Hey guys,
A few months back I bought this headunit to replace my stock Bose unit (what a PITA that was to take out...). I was going to throw up a review on audiodomain.com, however I just don't feel like signing up for it right now. So I'll just right a review for it here. Don't worry, pictures will be provided. Here we go:
This is the JVC KD-LH810 MP3/CD-R/RW headunit. At this point, most of you are saying that it's gonna cost a pretty penny to own this one. Wrong. Take it from a stingy college white-boy, this is by far the best deal of a headunit ever. You can get it online for about $150, maybe less if you look hard enough. I bought mine at best buy and had it installed due to my bose system. After everything was done, the total for me came to ~$220. The extra $70 was worth it, as the HEAD INSTALLER (senior audio system installer) took 4 hours to install just the headunit. Again though, this is attributed to my BOSE system. Spend extra at your own discretion. Enough of this though, lets get to the good, the bad, and the ugly. Not necessarily in that order though.
The Bad:
1. The face plate is very shiny. This may be puzzling some of you. Well, when the sun shines and hits the faceplate right,
It's near impossible to see anything on the display, not to mention you're being blinded.
2. No EQ button. That's right folks, no more changing sound settings on the fly for your changing music mood. You have to physically go into the menu and change the setting, which is highly dangerous to do while driving.
3. The remote isn't the most powerful thing in the world. If you don't shoot it just right at the unit, nothing happens. Seriously, it won't shoot through my auto shifter.
4. The custom video thing is VERY picky. The HU allows you to d/l videos up to 60 FRAMES long. Let me reiterate that, 60 FRAMES. This becomes quite the headache if you're lookin to put a video that's actually cool on the memory of the HU.
5. Button placement. Maybe I just can't get used to it, but they put the menu navigate buttons on one side, and the menu open and OK button on the other. Quite the headache when looking for something simple.
6. My condolences if you unplug the car battery. This could be just my HU as well, but when I undid the car battery, I lost EVERYTHING. Time, EQ settings, colors, everything. Oi...
7. Final one here, and I had to struggle to come up with this one. First, let me inform you my car is having starting issues, so sometimes I have to turn the car on and off 6, 7, even 10 times in a row before I can get it to start. Well, the first time this happened I had the HU plugged in. When I finally got started, the HU was on, but nothing was on the screen. Music was being played, but none of the buttons were responding. Strange. I just ejected the head and placed it back on and everything was fine.
The Good:
Ok, so the bad list always comes first, so we can dispatch with well...the bad. Here's the good news.
1. This HU looks GREAT in our cars. It's mostly black face blends right in with the interior. It hardly stands out at all.
2. MP3 playback is incredible. The sound is crisp and clear (providing your MP3 quality is good), and bass is deep and responsive. As far as changing tracks goes, I sped from song 1 to song 148 on my MP3 disc and the load time was approxiamtely 1.5 secs. Not bad at all.
3. RANDOM!!! Finally a head-unit that delivers a true RANDOM feature. If you choose random, it'll go into each and every folder on the disc and pick songs out in no particular order.
4. Changing colors....ooooooooooooooh. If you want you can leave the HU on color change and it'll scroll through colors. Looks real nice. Can also be distracting though...
5. Inexpensive. Nuff said.
6. 3 RCA pre-outs. On the chance you want to hook up some amps.
7. The face itself is bright during the day, but if you set the time right, it'll go to an inverted color face that is much easier on the eyes at night.
8. The 810 model is roughly 60 bucks cheaper than the 910 model. The difference? Well the 910 has SD disk compatability. Really not that important for 60 bucks in my book...
There are more things to be had on this deck. My brain is fried for now though, so I might do some more later.
Eventually when I get to my camera again, I'll snap some day/night photos and other observational shots and post em up.
A few months back I bought this headunit to replace my stock Bose unit (what a PITA that was to take out...). I was going to throw up a review on audiodomain.com, however I just don't feel like signing up for it right now. So I'll just right a review for it here. Don't worry, pictures will be provided. Here we go:
This is the JVC KD-LH810 MP3/CD-R/RW headunit. At this point, most of you are saying that it's gonna cost a pretty penny to own this one. Wrong. Take it from a stingy college white-boy, this is by far the best deal of a headunit ever. You can get it online for about $150, maybe less if you look hard enough. I bought mine at best buy and had it installed due to my bose system. After everything was done, the total for me came to ~$220. The extra $70 was worth it, as the HEAD INSTALLER (senior audio system installer) took 4 hours to install just the headunit. Again though, this is attributed to my BOSE system. Spend extra at your own discretion. Enough of this though, lets get to the good, the bad, and the ugly. Not necessarily in that order though.
The Bad:
1. The face plate is very shiny. This may be puzzling some of you. Well, when the sun shines and hits the faceplate right,
It's near impossible to see anything on the display, not to mention you're being blinded.
2. No EQ button. That's right folks, no more changing sound settings on the fly for your changing music mood. You have to physically go into the menu and change the setting, which is highly dangerous to do while driving.
3. The remote isn't the most powerful thing in the world. If you don't shoot it just right at the unit, nothing happens. Seriously, it won't shoot through my auto shifter.
4. The custom video thing is VERY picky. The HU allows you to d/l videos up to 60 FRAMES long. Let me reiterate that, 60 FRAMES. This becomes quite the headache if you're lookin to put a video that's actually cool on the memory of the HU.
5. Button placement. Maybe I just can't get used to it, but they put the menu navigate buttons on one side, and the menu open and OK button on the other. Quite the headache when looking for something simple.
6. My condolences if you unplug the car battery. This could be just my HU as well, but when I undid the car battery, I lost EVERYTHING. Time, EQ settings, colors, everything. Oi...
7. Final one here, and I had to struggle to come up with this one. First, let me inform you my car is having starting issues, so sometimes I have to turn the car on and off 6, 7, even 10 times in a row before I can get it to start. Well, the first time this happened I had the HU plugged in. When I finally got started, the HU was on, but nothing was on the screen. Music was being played, but none of the buttons were responding. Strange. I just ejected the head and placed it back on and everything was fine.
The Good:
Ok, so the bad list always comes first, so we can dispatch with well...the bad. Here's the good news.
1. This HU looks GREAT in our cars. It's mostly black face blends right in with the interior. It hardly stands out at all.
2. MP3 playback is incredible. The sound is crisp and clear (providing your MP3 quality is good), and bass is deep and responsive. As far as changing tracks goes, I sped from song 1 to song 148 on my MP3 disc and the load time was approxiamtely 1.5 secs. Not bad at all.
3. RANDOM!!! Finally a head-unit that delivers a true RANDOM feature. If you choose random, it'll go into each and every folder on the disc and pick songs out in no particular order.
4. Changing colors....ooooooooooooooh. If you want you can leave the HU on color change and it'll scroll through colors. Looks real nice. Can also be distracting though...
5. Inexpensive. Nuff said.
6. 3 RCA pre-outs. On the chance you want to hook up some amps.
7. The face itself is bright during the day, but if you set the time right, it'll go to an inverted color face that is much easier on the eyes at night.
8. The 810 model is roughly 60 bucks cheaper than the 910 model. The difference? Well the 910 has SD disk compatability. Really not that important for 60 bucks in my book...
There are more things to be had on this deck. My brain is fried for now though, so I might do some more later.
Eventually when I get to my camera again, I'll snap some day/night photos and other observational shots and post em up.
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