Discount Electronics Shop:Shopping Electronics USA

great deck
great deck. GPS is excellent on this unit. it does everything i need it to do. extremely easy to update the firmware. ipod function took a long time to get vr. you can turn this function off so you have instant menu.

Didn't expect to like it so much
I am a long-time user of GPS navigation systems, MP3 players, and cell phone bluetooth, and didn't expect an all-in-one system to impress me much, but one test drive after installing it in my wife's car, and I wanted one of my own.

The main appeal of this system for us was an end to the cable clutter on road trips. We would have our GPS plugged into one power socket, our MP3 player into another, with another cable carrying the audio signal from the MP3 to the car stereo. The suction cup on our GPS kept coming loose, and its battery ceased to work after only 6 months, which we found out later is because it doesn't tolerate heat well, which is ridiculous for a device you expect to leave in your car.

The AVIC-F700BT solved all these problems for us. The navigation works great, and it will not only charge our MP3 player while it plays, it will also play directly off a flash memory card, which is the route we decided to take. It has plenty of presets for AM and FM radio, and can play sources like satellite radio which we haven't even considered getting yet.

For us, the handsfree cell phone connections was not a feature we needed, but we certainly enjoy it since it was included in the package. Echo cancellation works great, sound quality is great, and voice dialing is much more reliable at picking the right number than we anticipated.

There are a few drawbacks. First of all, it does take quite a while to start up. I anticipated this for the first time after installation, but it seems excessive for every time you go out. If you have multiple numbers for a person, like cell, home, and work, it doesn't differentiate them well, at least for our phone, but it does at least present a list to the screen for you to choose from. I've also had at least one instance where it didn't connect to my cell phone and I didn't notice until I tried to make a call. This might have been because I am not the one who usually drives that vehicle, and my wife's phone was still in range when I started the car. There is a relatively easy way to manually specify which phone to connect to in that circumstance. Installation is also more difficult than the average car stereo, due to sensors on the parking brake and a microphone (that's not even including options we don't use like a backup camera), but the instructions are well-written and it's nothing an average enthusiast couldn't handle. Also, the screen is a bit dim in bright sunlight, but has never been unreadable.

In summary, it is well worth it even if you only use some of the features.

To many Issues
So I installed my 700BT about a 2 months ago and let me tell you that this is the last Pioneer Navigation I will EVER buy.
Where to start with the issues..............there are so many lol.

After I installed the unit I did the 2.0 update and went out to test how the GPS worked so I punched in a buddys address and off I went. About a half mile down the road it resets, I'm thinking this isnt normal so I continue on my way. After it FINALLY boots back up it keeps saying Satellite lost..........how is that possible when there is not a cloud in the sky, no trees or houses around me.....its an open area AND the antenna is on the roof. I get home and recheck all my connections and very thing is fine, I put it all back together and give it another shot.............wouldnt you know it the thing worked lol.

On to about a week later, the same thing starts happening this time it just kept rebooting. I figure the antenna might be bad so I ordered a new one, but no go...issue even with the new antenna. I go on here and learn that this is a common issue and I deleted a few files as stated in a few threads..............BAM it worked, for about 2 days before it started AGAIN! Now it will navigate for all of a few minutes before it stops responding.

On to issue #2..........Thumbdrives and hard drives are like Kryptonite. I plug in a thumbdrive and it works until I shutoff the car and restart it. When I shut the car off and turn it back on it does not recognize the drives, I have to unplug and replug it in for it to be recognized. I have tried all my thumbdrives which are Sony, Kingston, and Sandisk all different sizes, all of em do it.

Issue #3, I turn the car on let the system boot and guess what..................NO SOUND lol, not even the touch tone sounds, no music from CD's or from drives, but wait it gets better.... the AM/FM radio work fine lol. I have to shut the car off and restart it for the unit to fully work.

Here is a funny side note, my neighbor bought the 900 and it is doing the same thing with thumb drives, not having sound, but now it wont even stay on for more than 10 minutes when the GPS is on all it does is reboot.

I called Pioneer and they tell me to send the unit in for repair, well wouldnt you know it they could not duplicate the problems, figures . They reset it to factory and sent it back to me.............do I even have to say what happened when I got it back? The same issues, I called Pioneer yet AGAIN and I was not nice this time because I spent good money on this unit and it does not work even AFTER sending it out to them. The Customer service rep told me it was an installation issue.......ummmm NO, I know for a fact that it is not an installation issue, the symptoms do not fit their diagnosis. I have been installing car audio for over 10 years and I had 3 other installed check it and all is good and I'm also MECP certified and do this for a living. The unit is not hacked in anyway not hardware or software. So they wanted me to send it out for repair again, which I refused to do, at this point if I cant get this fixed on my own I will just chuck it. I heard rumbling about how bad Pioneer units are, but this is my first one for personal use, I have installed many of them and honestly alot of them came back with similar issues but I figured it was a bad batch or something so I went against my better judgment and picked one up...............big mistake, I should have stayed with the Kenwood. Never in my life did I think Pioneer would release such a inferior product.

I'm hoping someone on here can shine some light on how to fix these issues, because Pioneer has been ZERO help.

Overstated
If you are looking for a serious MP3 SD card car audio system, I would not recommend this.
1) It is the first car audio system I have owned that takes 2 minutes to start playing. I am typically a mile or two from home before it starts up. This is the (fast) Version 2 software!
2) Sometimes it starts playing. Other times it shows a disclaimer and switches to map view and starts playing when prompted.
3) Sometimes it restarts at the same song it was playing when you had turned off the engine. Sometimes.
4) Although it advertizes iPod compatibility, it does not have iTunes compatibility. The ID3 tags generated by iTunes do not work in the player, so no song details.
5) The Bluetooth will let me dial out, but my Motorola phone will not be answered properly by it. Instead the person calling me hears the music I am listening to, nothing else.
6) The voice recognition system does not. I state a telephone number; it misses the last digit, consistently. Even if you speak another phrase, like `please', it does not get them all.
7) My address book would not transfer from my phone?
8) Basically it does not operate with my flip phone.
9) It says it will work with 8GB SD cards - eventually. One time I left work (silently - no tunes yet), was about three miles down the highway when it eventually presented me with my Password screen. It would not let me enter anything until I had pulled into a parking lot and put on the foot brake. Then I was able to start the machine again. I was about five miles down the road before a first tune started. I stopped off to pick up something from the store. Big mistake. It never recovered. I have gone back to using 1GB SD cards; that it can manage.
10) The map lost its view a couple of times, the cursor just walks off a static screen. None too helpful.
11) It entertains me by behaving differently every time I power it up.
12) I tried the help desk. Six menus later, it tells me that there is a training session and should call back. I did, and waded through the same six menus before speaking to a person.
13) I found out they cannot upgrade the system with ID3, said it was a hardware shortfall, and oh yes, let me know it is one of the slower models to start up. I know ID3 is not hardware, it maybe is firmware, and they probably cannot access it from the USB port.
14) It sounds OK, except when you run it hard for a while. Then it is distorted until the unit cools down again.
15) You cannot turn off the `beep' every time you press a button on the steering column control.
16) It lags badly at times. You end up touching a button multiple times and toggling it (a few seconds later.....)
This proved hard work for me. Too hard.

LOVE THIS PRODUCT
My husband and I love the GPS System and I use it all the time when going yardsaling around the area. So much better than trying to look at a map. The bluetooth is an awesome add on as well.