I had some work done on my car a few weeks ago and they disconnected the negative terminal on the battery. This had the ultimate effect of disabling my car stereo. The factory Honda stereo wanted me to put in the activation code. I looked in the door jams, inside and around the glove box and even in the trunk. I couldn’t find this code anywhere. I was going to have to rip the stereo out or have the dealer do the same (the dealer themselves were unable to look up the code by VIN the one time I had dealer service done. Sure wish they would have given me the code when I asked THREE times).
With a thirty minute commute each way, I decided that I needed to do something about this fast. So, I looked around on Crutchfield and found this beauty. Built in HD tuner, USB port in the front and $20 off if I purchased with a Mastercard. It was an easy sell. Crutchfield shipped the receiver the same day that I ordered it and it was in my hot little hands two days later.
The adapter kit that was supplied by Crutchfield worked perfectly. It was color coded and a snap to hook up. I used wire nuts instead of soldering and it took me about 10 minutes to splice them together and triple check my connections.
Thanks to the wonderful engineering at Honda, I had to take out the storage console between the two seats as well as a few screws in the center console to get at the two bolts holding the stereo in place. I didn’t bother to unhook the hazard lights or clock plugs so it took me a few extra minutes to maneuver the old unit out of the console and the new unit in. About 10 minutes later I was reattaching the battery cable to test this thing out.
Here’s a quick overview of my impressions of the stereo. The receiver is amazing. I am able to pick up stations that my factory radio could not. They don’t sound crystal clear but it has opened new options to me. The HD is very nice. Some of my favorite radio stations have talk radio in the morning and their secondary programming is good ol’ fashioned music. The display is easy to read and the 30,000+ color choices look phenomenal. The radio doubles as a charger for my iPhone, and will even play music off a FAT16/32 formatted memory stick or USB hard drive.
Pros:
- USB port will charge any USB powered cell phone, even if it can’t play MP3s off of it.
- HD reception is amazing. Crystal clear audio with secondary station offerings (My PBS station does NPR on channel 1, classical music on 2 and NWS on 3. Very nice for the crazy Florida weather)
- Easy to install
- Superior sound quality over factory stereo both from off-the-air sources and my iPhone.
- Will play my MP3s off a memory stick, increasing my storage over my iPhone.
Cons:
- Does not have preset buttons
- Menu navigation is non-intuitive
- Pain in the butt to preset hop without the remote (haven’t tried the remote yet)
- Auto programming of the presets only does 6 presets at a time and selects the exact same stations when I try to do the next 6 presets
- Auto programming of the presets seems to only look for HD stations
- Will not play MP3s off my Creative Zen Vision: M. I was hoping to recycle the thing by leaving it in my car.
- Crutchfield supplied mount kit is VERY cheap. I’m honestly a little worried about how well it will hold up.
- Keeps switching from random songs to normal. Its somewhat awkward to switch back so this drives me INSANE!
Despite some serious cons, I do recommend this car stereo. I couldn’t find any that supported SDHC cards / iPod that did have regular preset buttons.
I’m excited to have music in my car again and I find myself fiddling with all the menu features at stoplights. Don’t worry, I don’t make people wait on me when the light turns green. 
*EDIT* The stupid thing keeps taking it off of RANDOM for my ipod/iphone. So I have to turn it back to random probably every 30 minutes or so.