Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
It's the best way to put an iPod in your car, but it still needs work, June 29, 2008
I've made my way through a bunch of different car stereo head units over the years, but ever since the iPod has become the de-facto standard, I've wondered why nobody made a decent iPod-friendly one. Alpine's iDA-X100 is probably the first usable product for this purpose (its predecessor, the X001 was essentially a beta-tester version of the X100, and by many accounts, not ready for prime time). Sure, there are a slew of crummy FM transmitter adapters, and many stereos have auxiliary (Aux) inputs, but those are merely kludges.
The X100 displays the artist, track, and album of the currently-playing song. It lets you quickly scroll through all your artists, tracks, and albums, so you can find the song you want fast. All this works very well, and does so while charging your iPod in your glove compartment or wherever you want to put it. Don't have an iPod? No problem - just put your tunes on any inexpensive USB memory key and plug it in!
The X100's bright screen rivals a typical iPod screen, although is definitely a step down from my iPhone. The volume knob, which also affords navigation through your collection, is large and comfortable. In all, a solid design designed for use while driving. (This means that, unlike the iPod itself, you can use without having to look at it.)
So, why not five stars? First, the screen is too small. With the X100's large, easy-to-read font, there's only room for 6-7 characters. Listening to the White Stripes? You'll only see "White S" on the screen. Sure, 'long' text scrolls back and fourth, but that's a poor design for drivers who need to keep their eyes on the road. If I had designed this unit, I would've moved the big knob all the way to the left, and made the screen twice as wide. As it is, the left side is wasted anyway.
Second, when a song begins playing, the text rolls out on the screen very slowly, like it's being typed one letter at a time from a typewriter. It can take 10-15 seconds before everything appears, making it a stupid design for a display that must relay all its information at a glance.
Third, the 'Back' and 'Next' buttons are small and flush with the surface of the unit; you can't use the big wheel to go to the next track. These buttons should be more prominent, perhaps akin to the slick lever on Sony's excellent CDX-C90.
Fourth, the X100 can be set to have blue or red backlighting. But the red is a harsh, dark crimson that looks terrible next to the amber lighting on my dashboard. Why no soft amber/orange setting? Who knows.
Fifth, the X100 can display cover art from the current song (provided you've loaded one into iTunes), but, for some reason, it displays a very low-resolution image. This is particularly glaring when you hit the Display button to hide the text and display only the cover art; it just looks bad. I have high-res cover art in my collection that looks great on my iPhone's screen, but the X100 just doesn't use it. Perhaps a firmware upgrade will fix this?
Finally, and it may sound like nit-picking, but the X100's customizable wallpaper feature is poorly executed. You have two trendy patterns from which to choose, or you can download additional patterns from Alpine's awful website (which was last updated in 2005, by the way, and only works on Internet Explorer). Although Alpine has gone out of their way to prevent customers from creating their own wallpaper (for reasons that completely elude me), you can do as I did and download the free, third-party xndconverter.exe utility and create your own APN files. With my own photo as the wallpaper, the X100 head unit actually now looks nice in my car, despite the lack of a matching backlight color.
As for the sound quality (which is supremely important, despite the fact that I've spent most of this review talking about the interface), I'd rate it a solid 'B.' The sound is pretty good, but lacks the richness and warmth of the gold standard, the Sony CDX-C90 (even when playing the very same MP3s). Perhaps the PXA-H100 IMPRINT add-on accessory will improve the sound, but I haven't tried it yet.
To sum up, this is THE unit to get if you want to listen to your iPod/iPhone in the car, but don't expect it to be perfect. I'd give it only three stars if there were competition, but since it's the only worthy game in town, it earns four.
(Note: At the time of this writing, Alpine also makes the ida-x200 and ida-x300, but these are lesser models, both without the X100's bright color screen.)
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Comme ci, comme ca, November 23, 2008
Corporate greed is the watchword these days, isn't it.? I bought this receiver for the ipod interface which is very nice and which alone is the reason for my purchase.But that's where the fun ends. There is no remote
included or one dedicated to it in the alpine store. There is a woeful
lack of audio eq, save simple bass-level,treble-level, and sub-level.One
is forced into considering their miracle imprint module (microphone xtra
too)to provide audio tweaking.(I purchased a Kicker brand kq9 graphic eq
half-din which works perfectly.)
You will crash into the nearest tree trying to call up the radio presets.
This requires 3 steps forcing the driver to take her/his eyes off of the road for too long.The presets don't show the channel or frequency either-
just "preset 1,2,3,..." The engineering of this product should have been focused more on making it a more complete, user-friendy unit rather than how much could be made with add-ons.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Alpine X100 has Exceeded My Expectations...., August 10, 2008
I use the X100 with a 16G USB thumb drive onto which I've transferred my entire classical collection (250+ CDs). The active display and large rotary knob make searching for a particular Composer/Symphony/Movement (i.e. folders and subfolders) very intuitive. Other head units had 'dot matrix' displays which were hard to read and only showed a few characters of the titles; on most, trying to navigate up and down the file structure was an exercise in frustration. I don't know of any digital car receiver on the market that can come close to this Alpine when it comes to ease of use. This unit has a good amp - my car speakers never sounded better. When the car ignition is turned off and back on, the X100 remembers where it left off in the music. A slight drawback is that you have to read the manual to learn how to set the presets on the radio bands (takes 10 seconds once you learn how). Automatic scrolling takes care of extremely long titles but it would be nice if Alpine would add a second (smaller) font to the display. I have never used an iPod with the Alpine and I never will - the thumb drive is cheaper and works perfectly. I transferred music to the drive using Apple's iTunes and my PC.
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