Rosen Nav, Ups and Downs

I just got the unit yesterday and did the installation in under an hour. This was mainly due to FrayChild's tutorials. Props to him.

Ratings are based out of 10, 1 being the lowest 10 being the highest score possible.

Overall I would give this HU a score of about 7

Design- 8
For design it gets an 8 because it nearly looks like it came factory. But the color is slightly off like a poorly done paint job when you replace your bumper. It maybe the same color as the rest of the car but when you look closer you can tell that it's a shade or two off. (Please note, my cars interior maybe a different color than a brand new prius due to sun damage but it's less than a year old)

User Friendly- 7
Eugh... not as friendly as I thought it would be. It's not overly complex or anything. Tangible buttons for the NAV and radio are a plus,

OS- 5
The operating system is not convoluted to any great degree but when gets to me is how the menu wasn't mapped out that well. Yes, The menu is quite simple but certain features like trying to find bluetooth A2DP mode was quite confusing and misleading. Like people have stated before the NAV button merely turns on and off the navigation feature nothing more... It would have been great if it could have been used as a home... button for the nav when you're going through the nav menus. So when you're deep into the menus on the nav you have to click back three or four times to get back to the maps.

Ipod Playback-4
The Ipod play back could be more friendly, it's a bit slow and sometimes doensn't load the playlists properly And I can't get the videos to play on it

DVD- 8
Plays DVD's quite well, the only reason this unit doesn't get a higher score is that the controls for the DVD could be better... like adding more than 2x seeking option etc.

Phone- 6
IT DOESN'T LOAD MY CONTACTS out:
.... IT DOESN'T LOAD MY CONTACTS
....

Audio Playback- 7
You know connect your ipod to you car and then you max out the volume on the ipod and then you go pretty high on your car stereo that the music's bass gets heavily distorted and makes the music sound terrible... but when you lower the ipods volume setting one or two notches the distortions gone and you can max out your cars volume with no problem...

Well when you connect the ipod to the rosen through the harness... it's like its stuck on max volume from the ipod and it says it's connected to a dock so you can't change anything on the Ipod OS. So you can't get the volume very loud in the car otherwise it sounds like a POS...

I hate to say it... but Ipod playback was of better quality when I didn't have this HU

However when I played a DVD I could tell that the sound is actually improved over the stock HU but just wish that carried through to the Ipod as well.

I will extend this rant as I find more problems overtime.

Overall I knew I was buying something that wasn't user intuitive. I really really wanted the factory look. I am quite happy with this HU even though I posted mostly negative things about it, There are positives as well. But for any positive in my opinion it should be a given.

 

I've only had this unit for about 23 hrs now, but I've had no problems with the NAV

Useablity-7
I rated it a 7 because I have a garmin handheld gps and it's not as user friendly as it. There are alot of features on it, I guess I just have to get used to it. Especially the Zoom Feature... I don't like it... the way it works. I wish it was more like the Garmin where you just keep pushing the arrows and it gets closer and closer etc.

Functionality- 7
It works. it has destination spots like restaurants and gas stations etc. You can plug in addresses and search the map by scrolling. It has night time and day time mode. It has different theme modes. Has different methods to plan your route etc.

Accuracy- 10
This thing is like a super upgrade from one of those portable GPS devices. It locks onto satellites in no time and is pin point accurate. The Garmin Nuvi would take about 2-3 minutes to find reception sometimes upwards of 20! But this unit finds reception upon startup What's the point of all the extra features if the GPS is not accurate?

Stability- N/A
Haven't had any problems yet but it's still too early to tell

Issues Continued

CD Playback- 6

The HU gives you the option to copy upwards of 6 cds onto the onboard memory.

What ticks me off is that it only can copy audio cds and not Mp3 cds. Therefore you lose the capability of putting a ton of songs on.

What really really ticked me off was the copy feature... it like locks up the system the way they did it. Nothing else is usable besides NAV when your trying to copy a cd... and it seems like you have to play all the music to record it? Wth? What is this a Sound RECORDER? you can't just copy the data? You have to play it to COPY IT? Wth! and you system is like in LOCK MODE while your copying it, CHRIST I was so pissed off trying to get out of copy mode while out on the road.

Regardless, The copy mode is pretty much useless for me anyway so I'm fine with never using it ever again.

 

Phone Menu

Ipod Cable coming out, Aux removed

how long the ipod cable can stretch out from the center console

This is how you activate A2DP bluetooth mode, in the Phone Section? why?

In A2DP mode, now all control is granted to my iphone

THIS COULD GET AGGRAVATING! Notice how it says Rosen and Dock Connector for output?
Well Once you get in your car from a cold start and have it connected to the rosen system via the harness, sometimes it selects Rosen as the default output for music sometimes it picks dock connector. I usually want the dock connector because it has better sound that using A2DP...So you have to manually change that sometimes. It takes 2 seconds but still it can get annoying. BTW you must be on Rosen output to use A2DP mode

Timer for the Rosen Nav bootup. Ignore the Big 45.5 Number. The laps are what I timed. 13.9 Cold boot up start. Then right after boot up I selected Nav and it took an additional 21.4 seconds. So total time to access navigation is 35.3 seconds. not bad at all

View from lower glove box on where i will run the aux cables from the HU to the glovebox to hook up either a mac or Ps2

Doesn't show... when the song will end... only how long its been playing


This is a joke right Rosen? Haha so funny rosen! Note in the previous picture of Ipod playback that every song has a number... Well the keypad is for you to look for the specific song like at a karaoke bar... funny thing is when you update you ipod with one song that begins with the letter A... All song numbers are changed.... God forbid that you memorized all your favorite song numbers and then updated your ipod... you can no longer find your favorite songs using the keypad function and must memorize their new numbers. P.S. The songs are given numbers based upon Alphabetical order. I wish rosen utilized the iphone system of searching for a song or maybe a QWERTY keypad at the very least?


So many people seem to be confused... I really hope this dumbs it down to the max for everyone. This is the blue brake wire that I stripped and screwed on to the shifter plate.

My incredibly lazy way of doing it. Credits to FrayChild.


Where I might drill a hole to run a USB 2.0 wire into the upper glove box

Image of the Ipod harness running into center console

 

I will hook up a Ps2 or this Apple - Mac mini - The most affordable, energy-efficient Mac.
Really debating... I will probably go with the Ps2 cause its so much cheaper.
In the End Everyone I take in my car is impressed with this HU. They are like holyshit! when I use the A2DP bluetooth feature to play songs. I hand them my iphone and tell them to pick a song haha and it's so convenient since it's all wireless

NAV is the main point of any HU and Radio and they did alright besides a few bad things as mentioned before

I would not get another HU cause then it wouldn't look all sexy and sleek with the rest of my console, besides Flyaudio

 

Check out my update. I mean I'm being a real PITA reviewing this thing but I feel that I have to be critical for others. I don't know the Toyota GPS system but this thing Runs IGO and it's alright since I've learned to use it a bit. I didn't read any manuals yet haha I should def get on it. The sound I noticed when playing Lord of The Rings is freakin amazing, all the clashing of the swords and everything is so detailed just from the stock speakers.

The Ipod playback setting on close to full volume sounds terrible cause the base is distorted. Maybe that's because this HU gets louder than the stock HU idk. My best guess is that This HU assumes that theres a sub... when clearly there isn't and the music gets a bit distorted. I don't know much about audio systems so can't help you out much bud.

I wouldn't get any other HU because I wanted the HU look like it belonged... instead of some Hispanic dude that works 1000hrs at mcdonalds just to put a HU into his honda civic with aluminum foil spoiler etc

 

just unplug the harness and it just pops right off