AVIC-5000NEX and am using a PAC RP4-HD11 to integrate SWC/Bluetooth buttons. PAC has awesome phone/email support, very responsive, every issue resolved!

I tried the Maestro SW then the RR, and finally gave up after being strung along for months by their support who denied the i-Mid clock problem (now they've acknowledged it, but I've moved on).

I bought the 5000 to save money, but in hindsight I wish I had bought the 8000...but maybe it was a good thing, now that the 8100 is out...nah, I'll wait for the Parrot RNB6 to hit the shelves.

http://blog.parrot.com/2015/01/05/ces-2015-parrot-rnb6-the-most-advanced-in-vehicle-infotainment-system/