Gaari Means Car. Car Reviews & Car News

Yet another product that does exactly what it is supposed to do. I have an AVIC-F900BT and an iPhone 3G, this works exactly as stated. I am able to control everything with the receiver as if I was using the iPhone itself, including audio, video, play list, artist, etc. It also charges the iPhone, so I can enable bluetooth to use the hands free without the battery dieing on long trips.

This combined with the iPhone has to be the ultimate in driving made easy. Yet another product that once you get used to it, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it, honestly. My car is in the body shop right now and I’m borrowing a car from a friend, and it has a headphones style input like I used to use. I hate it, and I have no idea how I used to use it! Connecting the audio jack, power, then constantly reaching for the phone and being like “Where did it slide to now?!” — It reassures my purchase of this product as a good one.

My only real complaint is that the iPhone detects that the receiver is not made specifically with the iPhone in mind and prompts if you want to enable airplane mode to avoid interference, and it does this every time it is connected. You can simply press no, but it’s still a bother. I rarely, if ever, get interference from the iPhone and I suspect Pioneer could easily fix this issue (perhaps in the next firmware release?).

Voice recognition works well for the iPhone/iPod as well. The VR database does take a bit to update if you have a lot of songs, about 2-3 minutes for myself. While the VR database is updating all controls are frozen except for previous/next on the current active playlist (which it seems the default is, if you weren’t listening to any music before connecting it, all songs in alphabetical order — be prepared to be very sick of the first song from your iPod/iPhone!).

That, for me, was annoying; but I found a work around! Connect it once, let it update, then go into settings and disable the VR catalog update. As long as you do not sync your phone, you can leave the automatic update off. If you sync your phone to iTunes (or any other app) you’ll need to enable it again so it updates or the VR will not behave as desired. I tried it to see if it’d work, but it seems once you change anything on the iPhone/iPod all the indexes get messed up and it will play the wrong song or play list until it is updated.

That aside, this is a great product, and definitely beats fiddling with the iPhone while trying to drive. The controls are very similar to the iPod. This does use the rear aux in RCA jacks though, so if you intend to use something else along with this you will need to use the front A/V in port for that, which requires a special cable (see your manual for the part number).

One final note, this cable works with the iPhone dock, and I assume it’d work with the universal docks for the iPod as well. Those wanting something a bit fancier can plug this into a dock to quickly attach and remove their phone from their car. I used some special double sided tape to hold the dock down, it makes for a very fast connect/disconnect.
Rating: 5 / 5

Got this for my AVIC-F700BT and it works beautifully. The RCA is for viewing IPOD video and the USB part for music. I’ve ripped 20 movies onto my 80G Ipod video using AnyDVd converter and Digital Copy w/ other DVD’s to store movies on my IPOD and watch on the AVIC700. AWESOME!!! Watching the Dark Knight, Wanted, the Hulk – almost unbelievable to watch movies in car. I had my AVIC700 hardware modded to play videos while in motion and it’s pretty awesome hearing movie soundtracks while driving. This cable is absolutely imperative if you have a Pioneer headunit w/ video capability.
Rating: 5 / 5

Not much to say… it’s a cable, and it works. It would have been nice if the USB portion of it were longer – but that’s a manufacturing issue, not the seller’s. The seller was excellent… sent it on time and it was well packaged.
Rating: 5 / 5