Attention E46 owners..
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Soldato
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The Harmon Kardon is not really much cop to be honest. I would not personally spec it from new for the system the E46 had. But the Mini system was very good. The bass was underneath the seat.
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love the oem appearance with a few great features but have been stung before on my previous double din all singing dancing unit so i opted to replace it with a kenwood, i'd certainly be interested to hear further comments about this though
Soldato
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Looks a lot better than the generic ebay ones, plus the resolutoin is much higher at 800 x 480, the ebay units tend to be 320 x 200 and look dire imo.
That satnav software looks like its IGO based which is pretty good.
That satnav software looks like its IGO based which is pretty good.
I dont think it looks at all bad, really. Hence the thread. I'm suprised how not-crap it looks.
I guess thats because they didnt design them in the year 2000 like BMW did
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lot of talk about them developing the E39 units at the moment on there forums 
Personally, I don't trust Chinese made gadgetry. It's lightyears away from the levels of Japanese or German made equipment. Every DVD player / MP3 player / knock off iPod adaptor I've bought from a Chinese manufacturer is unsuable, unreliable or is so poorly designed, that it causes more frustration than anything else. And that's before it breaks down a few months after you buy it. Lets not forget that QC in Chinese factories is appalling and R&D simply involves ripping off someone else's design or tech.
They're selling that gizmo purely on spec and price, which should never be the sole reason to buy something. I suspect quality and unsability is severely lacking. Who watches TV in a car anyway? It's also not a great place to have a sat nav screen - not anywhere close your natural line of vision when driving.
They're selling that gizmo purely on spec and price, which should never be the sole reason to buy something. I suspect quality and unsability is severely lacking. Who watches TV in a car anyway? It's also not a great place to have a sat nav screen - not anywhere close your natural line of vision when driving.
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Irrelevant. 99% of the time you are only listening to the audible prompts. Then a quick glance when approaching a large intersection/junction/motorway exit will tell you all you need to know.
Muchlike looking down at the radio momentarily.
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the technology is there and they have some of the most advanced pick and place machines around however the market for cloned or fake IC's and Low grade components makes it very difficult to churn out a quality product.
batch tracking and using official vendors is the best way to guarantee the product but the temptation for a buyer to get 1000s of ICs or other components at a fraction of the price can sometimes be too much.
the downside of all this is that the final price of the unit has to be higher, hence your branded units costing more.
its a cut throat market and hard to crack
batch tracking and using official vendors is the best way to guarantee the product but the temptation for a buyer to get 1000s of ICs or other components at a fraction of the price can sometimes be too much.
the downside of all this is that the final price of the unit has to be higher, hence your branded units costing more.
its a cut throat market and hard to crack
I suspect you are entirely correct. However, in the meantime, I see no harm in further research. There is potential for it to be decent - not as much as the potential for it to be a pile of steaming rubbish, I admit. But the chance is there.
IF its half decent, it offers a considerably better interface and featureset than the BMW system. The BMW system is a decade old (Mk4 is slightly newer but did not massively change the interface) now and looks and feels like a 10 year old IT system. Because it is. Now this wouldnt be a problem if its price reflected this but it doesnt, it's still eye wateringly expensive to retrofit.
Rather than this unit being cheap I think the alternative units are expensive. Lets look at how much this sort of functionality costs - a bluetooth module for your PC is £5 retail. A digital TV tuner is 20 quid retail. Just because we've come to accept the fact that BMW charge £300 for Bluetooth and £600 for a dealer digital TV module doesnt mean this is how much its actually costing to make!
It's like suggesting a 1Tb hard drive for £65 is a cheap knockoff because a Microsoft Xbox 60gb HDD costs £59.99....
And once you've retrofitted it, you've got no touch screen etc etc.
However, until now its the only real choice if you dont want your interior looking completely crud.
I'm just interested to see how these fare, thats all
It's the same location as the OEM nav screen.
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reading on there forums they seem to be quite eager to crack into the marketplace and are open to suggestions, they've even reduced the font size on the buttons due to a recomendation to get closer to OEM
Soldato
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Theres a difference between chinese made stuff and chinese made fake stuff you buy on ebay though.
Practically everything you buy in the high street is made in china, Vaio laptops, TVs Hifis etc. This doesn't not appear to be a fake chinese knock off.
Er, most people tend to look at the screen. And when you're approaching, junctions, exits, roundabouts, spaghetti junctions etc (all of increase the risk of a crash exponentially), the LAST thing you'd want to be doing is taking your eyes further away from road than you have too....
It's not the ideal place to have a screen. Fact.
It's where original sat nav would be. I don't see the issue. Besides, even if it was only to be mp3/SD enabled system, it's still quite excellent value compared to available factory options.
What this thing really needs is something like canbus/obd read outs. If it could read errors and show fuel and power statistics in customized format it woud be flying off the shelves.
I'm not talking about knock offs.
There's a huge difference between something assembled in China under Sony supervision, Sony management, Sony QC standards, on Sony production lines, with Sony trained employees, with Sony R&D and something that's conceived *cough* copied, manufactured and supported from start to finish by a Chinese company.
Sony have a brand to protect and understand consumers, markets, product support, and everything else. They've had 40+ years experience of it. XingXang Corp just want to make a fast buck with the least possible expenditure. The position may be different in 30 years time once the Chinese electronics industry matures and they start having a brand to protect, but no way is a Chinese made gizmo (ie conceived from inception to manufacture) currently going to have the usability, reliability or product support of product from the best competing non-Chinese companies.
But it's not the ideal place to have a sat nav screen is it? It's neat in terms of styling, but the best place would be a flip up screen on the top of that dash as it saves you having to take your eyes further away from the road than you have to. The only reason its not there is that is difficult to reverse engineer, and would need to be designed in originally.
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I completely agree.
There are two ways this could go:
a) As you say, fast buck. Cheap crap.
b) Genuine care over product quality given the vehicles the products are targetted at.
So far, the things on the forum tend to suggest that b) is at least a possibility. Perhaps this is just wishful thinking but I see no harm in waiting to find out.
