Customer Reviews

JVC KD-R900 30K Color-Illumination Single-DIN Flip-Down CD Receiver with Dual USB 2.0 for iPod/iPhone and Bluetooth

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Somehow I became a JVC man. I started off in 2002 following a recommendation from a friend to get a deck that could read MP3s. Since then I've bought three more decks and always came back to JVC. They tend to have innovative features, such as initially the ability to read MP3s on CDs, and then a front panel USB ports. I really looked at the specs for Sony, Pioneer, Eclipse, and Kenwood, but they never compared feature wise.

So the RD-900 looks good and does a lot: Bluetooth, a USB port and a 3.5mm audio in on the front panel. With the RD-900 I bought the optional HD Radio adapter the KT-HD300. It works great. JVC paired down a lot of gimmicky cruft they had an previous models. You get the choose the color of the display, so you can match you cars lighting and gauges.

There is a front and rear USB port. One has to pick one for use with the tiny BT adapter. If you use USB sticks like me, it make sense to use the BT adapter on the rear. If you prefer to use a small USB hard drive or IPOD in your glove box or console, you might want to route the rear port there and put the BT adapter in the front port.

The HD Radio is cool. I live in a big city so I get good reception. Finding a place to put the HD Radio adapter is a pain. I would rather have bought a unit without a CD player and HD Radio built in.

There are a few nits. No hard radio presets: one has the scroll through a menu. The bluetooth could interact with my Nokia better --- it turns on BT music streaming, but does not turn it off; placing calls should be easier; and when getting an SMS message, displaying it would be nicer than just alerting you that you have one. The fonts could be thicker. A previous JVC I had had that option. The front USB port comes off with the faceplate, which is annoying, cuz now you have to take out the USB stick and put that away when stowing the faceplate.

I can't speak to the iPod or iPhone compatibility.

Oh I just noticed that the LEDs are polarized horizontally, making the display unreadable with polarized sunglasses unless one tilts their head.

A Recommendation:

If you are like me and have all your music on a USB thumbdrive, it becomes quite a pain to remove the thumbdrive when stowing the faceplate. My solution is to find a thumbdrive that minimally extends from the faceplate, and keep it on semi permanently. There are drives and microSDHC to USB adaptors that extend only 5mm or so. Brands to google for are "Eagletec Nano" and "Buffalo 5mm". They come in up to 16GB in size.

UPDATE: JVC has come out with a firmware update for this unit. It supposedly addresses "hands free call quality". It is nice to know that JVC is fixing issues with this device.

I've traded up my Nokia for a Samsung Galaxy S variant running Android. It works flawlessly with the KD-R900.

And one final nit: It would be nice if the unit could pair with two phones simultaneously, so that it would automagically pair with my wife's or my phone when we get in the car.

The Good

Bluetooth comes with
dual Usb and JVC link
great microphone
24bit processing
HQ amplifier
strong radio reception
easy iPod/iPhone chrging
switches over your iPhone-iTunes to Bluetooth seamlessly when calling or a call comes in
rotary knob can pause/play
nice phone button easy to locate and use

The Bad

forward/backward key far too small
up/down keys have no functionality on iPhone
scrolling through playlists is painfully slow... Up/down keys should have been used to skip A / B / C and so on
scrolling phone lists is equally painful
faceplate is not motorized

The Ugly

engineers kept the same small sloppy 3 line interface from the 800 model
some info is duplicated unessisarily, like showing 'FM' twice along with a junky radio tower image
too little contrast on-screen by not mixing in any white text with the colour text
font for titles too thin... causes a kind of ghost fade as name streams across
auto setting for brightness level does not apparently work well
they put pink/red buttons at top left which can clash with your main colour
illumination at night can make the Menu and back keys hard to read
useless visual EQ

Recommendtion

flawed unit has Bluetooth and kick-butt sound for under 200 that not even Alpine can touch
due to the poor iPhone/iPod list scolling, you may opt to use your handheld controls for some functions
recommend you mount iPhone/iPod next to unit
if you can wait a year to buy, hopefully JVC will rip off Pioneer and Alpine interfaces on the update

I've had this unit installed in my vehicle for almost a week now. I did a lot of research before purchasing. I'm very satisfied w/ it, and it certainly is the best deck you can find for the price.

Pros: Bluetooth, remote, great sound quality, 30 different display colors to choose from, features for the price.

Cons: Noise quality for bluetooth calls is not very clear for the person on the other end, screen is small and dull, faceplate is a little awkward to attach, overall build quality is OK.

I previously owned a JVC kd-sh55 that I had for over 5 years. It had a brushed aluminum motorized faceplate and a nicer display, but was also $100 more w/ no bluetooth, HD radio capabilities, and the sound quality on the r900 is superior. I use my Android phone to play music through the bluetooth and the sound quality is excellent. I'm going to try to move the mic for the bluetooth away from the door more to see if call quality improves. I would definitley recommend purchasing this unit. If you want a better deck w/ similar features, you will pay $100 more.

I have owned a number different headunits from Kenwood, Pioneer, Alpine, and Nakamichi-- so I am not naive to what is a great headunit is or can be. This JVC unit sounds very good, has lots of features, and I love the simple integration of my iPod and Bluetooth cell phone. Overall phone calls come in clear and there is no feedback for the caller and it beats the pants off of having to always use my ear piece in the car. The iPod and Bluetooth works directly and seamlessly, just as they should. So far I have yet to find any real downfalls except three. My car has a red/ red-orange gauges and when I use a red color on the display it is just a tad dark during the day, but is perfect at night. The resolution is that during the day you can have a separate color for the day and I use a bright light blue/ white that solves that problem. The next two are not really problems, but more preference. First the front USB should be eliminated and installed as a second rear USB. Next the headphone jack should also be eliminated from the front and installed as a cable from the rear. With those features missing from the front a series of buttons for direct radio station control could be added. BUT... for the price, I cannot complain at all.

I have done everything from streaming Pandora through Bluetooth to playing CD's and listening to the radio. If you are looking for a good radio that has nice features and sounds really good.... go for it. I will be trying to use a USB hub and see if I can use the Bluetooth adapter and iPod on the same rear USB cable at the same time. If it works I will update this review. If not, it really doesn't matter as for less than $200 you can't go wrong.

this unit has plenty of reviews already so i will be brief. the only reason i bought it was because it was the only one i could find after extensive research that can read 2000 folders and a total of 20000 files. from a usb stick that is, as i refuse to have an ipod, especially if it's just living in my glove compartment. by no means do i have a huge music collection but i want have everything with me. i considered that a pretty basic requirement until i started to look.
so i use a 64Gb stick that is about half full. a typical car stereo would only read 256 folders, only 1 level of sub dirs, max 10000 files, have a strange sorting algorithm, a combination of the above or other limitations. only because it is easier to put an ipod cable in the box then putting some "brain" into the unit.
So as the mp3 part works just fine (as in "as one would expect"- with a 30s loading time) i'm happy to accept some drawbacks that are mentioned in other reviews. Some of them I don't agree with though; the display for example. There are more modern ones out there - but do I need a pic of the cover art? And if you can't read this display - you should probably not be driving a car to begin with...

minus
no easy access to sound settings and only one user setting can be saved
no startup volume setting
putting the panel back on is a little awkward
"front and back usb + built in bluetooth" is not entirely true - one usb port is taken up by the bluetooth adapter. at least it is reasonably small and doesn't stand out too much from the front panel

plus
good sound
BT works well (mic mounted over the door)
easy to use (and reactive) dial
and of course the mp3 capability

I've waited for over a month before posting this, hoping that my desire to leave a heated comment would be lessened with time.

Not so.

I'm not sure who designed this thing, but they must not have been thinking that the product would be used with a car. In fact, I'm almost positive JVC just sourced the design to a local high school's 9th grade weight training class. I've had to put up with some pretty bad UI's, but the last place I want to have to deal with "quirks" is when I'm driving on the road. I don't want to have to pull over to look for a preset. That's of course assuming that the XM module decides to play ball that day. Otherwise I won't have to bother changing presets at all.

1) XM support is HORRIBLE with this thing. Assuming your module works 100% of the time (and, it's possible that is a problem with the Terk adapter, and not the radio), the XM functionality of the Radio is *ss-backwards. More often than I'd like, I'll turn my car on and get nothing from the XM module. Mind you, I used the same tuner (not the same adapter) with a Sony radio for years without any issue. I'll have to turn the radio off, wait a second, then turn it back on before I get anything. And every once-in-a-while, that won't work either. Supposedly this is a problem with the Terk module, at least I've seen others complain specifically about it, but it's still unacceptable.

2) It constantly refreshes the name of the station anytime you attempt to do something with presets. This gets especially bad if your reception at the time you wanna change presets is bad, because you'll get kicked out of the preset screen before you can make a choice. The programming decisions when it comes to the sat. radio were pretty bad.

3) Changing XM presets isn't like changing radio presets. In radio mode, one of the rockers on the face of the radio lets you scroll through your presets. Therefore even though you can't go directly to preset 3 from preset 5, it's fairly easy to hit the rocker "down" twice to get there. That's great. Not so with XM. In XM mode that same rocker now scrolls through the categories. I don't know about anyone else, but the thing I care about LEAST is the categories. Most of the time I have stations that I like and I wanna listen to them. The only time I really "browse" through the 100+ XM stations is when I'm either bored or I have a passenger that is bored (at which point they can browse it themselves). Oh, and the bug I mentioned in #1 makes browsing ESPECIALLY bad because at some point you'll get kicked back to channel 1 because the radio got all confused because of lack-of-signal. Despite this piece of wisdom, you'd think JVC would choose to use the same methodology between radio and XM mode simply for some semblance of uniformity and consistency. No, not gonna happen. Seriously, I don't know what they were thinking.

4) Time is not persistent on this thing. "What do you mean?" you ask? Well, I suppose there must be some sort of mechanism keeping time when the car is off, however it doesn't do it well at all. If I leave the car for an hour or two, the time is typically only 30-40 minutes ahead of the time when I left it. Now, the radio will set it's own time off the air... somehow... I don't know how but it does it. As long as your time zone and DST settings are proper, the time will be set perfectly. This is great in theory, except the update can take as much as a minute to happen. And when the time changes to a new hour (i.e., 8:59 to 9:00), it will go to the non-DST time first (i.e. 8:59 to 10:00) and not change until the following minute.

5) The "red" color is not readable NEAR sunlight (mind you, I didn't say IN sunlight, just NEAR it). In the day time, unless I'm in a dark tunnel, I can't read the display if I set my color to red. Fortunately this thing lets you have different colors for dimmed and un-dimmed modes. So, when I need to have the lights on, the radio is red, like the rest of my dash, and in the day time it's an inverted white(ish) color.

The ONLY reason I'm giving this thing 2 stars instead of 1 is that if you don't use XM, and can deal with a slightly flakey time, it isn't a bad radio. The bluetooth works well enough, though I still haven't found a place to mount the mic. The various sound modes work ok. And the fact that you can work the colors to change depending on dim mode, as well as having the inversion be dimmer-dependent (i.e., if the background is black and the wording is colored, or the wording is black and the background is colored) is pretty cool. Also, the fact that you could choose to have your USB port in the front or back is nice too. I really wish it had presets.

In the end, this thing is suffering from some pretty bad programming. If you really like the looks of it, enough to deal with the above, then you'll have a pretty radio in your car.

Bought this item a few weeks ago for $175 and had it installed in my convertible. Forget using bluetooth when the the top is down. lol. I didn't expect it to work anyway.
If the volume is set to a reasonable level there are no problems in call quality and the seperate mic works far better than other products with the mic built into the face plate. If the volume is set too high, a feedback can be heard on the other side of the line making it difficult to hear you.

The look of the radio is great and the performance is very good.
The most impressive aspect is how my bluetooth enabled Nokia streams music to the radio effortlessly and the sound quality that it produces is wonderful. I wish that it displayed the name of the artist through this medium but if I want that I can hook up my iPod to the USB connection that is provided and it will display the artist and song title.
illumination variances are good to play with and I find it difficult to turn off the radio's shop Demo function which changes the color randomly.
Remote is average and has to be pointed directly at the radio to work. Sometimes it doesn't register the button pressed and when pressed again it double enters your choiuce making you skip the song or channel.
This radio definately does wht I bought it for and upgrades the enterior look of my car.
This radio originally listed for more than $250 and you can feel the qaulity when compared with cheaper brands
Equivelent specs in a different recognized brands cost way more and sometimes you do not get all the features that this radio provides or they are lacking in looks which the JVC definately has.
I will add the HD Radio tuner soon and then I will be set for a while.

I have owned the JVC KD-R900 for about 3 weeks. Overall I am very happy with the receiver. Makes my factory speakers sound very acceptable. Bluetooth works very well (people I talk to don't know I am talking hands-free!) I gave it this low rating because of some software bugs. All of the issues have to do with the IPod interface. 1. The audio from my IPhone is turned off as soon as the bluetooth connects! If I leave the IPhone connected to the front USB port and then turn the car on, MP3 music from my IPhone will begin playing where it left off. BUT a minute or two later the sound goes off. The only way to continue playing music is to disconnect the IPhone and then reconnect. THIS HAPPENS 100% OF THE TIME. But if I wait 1 or 2 minutes and do not plug in the IPhone until the bluetooth has connected then it works properly. 2. When I disconnect the IPhone from the USB port, the radio just sits there with the message "NO FRONT USB DEVICE FOUND". When you remove a CD, the unit is smart enough to change to a different input...why not when I remove the IPhone? 3. If you are on a bluetooth telephone conversation and you turn your car off the radio and bluetooth turns off! Other hands-free kits I have used will keep the blutooth alive until you disconnect. I wish JVC would do this. I am hoping JVC will come out with a new software load that will fix these problems. If they do, I will amend this review. Until then I would not recommend that anyone buys this unit!

This deck was a pretty simple install. The only problem I have with it is the microphone picks up some road noise and makes it hard for people to hear me while making a call.

I installed this CD Player into my Ford F150 extended cab as a replacement to a Pioneer CD Player that I had before. I've beena big Pioneer fan for a long time, as I feel like they are some of the highest quality manufacturer around for Car Audio products. This JVC unit had more features for the price than much more expensive Pioneer units only had a fraction of. I was really wanting to get a bluetooth hookup, for audio streaming from my Windows Phone 7 handset (LG Quantum) and Cell Phone calls. Bluetooth music streaming is great. I also wanted to have USB inputs for using USB drives to listen to new music in a hurry, have a nice display, a remote, etc. This one fit the bill. About the only other thing I could desire was built in HD Radio. It isn't important to me, but at least this one is expandable to that should I so desire it.

I did face a problem, as the bluetooth adapter wasn't working. According to the packaging, it stated if something isn't working, not to send it back to the dealer but rather call JVC. I called JVC and informed them of the problem, and they shipped me out a new bluetooth adapter no questions asked (after providing proof or purchase). Plugging in the new adapter made it work perfectly. JVC's customer service in dealing with the issue encountered made me decide to continue to give this a 5 star review. Yea it stunk that something came that was faulty, but that happens. The company handled it in a professional manner, and didn't even charge shipping or make me ship back the fault one first (or at all).

I highly recommend this product.