Customer Reviews

Pioneer AVIC-D3 In-Dash GPS Navigation System with DVD Player

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Just finished installing the D3 in my '06 Scion tC this weekend. In addition to the head unit I also installed the Bluetooth adapter/iPod cable/PAC steering wheel control interface and XM tuner. At this point I am still unsure if I am going to install the reverse cam. This is my third Pioneer head unit, but first Navigation unit.

The unit looks very nice installed with the included mounting hardware, much better than in the photos, I might add. The screen is very bright, and the touch interface works very well. The XM interface is very nice, especially when the Nav disk is in loaded, as it will then display station and category logos along with the standard XM track/artist info.

Here are some of the pros and cons I have come up with in the two days I have had to fool around with it:

Pros:
-XM or Sirius, it stinks to have to make a decision on a head unit based on your sat. radio prefs (Eclipse comes to mind here)
-Superb XM interface
-Solid iPod interface with cool iPod scroll wheel on-screen image (although no search function)
-So far the Nav has worked very well
-Vehicle diagnostics are fun, although not for any practical purposes
-Pioneers parametric EQ has always been great, it is even better with the enhanced visualization of the large color LCD
-Great internal sub-woofer controls including high pass filters, as well as low pass output and sub level controls
-Customization options are nice as you can match your cars instrumentation color
-DVD quality is very good
-Phone call quality is very good from the feedback I have gotten from callers (mounted the mic on the right side of my visor with the included clip)
-Night mode: when you flip on your headlights you can choose how dim you want the screen to get, and the navigation screen has a night mode which uses darker colors for the map, and is much easier on the eyes

Cons:
-No ability to have different EQ settings for each source as far as I can tell (source custom EQ)-this is a major disappointment, i.e. XM output is usually very flat compared to CD/MP3 sources, requiring a lot of messing around with the EQ to get it sounding right. Having to change EQ depending on source is a major pain
-No automatic sound levelizer (adjusts volume level depending on road noise)-even my stock Scion/Pioneer head unit had this
-No remote ($15 dollar option at [...], come on Pioneer, I know it's an inexpensive unit, but still)
-Some background noise at times, but I have concluded that it does not affect sound quality, as much of it only occurs when no music is playing (i.e. caused by the button tones or nav guidance)
- Having to use two little satellite antennas is silly- I don't understand why they couldn't have designed the XM tuner to be able to accept the sat. signal from the Nav antenna, i.e. pull the sat. signal through the IP bus
-I have still not been able to load my phone book into the unit and I tried both my cingular sonyericsson and my nextel blackberry-have checked forums and others are having similar issues, I'm guessing there will be a fix out soon as this is a brand new Bluetooth module
-No HD radio support

Overall I am very satisfied with the sound quality, interface, ease of use, and ability to customize the unit. I just wish it had the source custom EQ and the $170.00 Bluetooth module would load my address book.

I purchased this unit after trying two JVC products specifically because I wanted certain functions. After extensive research, I found that this device said in the product specs that it would do everything I wanted.

Here are the functions I wanted:

1. Bluetooth integration (including voice dial).
2. Ipod integration.
3. XM integration.
4. Control of unit from factory redundant controls on steering wheel.

While technically the unit does all of these, it performs quite poorly in some areas. I have decided to keep this unit, but it's a Hobson's choice. Frankly, I have been unable to find a unit that does all of them well.

Keep in mind, in order to do a lot of these things, you need to buy a separate breakout box or adapter that is not included in the price. Here how it did in each of these areas:

1. Bluetooth integration. OK at best. Call quality is fine. It also accessed and played music from my bluetooth smartphone. Where it suffers, though is voice dial integration. Basically, although you can initiate a voice dial call from the unit, there is a bug in the Bluetooth stack in the Pioneer unit, and, because of this bug, you cannot hear prompts from you phone telling you when to talk or asking you to confirm a selection. Pioneer says "yep, we have this problem", and "nope, we're not going to fix it". I have made a work around by disabling all voice prompts on my phone, but I still have to guess when to talk, and if the phone gets the wrong voice tag, you don't know until the wrong person picks up. This issue really is annoying if you rely upon voice dial. There is also no dedicated hard button to turn on voice dial that can be accessed no matter what mode the unit is in. You instead have to get to the phone screen & then trigger a voice dial. The JVC KW-AVX800 does a vastly superior job of bluetooth integration.
2. Ipod integration. Quite good, but has a rough spot or two. While the menu tree could be better, it is vastly superior to the JVC. It does sometimes loses time sync with my latest generation ipod nano, but it recovers quickly.
3. XM integration. Very good. Nice displays and easy to navigate. My presets do sometimes disappear from the preset list. What I mean is that the slot for the preset would be there, but the channel name would be missing. This happened with my JVC unit much more frequently, though.
4. Control of unit from factory redundant controls on steering wheel. Good. I wanted to be able to control basic functions on the unit from the factory steering wheel controls so I would not have to take my eyes off the road. It works reliably, but every tap on the buttons brings an audible "bing" from the unit. This can be annoying when you are changing the volume.

Finally, although navigation was not something I cared about, since it has nav, let me talk about it: it is incredibly sub-par. I have used a Garmin Nuvi unit for some time. The navigation experience on the Garmin is just vastly superior. First and foremost, the Garmin is just MUCH more accurate. The Pioneer seems not to recognize things like turns as well. Second, the Garmin's maps are preloaded. Each time you want to navigate on the Pioneer, though, you need to remove any cd or dvd you have in the unit & put in the navigation dvd. Cumbersome. Finally, and for me unforgivably since it would be a simple software fix, integration between an ipod and the nav system is poor. Unlike on the Garmin Nuvi which pauses music or book on tape content when the navigation system gives you a directional prompt, this unit does not. This means when the unit tells you "left tern ahead" and then 5 seconds later "turn left now" and then "proceed for five miles" you miss a lot of the thing you are listening to & need to keep rewinding.

In the end, I'll keep it because it does most of what I want at least passably well. If I was relying on it for navigation, though, it would definitely be a reject.

Finally, the product descripton says it has "15GB". I'm not sure that it has anything like that. It certaily requires you to use the nav DVDs, so I think this is a misprint.

Why I like it:

Unit:

- Cheap.
- Customizable with accessories.
- Does its navigation job most of the time pretty well.
- Nice extras such as vehicle dynamics, A2DP compatability, equalizer settings.
- Quite intuitive commands regarding navigation.
- Good sound quality (Better than factory setting).
- Good POI database and telephone search is a blessing.

iPod:

- Whatever. It works.

Bluetooth:

- Works ok. Automatically stops playback and transfers call and vice versa.

Why I don't like it:

USB Interface (I returned this accesory)

- Very archaic controls.
- Only folder navigation, but no subfolder navigation abilities thus resulting in cumbersome searching.
- Only 8 character text display for folder, artist, album.
- Painful.

iPod

- For song capacities > few GB, searching is cumbersome.
- No alphabetical navigation (that would be nice)
- Scrolling doesn't work. With 200+ pages, finding an artist starting with M requires holding the down button for a while.
- After all the hard work of getting to the artist/album, the entire process needs to be repeated for the same result.

Eg. If you somehow found Buddha Bar - I, listened to it and now want to listen to Buddha Bar - II, the entire onus needs to be repeated.

Unit:

- Urban canyons can be painful resulting in wrong or convoluted directions.

Bluetooth:

- Had to buy a new phone because older version of BT wouldn't work.
- Highway noise can cause receiving party to get frustrated.
- Still doesn't automatically recognize phone (perhaps it is phone's fault)

What I would like to see:

- Z-axis information I.e. altitude. After the end of a trip, a graph showing the altitude points along the way would be great (As this reflects in the fuel economy)
- Voice commands (its there in the higher end models)
- Punchier colors.
- Choice of different voices.
- Trip information in real-time i.e. Distance covered, time elapsed.
- NO CHARGE ON DVD UPGRADES (I plonked a coupla grand for this)

I've been debating on getting one of these for the past 6 weeks ever since I got my new (to me) 03 Camry. I had a Sony head unit with ipod capability installed a month ago but it just wasn't cutting it for me because of the difficult navigation with the one line text.

So today I made the decision to get this unit installed at Circuit City. I paid $100 extra for them to install it even though it took them about 20 minutes.. I think it's people like me who keep them in business but what can I say, I couldn't soder back in high school shop class and am too lazy to learn now. I'm more of a computer guy and I'm not too good with my hands.

I gave the guy and extra $30 to install the bypass to watch DVDs while the car is in drive (his idea). I doubt I'll ever watch them because it seems very dangerous but I'll put them on for the passenger sometimes.

Here are some positives I've found so far:

- Navigation is acurate and pretty fast loading.
- Very customizable including LED color and welcome background image
- Ipod integration is amazing. no more scrolling one song at a time. I can look through playlists, genres, artists, etc. Even has Ipod scroll wheel
- Sound quality seems better than my factory CD player
- Pioneer is a great name in high-end state-of-the-art electronics straight from Japan so I expect it to last a while
- Unit is aesthetically pleasing (It's <#000000> for you web designers) and blends with most if not all car dashes

Negatives:

- Screen hard to see/read when it's daytime and sun is shining on it but there's really no way around that right now
- One disc slot means limited navigation while other CD/DVD is in the drive
- I'm a more worried that my car will get broken into now (so I'm trying to think of a way to cover this when I have to park in bad areas)

Anyway if you're thinking about it like I was and can't decide, I'd say go for it because you only live once and you need to enjoy your time here on earth. Happiness is the secret to life and this unit will give you years of car enjoyment.

I'll keep this short and sum up everything I've found over the past 3 days since I performed my install of the AVIC D3:

Pros -

Ton of features and options for expansion
iPod interface is amazing and very useful
Screen is bright and colorful
Menus are easy to navigate and make sense
Sound quality is amazing - even more powerful than the AVIC N1 I replaced
Fits perfectly in my double din opening and looks great
Can't beat the price ($709) for DVD/Nav/iPod/etc...

Cons -

Nav is slightly delay in positioning but this can be resolved by hooking up the VSS wire

Other than that, I can find no fault for a product in this price range. A great bargain for the money and I couldn't be more happy with it.

I rate the radio 5 star. Ipod interface 5 star. xm interface 5star. Now for the Nav system if I could give it a -5 stars I would. I have used them all in rent a cars and own an old garmin that works great. The D-3 has a habit of routing you pass were you should turn and than will have you u turn and back track up to 3 or 4 mile to turn on the street you passed 5 miles ago. It is 4 house off to find my house, the old Garmin is 4 feet off. For Navagation forget this one.

First off, if you plan to use the Navigation system heavily AND a CD/DVD heavily as well, think about it!

I bought this system in the last week and I was able to test it thoroughly this past weekend. It is a very good beginning of the line model and for the price it is going for, even with all the bells and whistles, it is a very good product. If you buy it at the current price from amazon you will get the AVIC-D3($594.95) the bluetooth($94.95) the iPod Cable($15.45) and the remote($13.80-if you need it, my package already included it) totaling for less than $720.

Paying $700 for hardware you get navigation, DVD playing capabilities (video plays only when the car is moving less than 10MPH-unless overridden), iPod integration, cell phone integration (handsfree mandatory in CA beginning summer 2008), you can also get satellite radio and traffic if you want. It is a very complete system and you can also expand it by installing head rest monitors or flip down monitors, rear-view camera, amplifiers, and then list can go on and on.

As far as comparing this product to others in the market...it has it's limitations. It isn't as complete as other systems could be, but the price makes those things be forgotten about.

Cons:
1) It has a limitation on the media loaded. You have one slot for CD/DVD/Navi, so if you want to have a DVD all the time inside your unit, then pretty much forget about Navigation. If you are going to use Navigation all the time, then maybe this system is not the one for you. If you have an iPod however, you can have plenty of music from there without the need for a CD (plus you can play your videos from the iPod too, however you need to manually select them).
In my case, I would like to have two DVD slots where I can get to keep the navigation disc inside and I can get an extra slot so I can put music videos to listen to (music from DVDs is much richer than from CDs or iPod) or have it free for a CD. Juggling discs isn't something I look forward to when I'm even starting my drive, even less if I was driving.

2) The screen size is smaller based on its big buttons (relatively speaking) and the CD slot which is visible. I am unsure what the others are in comparison, but seeing them side to side the AVIC-D3 seems to be dwarfed.

3) Programming and usage of the unit is not completely easy or intuitive. I have not been able to program the 150+ entries from my address book into the nav unit since my phone will only do one by one. The phone needs to be disconnected from the unit in order to do this

4) Lack of tilt feature. Some units allow some tilt so that the glare can be reduced. I am unsure of the tradeoff that exists (on the one hand it could brake and make it unusable, on the other, there's no tilt).

Pros:
1) Very affordable compared to others. With less than 700, I was able to purchase the system, the bluetooth, iPod connection, and a remote (which I don't know if I'll use, but it's there for now). Other systems (the next one up) went for much more, two times more than this one.

2) Although some of the more intricate programming is, well, more intricate and hard, most things are very easy to get to. You'll get how to program your cell phone and once you have done it once, you really don't need to do it. Playing a DVD, CD, out of the iPod, radio (even programming the stations) isn't hard. Using the navi is very intuitive, keep pressing the Menu button if you need to do something and press Map if you need to get back to the map.

3) Has everything you need, or most of it anyway.

4) Expandable. You can have other screens connected to it, amplifiers, camera, satellite radio (XM & Sirius). I am unsure whether you can have HD Radio or if a DVD changer is currently available or if it will be available, but a DVD changer would be a great addition for the system.

In short:

I have the system and it works for me, it has what I need at an affordable price with expandability. At this current time, I would say I would buy it again, although I would look to see if there was a possibility to get one with 2 discs for a comparable, or even a little more expensive.

I would NOT get it if:
I had long drives to difficult locations where I don't know where I'm going and I was carrying kids who would be watching DVDs.

Hope this helps getting you the best system for you!

Avic-D3, I reciently installed pioneers nav/dvd multimedia in my 08 corolla, it looks stunning, has many many options. Of Course every option requires additional equipment to buy. i puchased it new on amazon for just over 700.00, well worth the money..Also the best part.. it is easy to change the background to what every you can upload to it. i got a great picture of my kids on it!! i love this feature!!!

-Navigation- Beautiful picture, lots of points of intrest, my house not found :(..but i can set a Wave Point and label it my address! 15 gig hdd can only store memory temp, one trip at a time. Need to use Navi DVD every new route.
-Bluetooth adapter- cd-bt200. easy to install, easy to use, sounds like speaker phone on other end.(lots of complants) cant upload my address book on my phone even though option is there. (lg9900 env)
-Sirius Tuner- easy to install, option there for siruis traffic on menu screen, would be a nice addition to nav, but sirius cant link up with this head unit at this time :(.. cant figure out how to edit presets to show channel name, xm can do it, siruis doesnt have directions in the manual.

-Great unit. should be a [...] from pioneer now at [...]- Feb thru Mar 08.. i recommend anyone who buy this or any other AVIC unit to read [...] lots of good help here

The unit works perfectly. I had some installation issues (returned to installer 4 times) so choose a reputable and knowledgeable installer. Read the users manual before use.

I installed this myself in an '06 Jetta.
Pros:
- The sound quality is excellent and the iPod control is the best I've seen.
- GPS is a 3.5 out of a 5 (compared to a Garmin Nuvi 660, which I give a 4.5)
- Button and screen color choices, ability to change background images - because of this, many people think it is a factory unit

Cons:
- GPS makes some strange routing decisions, and needs cheaper updates released more often than once per year.
- With thousands of songs on the iPod, it takes entirely too long to find a specific artist - you really need to have good iPod organization - mainly good playlists