Pioneer Premier DEH-P90HDD MP3 Player

Price Paid:  $1400.00 from Autopride

Year / Model Reviewed:
2003 Pioneer DEH-p90hdd

Strengths:
mass storage in a head unit - a must have awesome sound quality and customizability

Weaknesses:
Incredibly poor manual Scroll function broken cumbersome updating of gracenote no copy from memory stick to internal hdd slow recording internal playlist generation lousy requires magicgate memory sticks??? no true random play - big time pain

Summary:
BUYER BEWARE. This head unit has been a big disappointment on several fronts, with the chief complaint being that the designer's fanatical devotion to making the recording process as cumbersome as possible, probably to protect copyrights, has made this thing needlessly hard to use. If you're envisioning quickly ripping 10 gb worth of music to the hard drive and being on your way, forget it. How about sitting in your car for hour after hour playing through each song you want to record in real time? That's what you're facing. I have found the memory stick player to be virtually useless due to its requirement that you use magicgate memory sticks, which are no longer produced and difficult to find. (I haven't tried non-magicgate memory sticks, as the manual seems to indicate that magicgate is required). The internal gracenote database is a nice feature, but since the scroll feature doesn't work long titles will not be displayed properly. Also, be warned that if you put in a cd that the gracenote does not recognize, it will not be playable except in the "all" play mode, which doesn't organize the songs in any logical format, forcing you to waste time searching for the "unknown" song. And even if you manually enter the artist and track info, it will still not show up in the "artist" play mode, which I have found to be the quickest way to navigate through stored songs. This can be a huge aggravation when you have a rare remix by an artist which isn't in the gracenote, and you want to add it to the rest of the songs by that artist that are recognized, but can't because the player doesn't add it to the list even after you've entered the information manually, which is also needlesly cumbersome due to a lack of forethought in the design of the user interface. All in all, this thing is not user friendly even for people who are used to messing with this kind of stuff. After owning it for almost five months, I still haven't been able to make a custom playlist, since the procedure described in the manually does not work. But by far the biggest fault with this product is that there is no way to randomly shuffle through all the songs on the hard drive. That's right, the "random" mode actually only works within the playlists, which are automatically generated either by date or artist name. And since it proceeds through the playlists from top to bottom, in the same order each time, you're going to hear a random selection from the same small group of songs in the same order over and over. I can't believe Pioneer screwed up something so simple as random play. The audio capability of this deck is awesome, but once you get past that this thing is hard to use, has missing and/or broken features, and is generally terribly flawed for the hefty price tag. I would seek out a competitor if you're looking for a hard disk based car audio solution.

Price Paid:  $700.00 from Ebay

Year / Model Reviewed:
2003 Pioneer DEH-P90HDD

Strengths:
EQ, DSP, Mp3 Player all in one! No more eq and radio!

Weaknesses:
Real time rip to hard drive and needs to be able to have none fadeing option for sub outs instead of crossed over or off..

Summary:
This Cd player is realy cool if you have months to put your music on the hard drive..Also if you have external processor like an Audiocontrol epicenter dont get this radio you can not turn off the sub crossover rendering the epicenter useless unless you use the rear output like I did...in all it is a nice radio but for the price it lacks alot...If you just out for looks and factory sound with nothing to help your "jam" jam them this is the unit for you!

Similar Products Used:
Pioneer Eq 9200 Pioneer Deh-9400

Price Paid:  $600.00 from EBAY

Year / Model Reviewed:
 2003 / dehp90hdd

Strengths:
SOUND,FEATURES,LOOKS,

Weaknesses:
ONLY RECORDS IN REAL TIME. THE SONY HARDDRIVE DECK RECORDS UP TO 8 TIMES REAL TIME

Summary:
VERY NICE UNIT,SOUND QUALITY I WOULD GIVE AN 8 OUT OF 10,FEATURES 9, LOOKS 9. THE ONLY REAL COMPLAINT I HAVE WITH THIS DECK IS THAT IT ONLY RECORDS IN REAL TIME.I PUT A BATTERY CHARGER ON MY VEHICLE AND RECORDED ABOUT 8 TO 10 CDS A DAY.BUT ONCE THEY ARE IN THERE THIS DECK CAN NOT BE BEAT.I WOULD HIGHLY RECCOMEND THIS DECK.THE REASON THE PRICE IS SO LOW IS BECAUSE IT IS FACTORY RECONDITIONED BY PIONEER. HAVE HAD NO PROBLEMS.

Similar Products Used:
FIRST VEHICLE HARD DRIVE

Price Paid:  $1300.00 from Soundsmart Spokane,

Year / Model Reviewed:
 DEH-P90HDD

Strengths:
Hard drive, XM radio recording(analog), Gracenote DB, numerous audio tweaks.

Weaknesses:
No auto scroll function.

Summary:
Extremely high quality stereo!. I purchased 2 of these stereos for my 94 Probe and 03 Sebring. This stereo allows you to store endless CD's on the HD. I actually store only the tracks I like. There are countless tweaks enabling you to dial every possible combination. With the DSP, when you sit in the driver's seat it sound like you're in the middle of the car (like a stage). This stereo is only for someone who is looking for high quality sound (audiophiles). The price is quite high, but it gives a new experience in car audio. I use the hard drive to store music from XM radio with very little loss of sound quality. You can store about 160 hrs on the drive. One of the drawback to this stereo is that you don't have an auto-scroll function when you listen to XM radio. Seems like they should of had a better scroll function for such a high price unit.