Customer Reviews

Alpine iXA-W407 7" DIGITAL MEDIA RECEIVER

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I've been searching for a while for something that will work properly with the iPhone. A lot of the units I've come across seem to work with the iPod but then throw up that unsupported device message on the iPhone, not what I wanted. Took a bit of a gamble on this as it was fairly new when I ordered, but I've had rock solid performance from Alpine in the past so I went with it.
The install's not too bad. I was replacing a double DIN unit so it slotted straight in. The wiring wasn't too much trouble, pretty standard stuff with well labelled wires and a good manual. The hardest part was figuring out the wiring from the Subaru factory harness, but no big deal really. If buying this unit, you really want to get the PAC TR7 Universal Trigger Module as well. Without it you'll need to tap into the park brake and foot brake which can be a major pain. Instead you can connect this little module in and bypass the lockout 'feature' which prevents you from watching video and changing any settings unless both brakes are on.
Once installed the unit seems to work fine. Radio reception is really good with no static, don't have Sirius here so can't vouch for that but I'm sure it works fine. Working with the iPhone is great, I just get in connect the phone and the music starts. Sometimes it'll start from the beginning of the song list meaning that I keep getting the same song on startup, but I just hit 'next' and it soon skips to the next random song. I think this might happen if you use the phone for something else whicl you're out of the car. If you leave it in the iPod app it might just pick up from where it left off. Would need to test this though.
Bluetooth has worked really well. The unit and iPhone found each other and paired quickly, syncing contacts. Now I just jump into the car and they connect automatically. Call clarity is really good with the supplied mic, people say they can't tell I'm using a handsfree set in the car.
Only real trouble has been with streaming audio over Bluetooth via A2DP. When streaming audio there was a tiny pause in the music every 20-30 seconds. Sometimes the problem disappeared and sometimes it was really bad. It made using streaming audio impossible so I've disabled it. Looks like the problem is with the way Apple have implemented A2DP on the phone and not the fault of Alpine. This was made worse because as soon as Bluetooth connected, it would start streaming, overriding the wired iPhone source that was already running and causing problems. If you need to stop this behaviour and have a jailbroken iPhone, look on Cydia for an app called BTPS which lets you disable A2DP and therefore audio streaming. Works great and all the other phone functions over Bluetooth still work.
Haven't tried the nav unit either. Using TomTom on the iPhone so no need really.
Audio quality is great as you'd expect from Alpine. Some of the screen graphics can look a little low-res at times, but video plays fine and looks really good.
Great unit in all, highly recommended.

The system works great absolutely love it!!! Shipped quickly from Amazon and arrived in 4 days. I would recommend this Alpine unit. The user interface is easy. The buttons on the touchscreen are large enough to use the functions without taking your eyes off the road for too long.

Ok I'm going to be perfectly honest here , When I buy an Alpine product I expect quality , even if I'm paying several more for less , for example the pioneer equivalent cost 100 dollars less and offers DVD play back , and SSD card input .

Now my experience: I was highly exited about my purchase , I had 4 component Alpine mids and 2 alpine tweeters in total on a stock 08 honda civic radio and two 10^ kickers with an alpine amp 500 watt pushing them , the sound was ok , but the bass was too hard and made the car rattle , the high low addapter made the bass dirty and the stock radio barely pushed the high end speaker to the point where I had to crank it to 100% sometimes making it sound like crap , when my head unit installed and proper RCA cables running to the amp I was like whoa ! the sound was crisp , the bass was there , but not hard enough to make it bother you , I can only compare it to the sound coming out of a Bose system , then I tried setting it up and had to drive back to the store because the untit does not come with an owners manual , after he explained how to access the settings I got to play with them while safely parked on the side of the road , after some tweaking I went to pair my phone with the blue tooth , the blue tooth paired quickly and off I go , made a test call and was surprised how clear the sound was , the person I called couldn't beleive it was a hand's free because it was so clear.

But like a new girlfriend (or boyfriend)the flaws start coming out quick , after I turned the car off and on the radio could not see the phone until a call was initiated on the I-phone itself , and then sometimes it would just go into "error" and it would not work at all(the blue tooth option that is ) I would have to switch the car off and then on to get it to work , after some infuriating pairing and un-pairing of the phone now it seems to pair correctly every time , except when it get's the error message at which point the only fix is to turn the car off and on , this can't even be blamed on Apple since this is just a nasty error in the screen , nothing will work with blue tooth after that .

Then more disappointments , I find out that a lesser one din unit out there allows you to control Pandora trough the radio , but the app does not work for my radio , why would Alpine do this for only one type of radio when my radio was clearly designed for Apple products , sometimes I'm forcing the signal trough and my radio helplessly displays whatever song it was trying to play off the memory of my phone instead of what is playing on Pandora , and here is where things get a little wierd , if I'm streaming the sound trough blue tooth then the radio allows me to switch to the next song trough the radio touch screen, if the i-phone is plugged in then I have to use the I-phone screen to switch .

And more complains , when the phone is plugged into the radio's I-phone connector the phone turns on , which makes the I-phone sync the blue tooth with the radio , at which point the radio would automaticly switch to blue tooth audio ,and of course it sounds much crapier so I had to disconnect the phone and plug it back in , from there on it seems like a fight between the radio trying to use the dock connector or the blue tooth.

Overall way too much trouble to be fighting with all this while driving !

In addition my I-phone has a built in GPS , why not allow the radio to become a full extension to my phone gps and allow me to see what is going on there instead of the phone ? well 2 answers ,
1:Apple won't allow it , because they are pricks and they fear you may start hacking into it.
2:Alpine wants you to buy their 250 dollars (plus installation) gps brain .

Then my girlfriend jumped in the car and wanted to listen to the regular radio , to which I had to tell her that I didn't think the car had a radio since it is all digital to which she made a face , and then she asked me to let her put her CD in the radio and I told her that there is no such a thing , at to which she said "oh" , embarrassing , later I found out that the car does indeed have a radio function , but it is so anti intuitive that I had to watch a you tube vide on how to use my radio to find out I did indeed had a tuner on it (but no cd player lol)

The bottom line is this , Alpine doesn't give you anything for free, you want gps? extra , you want HD radio ? extra , you want to watch DVDs? extra .

Pros: decent price and lots of room for expansion , being able to plug in your i-phone with it's built in connector is nice ,and so it being able to go trough the folders and play lists , sound quality is amazing , controls are intuitive and the unit is nice looking and clean , so much that if you turn it off it looks like part of the car , blue tooth calling is nice with it's included mic , enough options in the set up to fiddle with .

Cons: it is cumbersome to be fighting with it when trying to sync with the blue tooth and errors , the menus are confusing , a removable face plate would had been nice , GPS (if you decide to buy the add on) has old maps on it with no word on updates ,the I-phone does not truly interact with this radio as much as it is marketed to be , Pandora controlling should be a feature and not having to buy another radio to have this feature .

Hope this helps.

Please note that this Alpine unit would work only with iPhone (or other Apple product) for movies! If you connect a USB thumb drive, it will play MP3 songs, but not movie files.

If you are anti-apple person (like me) - don't buy this unit!

Unfortunately I have no experience on this unit, so I have nothing to share. I have to return/refund this unit and get something else (I am big fan of Alpine - must be good!)