Frequently Bought Together
Product Specifications
Display Size5.8 inches
WarrantyLimited 1-year parts & labor
Technical Details
- Multimedia GPS navigation system with built-in antenna
- WVGA touchscreen (800 x 480 pixels
- Includes MSN Direct receiver with free 90-day subscription to MSN Direct service
- Internal 2GB flash memory preloaded with maps for the United States and Canada
- Text-to-speech technology lets voice prompts announce road names over the built-in speaker
Product Details
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Product Description
The Pioneer AVIC-F500BT on-dash navigator offers an advanced, all-in-one solution for adding large-screen navigation, multimedia capability, and hands-free calling to your vehicle ¿ without removing your factory radio. Simply mount this road-ready travel companion on your dashboard and exercise convenient control over your music, phone, and navigation.
Available Warranties for This Item
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
26 of 26 people found the following review helpful
I've been using the F500BT for a few weeks after using a Nuvi 760 for years. I already upgraded to Firmware 2.0. Here is how the F500BT compares to the Nuvi
Cons:
- Routing engine not as good as the Nuvi. Very prone to give U-Turns when I miss a turn even though I disabled them. Worse is that it doesn't know if the U-turn is illegal or not. Besides the U turn issue, most routes offered are not that bad in "Economical"
- Touchscreen not very responsive. Not as good as the Nuvi.
- Not as easy to use as the Nuvi in general.
- MSN does not work unless you use a big ugly harness. You also need to connect a ebrake signal for to avoid the menus getting locked out.
- Battery life of 30mins
- Does not auto dim the screen when switching to night maps.
- Does not tell you the side of your destination. The Nuvi does.
- Only 1 TTS voice in English. Not great, but not horrible either.
- Voice recognition doesn't work very well
Pros:
- Nice glossy look with a big screen. Looks way more expensive than $199
- Map and menu hard buttons are very convenient to have
- GPS reception seems to be as good as the Nuvi. I get reception indoors
- A lot more information is displayed on the map compared to the Nuvi
- Plays AVI movies
- Lane Assist on freeway junctions. A MUST HAVE.
- Maps are very smooth map animation when routing. Much better than the 760, which was always 2 seconds behind and when making turns it would lag for 3-4 seconds
- Voice does not stutter unlike the Nuvi 760
- Very easy to hack and goes from good to almost great after hacking. I also have TomTom Navigator and Garmin XT loaded (more on this later)
- 3D buildings are pretty cool.
- Pairs with my Palm Centro with no problems. My phonebook does not dissapear. BT performance way better than that of the Nuvi
You can head to avic411.com forums and learn how to modify the Pioneer software aka IGO8 (its very easy). You can also add new maps schemes, and enable speed camera warnings, add extra 3D buildings, load international maps, etc. You can even hack the unit so it runs Tomtom and Garmin XT. However, these 2 don't have the same software as the PND counterparts, so I use the Pioneer software anyways. With the hacks I now get the current house number at my position, so I can easily know which side of the road my destination is on. I also increased the font size of the data displayed on the map. Overall, its a very good deal at $199.
Cons:
- Routing engine not as good as the Nuvi. Very prone to give U-Turns when I miss a turn even though I disabled them. Worse is that it doesn't know if the U-turn is illegal or not. Besides the U turn issue, most routes offered are not that bad in "Economical"
- Touchscreen not very responsive. Not as good as the Nuvi.
- Not as easy to use as the Nuvi in general.
- MSN does not work unless you use a big ugly harness. You also need to connect a ebrake signal for to avoid the menus getting locked out.
- Battery life of 30mins
- Does not auto dim the screen when switching to night maps.
- Does not tell you the side of your destination. The Nuvi does.
- Only 1 TTS voice in English. Not great, but not horrible either.
- Voice recognition doesn't work very well
Pros:
- Nice glossy look with a big screen. Looks way more expensive than $199
- Map and menu hard buttons are very convenient to have
- GPS reception seems to be as good as the Nuvi. I get reception indoors
- A lot more information is displayed on the map compared to the Nuvi
- Plays AVI movies
- Lane Assist on freeway junctions. A MUST HAVE.
- Maps are very smooth map animation when routing. Much better than the 760, which was always 2 seconds behind and when making turns it would lag for 3-4 seconds
- Voice does not stutter unlike the Nuvi 760
- Very easy to hack and goes from good to almost great after hacking. I also have TomTom Navigator and Garmin XT loaded (more on this later)
- 3D buildings are pretty cool.
- Pairs with my Palm Centro with no problems. My phonebook does not dissapear. BT performance way better than that of the Nuvi
You can head to avic411.com forums and learn how to modify the Pioneer software aka IGO8 (its very easy). You can also add new maps schemes, and enable speed camera warnings, add extra 3D buildings, load international maps, etc. You can even hack the unit so it runs Tomtom and Garmin XT. However, these 2 don't have the same software as the PND counterparts, so I use the Pioneer software anyways. With the hacks I now get the current house number at my position, so I can easily know which side of the road my destination is on. I also increased the font size of the data displayed on the map. Overall, its a very good deal at $199.
23 of 25 people found the following review helpful
Pros:
- Large LCD screen.
- Decent maps and navigation.
- Plays video and music files from SD and flash drives.
- Relatively cheap.
Cons:
- Touch screen response is erratic.
- Text to speech (TTS) voice quality is poor.
- Voice recognition does not work particularly well.
- No photo viewer.
To start off, I am already running the new 2.0 FW. If you are not, make sure you update.
The biggest complaint that I have is overall sluggishness. Often times one touches a button, and nothing happens at all for a while. This is in stark contrast to the Garmin and TomTom units that I have, and reminds me of Windows. But my oh my this IS Windows! The unit actually runs on Windows CE... which brings us to the start up time. The unit takes a long time to start up (a "cold" boot). Since this should happen rarely, it shouldn't have been a problem. In fact once the unit is running, pressing the power button to turn off/on the unit is almost instantaneous. However, for some mysterious reasons, the unit does decide to cold boot from time to time (see below on "cabling").
As a GPS, the unit functions reasonably. It is not particularly fast in acquiring satellites but tolerable. The 2D maps are pretty detailed and good looking, but the orientation is fixed at pointing North as in a real map. There is no option to orient the map according to your current driving direction, as in the 3D map mode.
Despite the large screen size, some vital information (like time to destination and nearby street names etc) are rendered in font sizes far too small to my liking. My Garmin has a smaller 4.3 inch screen but the texts are a lot more readable.
For voice navigation, there are two different selections for English. One is a male voice of good quality but does not support text-to-speech, meaning that street names won't be announced. The female version does support text-to-speech, but the quality is pretty poor. By the way none of this is in the manual...
Connecting the unit to a Blue-tooth enabled phone is a snap. I paired it up with a Razor and transferring the phone book is smooth. The unit is touted to have advanced voice recognition. Supposedly one can use natural utterances to command the unit to dial your wife. In reality the performance is poor, even using straight syntax like "call John", as compared to the native voice recognition on my 3 year old Razor. I wish there's an option to bypass the unit's voice recognition and have it function just like a normal BT speaker phone. That way I can rely on the more reliable voice commands of the phone itself.
As a media player, I'm surprised that the unit does not play JPEG, which I thought would have been the simplest thing to do. As for playing video and music files from SD cards and USB thumb drives, the user interface is functional but mediocre in this day and age of iPods and iPhones. I have not tried iPod control - I just can't justify paying another 40 bucks for a cable, without knowing how well it works. I tried connecting the iPod using a normal iPod USB cable, hoping that at least I can get power that way and then use the "AV in" jack to get the music into the unit. Unfortunately this is not allowed: the unit simply refuses an iPod connected this way. Also the "AV in" part won't work without another special cable from Pioneer.
Finally we come to cabling. The unit comes with a big fat cable which plugs into the side of the mount instead of the unit itself. I find that useful because
1) The unit will then turn on/off automatically when power is applied/removed;
2) Since no cables is attached to the unit itself, it can be removed easily. BTW despite the size of the unit, attaching and detaching the unit to/from the mount is very easy.
In reality, however, there are a couple of problems.
First of all the unit must be rather finicky to power surge. When you turn the ignition key to the position whence power is provided to your car stereo and cigarette lighter etc, things are good and the unit will turn on automatically. But then when you actually start the engine, the power will usually go out momentarily and then come back on. This seems to totally confuse the unit, and often times it will turn off and won't turn on again. When you manually turn it on by pressing the power button, often times it will do a cold boot.
Secondly when the unit is powered via the big fat cable, some of the menu items (like "settings") are disabled. If this is for safety reason I find it draconian. Not allowing me to watch video? Maybe. But not allowing me to change some navigation settings? That's unreasonable.
Overall, the unit has potential. It is a small computer running Windows with a high resolution screen after all, with all the right hardware. It has many functions, but sadly in its current form it does not excel in any of them. I ended up using it mostly just as a GPS device, and for that one can get a much nicer GPS like Garmin or TomTom for $[...].
Let's hope Pioneer will continue to improve the firmware and come up with new updates.
- Large LCD screen.
- Decent maps and navigation.
- Plays video and music files from SD and flash drives.
- Relatively cheap.
Cons:
- Touch screen response is erratic.
- Text to speech (TTS) voice quality is poor.
- Voice recognition does not work particularly well.
- No photo viewer.
To start off, I am already running the new 2.0 FW. If you are not, make sure you update.
The biggest complaint that I have is overall sluggishness. Often times one touches a button, and nothing happens at all for a while. This is in stark contrast to the Garmin and TomTom units that I have, and reminds me of Windows. But my oh my this IS Windows! The unit actually runs on Windows CE... which brings us to the start up time. The unit takes a long time to start up (a "cold" boot). Since this should happen rarely, it shouldn't have been a problem. In fact once the unit is running, pressing the power button to turn off/on the unit is almost instantaneous. However, for some mysterious reasons, the unit does decide to cold boot from time to time (see below on "cabling").
As a GPS, the unit functions reasonably. It is not particularly fast in acquiring satellites but tolerable. The 2D maps are pretty detailed and good looking, but the orientation is fixed at pointing North as in a real map. There is no option to orient the map according to your current driving direction, as in the 3D map mode.
Despite the large screen size, some vital information (like time to destination and nearby street names etc) are rendered in font sizes far too small to my liking. My Garmin has a smaller 4.3 inch screen but the texts are a lot more readable.
For voice navigation, there are two different selections for English. One is a male voice of good quality but does not support text-to-speech, meaning that street names won't be announced. The female version does support text-to-speech, but the quality is pretty poor. By the way none of this is in the manual...
Connecting the unit to a Blue-tooth enabled phone is a snap. I paired it up with a Razor and transferring the phone book is smooth. The unit is touted to have advanced voice recognition. Supposedly one can use natural utterances to command the unit to dial your wife. In reality the performance is poor, even using straight syntax like "call John", as compared to the native voice recognition on my 3 year old Razor. I wish there's an option to bypass the unit's voice recognition and have it function just like a normal BT speaker phone. That way I can rely on the more reliable voice commands of the phone itself.
As a media player, I'm surprised that the unit does not play JPEG, which I thought would have been the simplest thing to do. As for playing video and music files from SD cards and USB thumb drives, the user interface is functional but mediocre in this day and age of iPods and iPhones. I have not tried iPod control - I just can't justify paying another 40 bucks for a cable, without knowing how well it works. I tried connecting the iPod using a normal iPod USB cable, hoping that at least I can get power that way and then use the "AV in" jack to get the music into the unit. Unfortunately this is not allowed: the unit simply refuses an iPod connected this way. Also the "AV in" part won't work without another special cable from Pioneer.
Finally we come to cabling. The unit comes with a big fat cable which plugs into the side of the mount instead of the unit itself. I find that useful because
1) The unit will then turn on/off automatically when power is applied/removed;
2) Since no cables is attached to the unit itself, it can be removed easily. BTW despite the size of the unit, attaching and detaching the unit to/from the mount is very easy.
In reality, however, there are a couple of problems.
First of all the unit must be rather finicky to power surge. When you turn the ignition key to the position whence power is provided to your car stereo and cigarette lighter etc, things are good and the unit will turn on automatically. But then when you actually start the engine, the power will usually go out momentarily and then come back on. This seems to totally confuse the unit, and often times it will turn off and won't turn on again. When you manually turn it on by pressing the power button, often times it will do a cold boot.
Secondly when the unit is powered via the big fat cable, some of the menu items (like "settings") are disabled. If this is for safety reason I find it draconian. Not allowing me to watch video? Maybe. But not allowing me to change some navigation settings? That's unreasonable.
Overall, the unit has potential. It is a small computer running Windows with a high resolution screen after all, with all the right hardware. It has many functions, but sadly in its current form it does not excel in any of them. I ended up using it mostly just as a GPS device, and for that one can get a much nicer GPS like Garmin or TomTom for $[...].
Let's hope Pioneer will continue to improve the firmware and come up with new updates.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
I received my AVIC F500BT yesterday, and I spent the longest 30 mins of my life waiting for the battery to charge just so I can turn it on. It is an absolutely amazing device as far as I have seen. I registered my Blackberry Curve with it and made a couple test calls. Perfect! I connected a SDHC 8gb card as well as a 2gb Usb drive to test out the Music and Video capabilites. Perfect! It actually plays much more video file formats than documented. I had converted a movie to MP4 to watch on it and I had a WMV on the card as well. Surprisingly both videos played well. Though the WMV had just a little lag, which I believe is due to the fact it was not converted to the correct frame rate designated for the device.
Copying my entire contacts list to the phone over bluetooth took less than 5 minutes.
Also most important is that the device is HUGE but not very heavy. It came with all the cables for having it fully installed to enable the parking restriction and rear view camera. But it can be used with just the car power adapter. The Speaker is quite low, BUT since my 08 CIVIC LX came with an auxiliary input and this device has a headphone jack.... I AM IN CAR ENTERTAINMENT HEAVEN. Their could not have been a better device for the under $400 price range.
Oh, did I forget to mention I purchased a 16gb sdhc card for this said device. IN CAR HARD DRIVE. I basically have Movies On Demand in My CAR!!!!
Copying my entire contacts list to the phone over bluetooth took less than 5 minutes.
Also most important is that the device is HUGE but not very heavy. It came with all the cables for having it fully installed to enable the parking restriction and rear view camera. But it can be used with just the car power adapter. The Speaker is quite low, BUT since my 08 CIVIC LX came with an auxiliary input and this device has a headphone jack.... I AM IN CAR ENTERTAINMENT HEAVEN. Their could not have been a better device for the under $400 price range.
Oh, did I forget to mention I purchased a 16gb sdhc card for this said device. IN CAR HARD DRIVE. I basically have Movies On Demand in My CAR!!!!
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Disaster for Pioneer
I purchased this navigation back in 2010. The most attractive features were relatively reasonable price, bigger screens, nice design, HD quality and voicing, and most of all, it... Read more
Published 3 months ago by hankho
stopped working after 10 days
contacted seller by email on 11/28 about product and asked for instructions to return avicF500BT, no reply yet. 12/31/2010
Published 16 months ago by Theresa M. Silvius
Buggiest computerized device I've ever owned.
On a good day this thing barely functions. Touch-screen requires multiple touches and unit freezes constantly. One becomes very, very familiar with the reset button. Read more
Published 18 months ago by C. D. Payne
Not a bad unit overall
I've been using F500BT with a Pioneer AMP, backup camera, iPod for the last two years. Overall it's a nice unit - it is portable (you can take into a different car, but it's not... Read more
Published 22 months ago by Yuri R.
Pioneer AVIC-F500BT Touch Screen Problems
I am very disappointed with the unit and Pioneer in general. The interface is fantastic but the sound is crippled. Read more
Published on April 4, 2010 by Yakov Fisher
400.00 Brick
Being the die-hard Pioneer fan I decided to buy Avic500bt about a year ago for my single din late model Dodge Durango.
The Installation was quick and easy. Read more
The Installation was quick and easy. Read more
Published on February 4, 2010 by Darick F. Harriger
Pioneer Navigation F series future Bricks?
BEWARE
I was very happy when I bought my F series Navigation unit until it died during a Pioneer recommended upgrade. Read more
I was very happy when I bought my F series Navigation unit until it died during a Pioneer recommended upgrade. Read more
Published on August 1, 2009 by Marilyn Martin
A Hidden Gem!
When this unit first came out a little over a year ago the price was definatly outrageous to even think about it at around $700. Read more
Published on July 20, 2009 by Stas Rosenboum
Bigger is Better
A bigger sreen makes all the difference...this allows for easy quick viewing while driving with the best 3D mode I've seen. Even others have commented on the clear large screen. Read more
Published on July 15, 2009 by Erik D. Williams
Pioneer GPS FB500
Pioneer AVIC-F500BT Navigation System with Digital Player and LCD
I have used this GPS on 3 separate trips in the past month, and the only problem I have found is the volume... Read more
I have used this GPS on 3 separate trips in the past month, and the only problem I have found is the volume... Read more
Published on July 8, 2009 by Bolivar Shagnasty
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