How to Choose 9 inch car stereo?

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Join Date: Jul Location: Pune|Vijayawada Posts: 57 Thanked: 23 Times Re: The Android Head-Unit buying guide Quote: Originally Posted by Abhi_abarth I would suggest reach them directly which is what I did. Do they have their network of technicians in all cities including Hyderabad ( in Gachibowli).


Good Luck
Thank you so much. I have done so. I'm looking at this as just another purchase and hence not being alarmed by the price. Just as I'd want better processor and ram in my for lasting longer, I'm thinking of the Xtreme 3.0 with either 4 or 6 gb ram. 4gb one is coming for 37.5k and 6gb for 45k with free rear camera. Youtube videos of this model look really good and it looks to be very snappy and responsive (which is a must for me, I really have less patience with slow tech )

SO i'd otherwise not have thought of spending so much on a head unit, and preferred to go for expensive components and amp or something, this will deplete a ton of my budget. I don't want to skimp on it because without responsiveness getting this device is a waste, so will try and max out. 360 degree is not important for me so will avoid getting it, unless they throw in some deal at the same price.

I hope I'm thinking about this the right way. Please let me know if others have suggestions on an upgrade pathway for this in terms of damping, and especially good component speakers. I'm going to keep this car till the legal limit of so Looking to spruce it up bit by bit to make the journey more enjoyable. It is just 86k kms young BHPian  
Join Date: Mar Location: Bangalore / Boise Posts: 944 Thanked: 1,545 Times Re: The Android Head-Unit buying guide Quote: Originally Posted by sultanofswing I hope I'm thinking about this the right way. Please let me know if others have suggestions on an upgrade pathway for this in terms of damping, and especially good component speakers. I'm going to keep this car till the legal limit of so Looking to spruce it up bit by bit to make the journey more enjoyable. It is just 86k kms young I recently installed woodman play series on my xuv500. Let me explain my thoughts. There are 3 ways you can use the system:
1. Use the android system as your main system and play things right off the main OS. Like you have your music apps and navigation etc right from the headunit.
2. Use wired android auto or carplay and treat the unit more or less as a dumb unit and let your do the heavy lifting.
3. Use wireless android auto for a seamless experience.

On my unit, (1) is too slow and painful and in that respects going for the extreme model will help. However, how would the unit get internet access? That means you would have to either get a model with a sim card and maintain a subscription for it or use your as a hotspot. If you use your as a hotspot, it will discharge fast, which means that you will need to have the plugged in all the time. Imagine, you get into the car and you cannot just click on navigate and get going - you need to have ritual to switch on hotspot, connect the to the charger, then open the right app on the HU and only then you are good to go. On top of all this, it's slow.

Contrastingly, with option (2) the is doing all the heavy lifting and so the performance is superb even with basic models. So, your use case would be, you get into the car, plug your , open the Zeta app, and you are good to start playing music or navigate. Since your is not exposing the hotspot, it would not drain the battery heavily. However, remember one thing here, since the is plugged in to the HUz the charging rate may be slow. On my setup it's so slow that it just is almost useless from the charging perspective. It only helps that android auto works seamlessly.

Now coming to the best of both worlds, using wireless auto, where the HU becomes a wireless hotspot and the connects to it, this use case means that you can plug in the to its native charger or even wireless chargers as you see fit, and it would just work. My current use case is, I enter the car and just start the car and start driving. I open the Zeta app and it takes about 10 seconds to establish the connection and I can simply start navigation after that. I have a choice to leave the in my pocket or plug it in for charging.

So if option 3 works well, it's the best. However, with a lot of mix and match of phones it may or may not work well. For me it is working well.

So, whether you buy extreme or not should ideally depend on the sound quality and whether you get better sound with the higher end system than due to a better ram/cpu. Whatever you buy, remember that your will tend to get updates 2 to 3 times in the next 6 to 8 years but it's likely that the android music system stays at the same OS level. So using your as your main system is also future proof.

There is some complexity if 2 people drive often. In my case my wife and I both use the car and if both of us get into the car, the car pairs to one , and it's not clear which it will pair to. This use case adds a little complexity but it's manageable if you get a hang of how the connection works and it will add one more step to ensure it always connects as you want it to. Last edited by deep_bang : 9th August at 06:44. Senior - BHPian  
Join Date: Nov Location: India Posts: 1,006 Thanked: 2,498 Times Re: The Android Head-Unit buying guide Quote: Originally Posted by scorpion_blore I'm looking for an infotainment system to replace the OEM setup. My main requirements are FM, audio playback from songs stored in USB, Google Maps, Amazon Music and such audio streaming apps.

I saw some reviews in YouTube where users mentioned that Google Maps is extremely laggy. Is this a common issue? Isn't a 2GB system enough to handle Google Maps? If you want to play the music from USB then look for the headunit with dual USB ports.

After trying out 3 different Android HUs in my car for few days, I switched onto conventional Android Auto/Carplay headunit due to the unacceptably poor audio quality and poor user experience while accessing the routine driving related tasks like navigation and all. It was so much distracting and risky to use in a car.

Apart from the audio quality and user friendly simple interface, another good thing with the conventional navigation units is that the performance depends on your . For eg when I got the system in early , I was using a mid-ranger mobile bought back in . it was doing the job and I had no complaints. Performance was predictably consistent.

But then I got the Pixel 6 and the user experience improved drastically. Its got much more responsive. Pixels 6 has some dedicated hardware for AI based voice assistance so now the system quickly captures my voice commands without missing anything. This is the most important factor while choosing the right infotainment system for car since the voice assistance is supposed to be the primary mode of interaction due to the obvious safety concerns.

Also tried my cousin's iPhone with Apple maps and Siri and experienced same smooth performance with that as well.

If you are planning to do some tinkering with the car's features via the Canbus interface then definitely go with the Android systems along with the appropriate Canbus adapter, otherwise the conventional systems are better choice to make your routine drives easier. Last edited by tbppjpr : 11th August at 09:27.