Customer Reviews

Jensen VM9512 7-Inch Motorized Touch-Screen Multimedia Receiver

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

 

 

First, let me say this - if you actually pay the $899.99 MSRP you'll be wasting a LOT of money. If you've gone through the effort to look for reviews of this product, then do some dedicated searching and you'll find online stores selling this product for around $420 (as of March of 2008.)

At $420, this unit is a decent value. I bought this stereo because I took a new position that forces me to live away from home and travel 10-hours round trip on the weekends. I wanted something that would allow me to play MP3's from a memory drive instead of messing with CD's. This stereo has an SD card input and a remote unit which can be mounted under your dash or elsewhere (within about 3 feet of the headunit) which provides a USB slot among other inputs. The SC card drive seems to have its issues. Jensen claims it can read up to a 4GB card, but it won't read mine. I read in an online forum that you have to have a particular brand of SD card, but I cannot confirm that. In my opinion, a 4GB card should be a 4GB card and it shouldn't matter who made it. However, if I plug the 4GB card into a USB adapter and plug it into the USB slot, it works just fine.

My issues come with the user interface. MP3 titles (of which I use almost exclusively) only present the first 15-or-so characters of each title on the screen. This means you can either see the track title, or the artists name, but not both. I have had to create clever file-titling tricks so that I can find the song I want. (For those interested, I rename each MP3 with the artists's first initial, a dash, the song title, a space-dash-space, and the full artist name. Ex: M-Push - Matchbox 20") This of course forced me to rename 200 mp3's... As Kevin James once put it, "A lot of work for nooooot that much fun..." In addition, you cannot use the up/down buttons on the unit or remote to scroll through songs WHILE a song is playing. Instead you have to press tiny buttons on the touch-screen to scroll, which often results in scrolling too far, accidentally selecting a song instead of pressing the button, or hitting the stop button, which is very close to the down-arrow. This is not to say that the Touch screen is innacurate - it is in fact just the opposite. Some of the buttons however are just a little too small.

A few other annoying attributes - there is no "randomize" button on the unit. The unit will randomly scan through your MP3's, but you have to select "Random" from your remote control. I cannot fathom why they didn't give that option on the unit's face or screen. Sometimes the unit cannot decide whether to open its screen when you turn the car on - sometimes it will, sometimes it won't. The "autodim" feature seems completely inoperable. This forces you to change the brightness of the screen every day and night. The DVD player often seems to get confused, and sometimes will show disc errors or take at least a solid minute before beginning playback. This will cause you to insert a disc and forget that you did so by the time it starts playing. This especially seems to be an issue when the unit has gotten hot after extended use. The bluetooth interface with phones is easy to set up and use, but very limited in it's usage. I would like it to notify me when I receive text messages, and I have read (though not experienced) that if you have the volume low or muted, you will not hear when a phone call comes in.

Many users have complained about the screen being washed out by sunlight, but I say "What do you expect?" It's a screen. Take your TV or monitor outside in bright sunlight and tell me how well you can see it. Turn the brightness all the way up and tilt the screen down and you can usually see it well enough.

So why four stars? Well, this unit pretty much does everything it says it will do, and it does it pretty easily, without much fussing, and does it all at a reasonable price (again, read the first paragraph.) It has already provided plenty of entertainment during 20+ hours of driving and quite frankly, I still think it's "pretty cool." Find a product that does everything "just right" and you'll pay this unit's MSRP plus a lot more.

Do note that any desire to drive recklessly on the highway because you're watching "KITT" engage the Super Pursuit Mode on an episode of Knight Rider is not the fault of Jensen, myself, or David Hasselhoff.

I am absolutly in love with this in dash flip up. It does everything I would ever want it to do. Things to know. If you have the newer version ipods, it does not support video. What you can do is get the apple video cable and hook it up to the Aux input. Also this unit has a feature that prevents you from displying video while driving. Their is a way around it. It took me a while to find it but I did. Allow me to clear up some misconceptions about this unit.
-It does remember what track you left off on when you turn your car on and off.
-when you hook up your ipod to the supplied cable, you can control it from the unit, and it will pause your ipod when you turn off your car, and unpause it when you turn it back on.
-When you turn on your car the vol always comes on at the preset vol. No surprises!
-It is very easy to install this unit if you are doing it yourself. The directions have pretty colors and arrows so you won't need your car audio for dummies guide.
-The bluetooth is off the hook. It is a life saver to be able to be completely hands free. When your call is complete the unit returns to the function you were using before the call.

Its great having a receiver that has bluetooth, SD, DVD video, etc. but here's the list of things that drive me nuts :)
1. If you have radio presets saved you cannot flip through them without opening up the screen. I wish there was an easy way to surf through your presets. I have the receiver integrated with the steering wheel controls and it still does not do the trick
2. Hard to browse through albums stored in your SD card. You cannot see all the albums in a list on the screen and scroll and choose the one you want to hear. You have to press album up/down buttons on the touchscreen till you get to the right one. On a 4GB SD card this can take a couple of minutes.
3. Skipping MP3 tracks takes 5-10 seconds after you press the button.
4. Bluetooth does not switch back and forth between multiple phones easily. Once the receiver pairs with one phone and then you pair it with another one, it sort of forgets the previous one and will not connect to it till you explicitly ask it to pair again.

If these problems were solved i would be a lot happier.

I bought this unit for the dual zone capability and also bought the MZ7TFT touchscreen and the NAV GPS unit. Install and features are as described except....

I am dissaponted, though. I found out you can not play a DVD in one zone and listen to music from the SD card on the other zone.

You can dual any other combo but a DVD and the SD can not play at the same time. Bummer.

I will keep the unit because I CAN play a DVD in one zone while listening to music on the other zone through USB. Now I just need to buy a couple of USB thumb drives and transfer my music to them. An annoyance but not a show stopper.

I do like the DVD picture quality on the monitors.

I only had this unit 2 months before the tray started messing up. The dvd player stopped playing dvd's. and after 6 months the screen stopped showing any picture what so ever. I liked all the features but now Jensen is made in China, it is a real piece of crap. Spend a little more and get a good name brand. Im going to order the Pioneer.

I called Jensen for support, poor support, mapping for USA and Canada only, poor Quality, this is my second in dash Jensen, will never buy Jensen again. You lost a customer.

So far this head unit is working out just fine. Today I finally fully installed the JENNAV101 (Jensen NAV 101 - Navigation system), the Auxiliary Adapter, and the XM Direct 2 (Audiovox Car CNP2000UC XM Radio Direct 2 Add-on Car Stereo Receiver with Mini-Tuner). Lots of cables to be packed into my 08 Honda Civic sedan dash. I mounted the GPS and the XM tuner in the glove box. The Auxiliary Adapter is in the DIN above the radio. Everything functions as advertised.

Pros: Nav directions through stereo speakers, Bluetooth, SD card reader, and XM directly through head unit

Cons: Nav system maps are a little outdated, but the unit functions well. The color screen could be a little more vibrant.

Overall I am very happy that I purchased this Jensen VM9512. It has all the functions I was looking for. Now we just wait and see how durable the unit is.

I've had the unit for 4 years now and although the sound is great and I love the connectivity issues I've had some issues. Limited control options through touch screen (but some available through remote). The small screen for when the unit is retracted by default shows song duration (not clock) and it has stopped working. The iPod interface doesn't work.

I recommend you spend a bit more and go for a SONY, Pioneer and such.

This stereo sucks the life out of my car battery. My car was a year old when this was installed in '09 and within 6 months I actually had to replace the battery, but it's died at least a half dozen times since putting in a new battery when playing the radio with the car parked for as little as 10 minutes...

The bluetooth is crap for phone calls, but works well to play pandora from my phone through the car stereo.

The ipod interface is terrible, it only really works if you have a playlist set up and don't want to navigate through the music on the ipod. Connecting the ipod forces you to use the stereo to controls, so you can't just use the ipod to control it.

If you watch a dvd at night, it is okay, but very hard to see during the day due to the glare.

The clock seems to change itself for no reason, and the screen tilt doesn't always remember your last position, so it needs to be reset more often than not.

The preset stations get reprogrammed too easily, as one of the exterior buttons seems to autosave and over right your settings.

It's not a bad product if your looking for something just to keep u occupied while out on the road.