Alpine IXA-W407 - Digital player with LCD monitor and radio Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I've been searching for a while for something that will work properly with the iPhone. A lot of the units I've come across seem to work with the iPod but then throw up that unsupported device message on the iPhone, not what I wanted. Took a bit of a gamble on this as it was fairly new when I ordered, but I've had rock solid performance from Alpine in the past so I went with it.
The install's not too bad. I was replacing a double DIN unit so it slotted straight in. The wiring wasn't too much trouble, pretty standard stuff with well labelled wires and a good manual. The hardest part was figuring out the wiring from the Subaru factory harness, but no big deal really. If buying this unit, you really want to get the PAC TR7 Universal Trigger Module as well. Without it you'll need to tap into the park brake and foot brake which can be a major pain. Instead you can connect this little module in and bypass the lockout 'feature' which prevents you from watching video and changing any settings unless both brakes are on.
Once installed the unit seems to work fine. Radio reception is really good with no static, don't have Sirius here so can't vouch for that but I'm sure it works fine. Working with the iPhone is great, I just get in connect the phone and the music starts. Sometimes it'll start from the beginning of the song list meaning that I keep getting the same song on startup, but I just hit 'next' and it soon skips to the next random song. I think this might happen if you use the phone for something else whicl you're out of the car. If you leave it in the iPod app it might just pick up from where it left off. Would need to test this though.
Bluetooth has worked really well. The unit and iPhone found each other and paired quickly, syncing contacts. Now I just jump into the car and they connect automatically. Call clarity is really good with the supplied mic, people say they can't tell I'm using a handsfree set in the car.
Only real trouble has been with streaming audio over Bluetooth via A2DP. When streaming audio there was a tiny pause in the music every 20-30 seconds. Sometimes the problem disappeared and sometimes it was really bad. It made using streaming audio impossible so I've disabled it. Looks like the problem is with the way Apple have implemented A2DP on the phone and not the fault of Alpine. This was made worse because as soon as Bluetooth connected, it would start streaming, overriding the wired iPhone source that was already running and causing problems. If you need to stop this behaviour and have a jailbroken iPhone, look on Cydia for an app called BTPS which lets you disable A2DP and therefore audio streaming. Works great and all the other phone functions over Bluetooth still work.
Haven't tried the nav unit either. Using TomTom on the iPhone so no need really.
Audio quality is great as you'd expect from Alpine. Some of the screen graphics can look a little low-res at times, but video plays fine and looks really good.
Great unit in all, highly recommended.

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