Customer Reviews

Pioneer AVIC-X920BT 6.1-Inch In-Dash Double-Din Navigation A/V Receiver

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Had this installed for one day. So far, so good. Replaced an Avic 900BT. I like the new menu interface. Flicking & scrolling using the fingers. Mostly used in the Ipod, FM/AM, XM screens.

The navigation screen may take some getting used to. The maps don't look as sharp. Seems a wee bit fuzzy around the edges of objects on the map whether in 2D or 3D mood.

You will need the current Ipod (new) cable to get this unit to work with your Ipod. Also it's now using a micro SD card. The sound quality is an improvement. Imaging is sharper/cleaner. I do feel that the manufacturer skimped about 64MB on the RAM. With these newer units going back about 3-4 years they're beginning to behave more like a computer (what with boot-up times & being able to update firmware/wallpaper via SD card) so when they skimp on the RAM it really affects the overall minute to minute usability of the unit. Thankfully with this unit you don't notice it as much but a bit more memory would have helped.

The Ipod interface is really nice & has a 3D look to the menus. Same when in the XM/FM/AM radio menus. Touching names/items causes them to slide, flip & rotate to reveal additional choices. Very neat. I still like the way that Pioneer has been programing these units in the sense that if you're driving & you touch a menu feature it doesn't automatically time out & revert back to the original or home screen if you take too long to make a choice. Had a few Clarion units few years back that used to drive me crazy with this feature. Ohh, video off Ipod works as well.

Will be purchasing a micro SD card so I can change the boot up picture from the Pioneer logo to an image of my choosing. Kinda sucks having to purchase a micro SD card for basically a one time use, but. . . . . . On my 900BT I had installed my own start-up photo but that unit used SD card so I just borrowed the card from my digital camera.

Not too many comments on the GPS portion of the unit as yet. Going to have to figure out how to adjust the trip method on the fly (fastest route vs. shortest distance kind of thing).

Ohh man, the Blue tooth feature works the way it's supposed to. I'm using an Iphone & I was able to not only sync contacts onto the Pioneer but I was also able to stream music from the Iphone as well as other internet audio. Pandora & many other internet radio stations I play on my Iphone using various Apps. Can't believe it worked so flawlessly. Didn't even have to use the manual. My phone book synched in about 1 minute & I was able to stream audio via blue tooth in another 1 minute. On the unit's menu you just select blue tooth audio & within seconds whatever is playing on the phone comes through the car speakers. No fuss, No scuss.

So far I would say this was a great buy. I know that Pioneer will shortly be releasing more units using this menu interface but I decided not to wait & went ahead & jumped on the first one out the door. We'll see how well that decision fares in the next few months. I still say that compared to other manufactures, who offer blue tooth as an additional item (module) to purchase I've always appreciated the fact that for the past 3 plus years Pioneer has built their blue tooth connectivity directly into the unit. I looked at the current Alpine "top of the line" unit a few days ago & they're still asking you to buy a separate blue tooth module. While I'm willing to entertain arguments regarding unit stability & only paying for features you're going to use, I still say Boo to those manufactures that implement this approach, and Yeahhhh to Pioneer for their blue tooth approach.

For the new flagship from Pioneer, I'm very disappointed in the navigation. The deck has great sound quality, and great iPod integration, complete with album art and the ability to quickly browse artists or songs, even with 6000 plus songs on your iPod. The NAV system is useless and a real disappointment. A 2 year old $100 Garmin stand alone GPS performs light years ahead of this. I actually just came back from a 3 state road trip using both a $100 Garmin and this Pioneer. Four times on the trip, the Garmin said turn left, and the Pioneer said "turn right". The Garmin was correct with the short and faster path all 4 times. Every trip I've used the Pioneer with has the estimated arrival time about two hours later than actual arrival time, and it doesn't adjust until the final few miles of the trip. Completely inaccurate, bad directions, no speedometer. I could go on, but suffice it to say it's BAD BAD BAD. I'll probably be selling this one on eBay when someone finally comes out with a good iPOD interface AND good nav systems.

I've had this unit for a couple months now, and I'm not pleased at all with it.

Pros:
- Plays DVDs
- Has iPod integration, and shows album art
- Backup camera integration is nice
- Can play streaming bluetooth (Slacker!) from phone
- Looks cool at first

Cons:
- Horrible integration with Sirius. It just looks terrible. I've emailed support and they blamed the interface on Sirius. I've seen stock Chrysler products with Sirius built in that looked fantastic via touch screen, so I know this can't be true.
- Preset buttons are HUGE and generic. Not sure why they need to take up so much room that only 2 buttons are visible at one time. And why do they need to simply say "1" or "2"? Why can't you save the FM channel, or the Sirius channel on the button?
- Song/Artist display is sparse. There is a ton of real estate on the screen, yet they can only show one of artist/song/cd/station. Seems ridiculous that you have to hit a button to toggle between artist and song. And the field is pretty long, yet no matter how short the song or artist is, it scrolls from the right to left for everything, which is dumb and annoying.
- Navigation directions are pretty bad. I took a trip from Michigan to DC and used the navigation on this, as well as on my Droid phone (Google Maps), to compare the two. The x920 navigation was pretty bad... had me getting off on a side street in downtown Detroit, only to turn around and get back on the freeway. Many other head-scratching directions.
- The biggest con of all is the bluetooth phone integration. It is completely unusable. Every time I try to use it, the person I'm calling says everything is repeated multiple times and just sounds terrible. I really wanted this for hands-free calling, but it's simply not usable for two-way conversations.
- The other features (Eco something, pandora, etc) are half-baked at best and unusable.

I REALLY REALLY hope some of these things are fixed in future firmware updates, because the unit has potential.

First off, pandora link and the musicsphere app are not out yet as of this writing. So I couldn't test those features.

Pros-
Fast boot up around 8 seconds.
Excellent button response, there is no lag what so ever.
Great use of screen size showing good information for ipod, album art, play time etc.
3d transition effects are very neat and adds to the wow factor.
FM tuner shows all the over the air data information when provided (station name, song playing etc)
Very good physical button layout
Navigation works ok very good on details and voice guidance is good. Has a lot of options.
Enter address by voice, search by poi name like "find the nearest starbucks".
Search for artist, album etc using voice commands, works well.
Great pairing with iphone, when listening to voice mails, an indicator on the stereo screen says "voicmaiil" and will disconnect when finished automatically.
Clear voice quailty on bluetooth hands free
Dial phone by voice and call using phone books names, (no need for phone book transfer its all done in the back round automatically)
Supports stereo bluetooth
Plays DVD's and Video from ipod/iphone.
Supports micro SD
Love the layout buttons, and ability to custom the menu screen with icons, for frequently used options.
MP3 dvd's work grat, and show all good information
I love the ability to drag the song lists up/down to view it instead of the button taps, all part of the 3d interface.

Cons:
Where is the pandora link app so I can use it with my iphone (get the song information album art etc)? Month in my car, still no sign of it, or word.
Where is the musicsphere app? It's missing in action.
Dated look on map details like water, grass, street look etc.
What's up with the red line that connections your location arrow to the destination? And why can't it be turned off?
What is the real point of ecodrive feature? It's pretty worthless.
Enter address by voice almost takes longer then punching in the numbers manually. Also it defaults to alabama? No matter what state your in , which means you have to tell it, change state, then say your state name every time.
You HAVE TO bring up the map screen to have any sort of voice recognition become functional. The VR engine will not startup until the map screen is selected, no clue why that is but its annoying.
FM tuner is extremely confusing if you don't read the manual. It is not intuiative at all, hidden buttons all over. You have no idea if your going to select preset station or .1 mhz up or down.
The interface features on the ipod screen is also pretty confusing at first.

YOU MUST READ THE MANUAL! I don't always do that but it was a must with this unit. It's very deep in features and you will miss out on a lot if you don't.

Overall an excellent upgrade from the f series I had. Every feature has been improved, upgraded or at least kept. I love the faster start up time. and the 100 percent better use of screen space and physical button layout. Also the quick select buttons for the source along the left is excellent and makes a lot of sense and its much easier to use. I can't get over how great the new 3d drag to scroll and move things around is. It really makes any other unit i've seen on the market look dated by comparison.

Pioneer has a winner on their hands, if they could just push out the pandora link app and music sphere app, I think i'd say this is worth 5 stars, until then its a solid 4.

I do not recommend buying this unit. It's navigation features are not as accurate as my Garmin GPS Navigator. The X920BT suggests wrong routes or routes that are longer than my Garmin. The annual map updates to X920BT costs $120 per year. The voice recognition software is a joke. It freezes up on occasion when I am switching between navigation and music, forcing me to turn it off and restart it.

Pros: Decent navigation features. Slightly cheaper than the Kenwoods...

Cons: Traffic & some other features rely on MSN Direct, which will be shut down in Jan 2012. Voice-recognition calling & other features of the X920BT sometimes buggy.

Details:

The Pioneer AVIC units have tended to be plagued by pretty silly bugs that more thorough product testing would've caught before release. The AVIC X920BT is no exception.

More importantly, the Traffic & some other features on the Pioneer AVIC X920BT rely on Microsoft's MSN Direct service, which is shutting down in Jan 2012. Pioneer apparently has no plans for a replacement traffic accessory or add-on for this unit, not to mention the many others they've sold that rely on MSN Direct.

Instead, they simply tell customers that their units will offer all features until Jan 2012. One would think that an FM Traffic Data System (TDS) accessory would be easy to design for this unit, but given Pioneer's record of inadequate support -- and delayed map updates -- for previous AVIC units, customers should be rightly nervous about purchasing this unit, given its planned obsolescence.

I received this as a gift from my wife for my birthday. I've been looking at an double din in-dash head unit with GPS, bluetooth, and the ability to control my ipod. I was leaning toward the Kenwood DNX 8120, which is now out of production. I was excited to see that this unit has the ability to control my ipod and cell phone with voice commands. I do not have the HD, Satellite, or back-up camera modules connected to this unit.

+ The back lighting can be customized to any color under the spectrum to coordinate with your dash.

+ The stereo reception is excellent with the capability of showing the call sign and song being played if you live in a metro area that has stations that do this.

+ The bluetooth connection is also excellent, in both reception and transmission.

+ CD/MP3/WMA player is exceptional with the ability to play up to 4.7 gigs of MP3 off of a DVD.

+ DVD/MP4/DivX player is excellent and the only digitization noticed was with darker tones (typical with small led displays).

+ The GPS is accurate and was able to keep up with my vehicle in a seven story parking garage when I was on the bottom two floors. I could find no specifications on whom makes the actual GPS software/hardware for this head unit; but after using it I believe it is probably a Magellan based set-up. I have not navigated anywhere with this yet, having only traveled around town. See my next item regarding the voice for turn-by-turn. I'm afraid that I've been spoiled by my Garmin Nuvi 680 for so long that anything else will fail in comparison.

+/- (mainly minus) The voice recognition is mediocre at best; hit or miss in functionality. I've got an ipod classic with about 45 gigs of music on it and it took almost four hours for the head unit to sync to the ipod. It will recognize some artist requests, no album requests, and will shuffle play. It will recognize your phone book and connect to multiple numbers but it's diction and pronunciation of those items is awkward (i.e. mo-byle for mobile) Steven Hawking has better oratory skills than the AVIC x920bt does. It's in desperate need of a software update in this regard, ala Garmin's website.

- Eco-drive is a gimmick that does absolutely nothing, kind of like the Ford Escape Hybrid's dash screen with all the stupid leaves that "grow" on it when you're driving in the most eco-friendly ways. Pioneer needs to puff-puff-pass and move on to some software that will actually benefit the driver, like a better voice command data push.

- (big minus) The Music Sphere trump card that Pioneer and every other shop selling this item trumpets is non-existent to consumers. I called Pioneer's customer service center about the voice recognition issues (which they said had no updates to the software, yet) and asked where I could find this on their website. I was told by the agent that they have been told not to mention it, nor are they able to tell anyone anything about it (release date, how big of a software push et cetera).

All in all I am happy with this gift. I am disappointed with the customer service and some of the features of this head unit. Hopefully Pioneer will come around to supporting this new product the way it needs to be, especially since it is one of their flagship products.

There is a lot to be said about this unit. I will try to keep it short.

As suggested by other reviewers, reading the Operational Manual is a must. In my opinion, the correct price for this all-in-one unit should be $500-$600 tops. I do not have nor planning on having an iPod or an iPhone and as such unable to comment on the Music Sphere application. I do not watch videos or DVD's in the car either.

Having music stored on a micro SD is a fantastic option. The voice recognition functionality is the worst I have ever seen or used. To begin with it is very slow to react. Paint dries quicker. In addition it does not understand any of the commands, nor recognizes any of the contacts. Not even simple command such as "call home" or "call office". It will tell you over and over again that it does not get it and it asks you to keep on trying to a point of great frustration and using the phone to dial the numbers. Firmware upgrade was successfully completed. It did nothing to improve the situation. In comparison to THB BURY CC9060 which is a fantastic unit (the best I have ever used), the PARROT system incorporated into this unit deserves an F MINUS. It simply does not work. Unit will pair with up to five different phones, but for some reason will only automatically connect to the last phone connected. Other "Registered" phones must be MANUALLY connected via the phone's Bleutooth menu. Yet again, unlike the BURY CC (as an example) that will first search for the Default device, and then for any of the other devices paired with it for connection within seconds, the PARROT will only automatically connect with the last device connected. The BURY CC also connects to two phones at the same time, will read your SMS messages, and your BlackBerry e-mails. The PARROT interface does none of the above. The technology used by PARROT in this product is very old and somehow I don't believe that it ever worked.

GPS is much better than was expected. It gets you there quickly and accurately. Graphics though are dated. MAP (it sais that it is the 2010 version) was not updated for very many years. Major streets and intersections that were added in New York City over the past four and five years simply do not exist on the Tele Atlas MAP. I am also missing the "Where am I" and "Auto re-route (fast off-route and detour recalculation)" functionalities. Both do not exist unless you make the additional investment in purchasing the MSN DIRECT accessory. While both the accessory and the MSN DIRECT service are fairly priced, the MSN DIRECT service will cease to exist in just about a year. Bottom line is that PIONEER failed to incorporate these two very basic but important functions as standard functions. The only solution available should you hit heavy traffic or a detour is to CANCEL the route guidance and start all over again by selecting a new route. Only one little problem though... this cannot be done while the car is moving.

I don't know. Would expect a lot more from an $1100.00 unit (RRP).

All in all it is not a bad unit. Buying a mid-range GPS + a car hands free (such as BURY CC) + replacing the stock radio would cost at least $500.00 - $600.00, so getting an "all-in-one" PIONEER unit for $500.00-$600.00 is a fair deal. It is still much cheaper in comparison to the price of the car's manufacturer in dash GPS.

Paying more for this very specific unit would be throwing money down the drain. Unit is good but far from being great considering the terrible voice recognition interface, the useless PARROT Bluetooth interface, and the very basic GPS.

To me it seems that in effort to trim costs and maximize profits, PIONEER associated two low quality products (PARROT and Tele-Atlas) with it's high quality head unit.

As unlike other technology companies, PIONEER does not see the need in offering true Firmware or Software upgrades, this unit may never get any better. PIONEER is likely to identify and implement better solutions in future models, but in effort to sell new products they are not likely to offer the users of current units with the necessary Firmware/Software updates/upgrades. Let's hope that PIONEER proves me wrong.

Overall I am pleased with this unit. The sound is superior to the Kenwood DNX-7100 that I have in my wife's car. Bluetooth works great for me although I have read other negative reviews about that feature. That being said, there are a lot of different factors that affect bluetooth performance, so you can't always blame the head unit. A couple of disappointments though. First of all, I don't understand why the unit will not display album art from mp3's on the usb device or the micro disk. My Kenwood does that no problem. Album art only display when you have a ipod connected. Secondly the navigation is not as good as the Kenwood. The map displays are not as detailed. Also if you happen to wander off of your programmed route, the re-routing is lousy. Even after I finally arrived at my destination, (which I figured out myself) the unit was still trying to direct me back to the intersection where I wandered off of the route. The unit did not even acknowledge that I was at my destination. If Pioneer could get their act together with navigation, I would give this unit 5 stars.

I really enjoy this X920BT. It was an upgrade from an older model that I had (AVIC-D3) and I was hoping that it would be up to date on new technologies, such as my new phone, etc. Well it was worth the purchase. My phone (i use an iphone 4) now syncs effortlessly, bluetooth is now built in and performs very well. I love the Pandora radio app since I listen to alot of internet radio. If your main reason for purchasing this is Navigation however, I would not recommend this unit. The navigation works "ok". I would rate it at about 7 out of 10 maybe. It seems to be a bit off, a bit hard to use, and a bit dated for an item that was just released in 2010. My exits were changed years ago and this Nav (at least in the areas surrounding Pittsburgh PA) is completely off when it comes to exit numbers. I've relied on my phone's GPS when taking trips as I'm just not confident in the Navigation. Again, i've heard people say it is wonderful, but my personal experience is that it is not the greatest. There are plenty of features to keep you busy, but be careful, they also take your eyes off the road!!! Amazon runs deals on Pioneer units frequently and I feel like my purchase price was better than I could have ever expected compared to retail.