Blaupunkt SAN JOSE MP41

Price Paid:  $159.00 from Crutchfield (scratch

Year / Model Reviewed:
 Blaupunkt SAN JOSE MP41

Strengths:
- Very Rich Feature Set - Incredible Price - 12 character dot matrix display - MP3 CDR/CDRW Playback - Travel Presets - Disk and station naming - Full pre-amp outputs - etc.

Weaknesses:
Interface polish - CD mechanism made disturbing noises while ejecting, injesting CDs. - Inconsistant controls (hold DISP to confirm here, press Mute to confirm there, hold button X for this, etc.) - MP3 folder browse showed file# of first song in folder instead of Folder Name. - MP3 displayed file# while scrolling through songs, only showing names after the song started playing - Default display modes not consistantly applied, ignored in some circumstances (Set to Song Name, but displayed file name instead) - Bright blue backlight very bright in car at night, no dimmer - Rotary encoder skips values when adjusting volume slowly (45-46-48...) - Just nitpicky stuff

Summary:
Note: the MP41 is almost the same as the slighly less feature rich MP3000. I've only had this unit for a few days. The unit is functional and sounds good enough (I can't compare it with anything except my $6000 home stereo...). The build is solid, the feature set is complete, and it has a great price all over the web right now. Overall, though, I was disapointed with design and execution of the interface, primarily the MP3 control. I might be happy with the Blau in the long run, but I've decided to return it for an Alpine CDA-7995 (which was available for $254 from Crutchfield). It's really on a matter of nit-picky interface details for me. However, I'm afraid that I'd regret not making the change, or that larger design flaws would become apparent down the road. A few notes on MP3s ------------------------------------ I used PC iTunes to rip my entire CD collection to MP3 recently. However, I have discovered that their best MP3 encoding was rouhgly 2/3 the size and dramatically lower quality than the "Standard" encoding in the widely used L.A.M.E. encoder. Be sure to use a high quality encoder, such as LAME, if you plan to play on a quality system. Even the LAME MP3s were not as good as CD on this unit, but it could be the unit's fault.

Similar Products Used:
n/a - This is the first MP3 Car stereo that I've used.