I just came back from a grand tour of all establishments (that I know of) here in Charlottetown that sell car CD players. My sigfinicant other recently bought a used Toyota with a dud CD player. We like the factory default — it’s simple, it has a volume knob, it doesn’t light up live a rave/disco/acid-flashback.
As it turns out, factory default car CD players seem to be the only ones available that aren’t totally X-treme®!
I’m having a similar problem with replacing my cell phone. It seems that color screens on cell phones do two things (and only two things, as far as I can tell): 1) suck up the battery faster, and 2) obscure system icons with crappy photo-realistic but unintelligible icons.
Anyone who has tried to buy sneakers in the last few years knows that unless you are a go-go dancer from Mars, a mountain climber, or some kind of space athelete, there are no shoes for you.
I can understand that “dudes” want to buy wacky stereos for their dude-mobiles. I also understand that flashy lights might help sell products when they are sitting next to a bunch of others on a store shelf. However, is there not a market for simple and elegant user interfaces? I am not asking for much — from the last I’ve seen, Chrysler, Toyota, Honda, Subaru, etc, all have relatively simple factory default stereos. Why can’t we buy these after-market?
Are substance, value, and usability — factors that come into play after the purchase, not during or before — always going to be drowned out by flash and featuritis — which make their impression at the time of purchase, but let you down afterwards? Of course, I dont’t mind that these wacky products are out there — I just wish I could still get something simpler.
I don’t need more flashing lights in my life right now.
(by the way, if anyone knows where you can buy a used factory default toyota CD player in Charlottetown, please let me know)
I agree about the cell phones, I have the same one that I got when I signed up 2 and a half years ago. It is a tiny little Nokia that to this day still lasts near a week on a single charge. All my friends with “color, walkie-talkie, fuzzy-picture taking camera” phones have to charge them at least once every 2 days.
The reason you can’t find any non-flashing “head units”, as I’m sure you can imagine, is that it’s very rare to find someone wanting to buy an aftermarket head unit that doesn’t contain at least three strobes, four floodlights, and one-hundred and eighty-nine LEDs. To whit, the makers of aftermarket “In Car Entertainment” (or “ICE”, to its friends), must appeal, as much as possible to people who have an obsession with turning cars into mobile night-clubs.
And the people who are in the market, but don’t want flashiness usually don’t care enough to look very hard. The only thing I could possibly suggest is contacting your local Toyota dealer for a replacement.
Steven Marshall says “…it’s very rare to find someone wanting to buy an aftermarket head unit that doesn’t contain at least three strobes, four floodlights, and one-hundred and eighty-nine LEDs.”
Yeah, I figure this is the reason – but are we really that rare? I would think that if we (the boring-but-usable-stereo contingent) are not the majority, we are at least a market worth servicing.
Also, we did check out the local Toyota dealership, but the line there is that it is much more expensive (to the point of being unreasonable) to get a replacement from Toyota than it is to get something at Canadian Tire or the FutureShop. They did, however give us a lead on a guy who might have some spare parts – we’ll check that out next week.
I agree that most of the products in the mobile entertainment arena are utter garbage to look at and worse yet, to use. It’s definitely a case of where their core market drives the product. You have these 19 year old men with lots of disposable cash and they want flashy and chrome and blinky stuff, and the manufacturers completely ignore the mainstream “normal folks” market.
There isn’t really any company doing refined interfaces without blue lights, servo-controlled faces, or flashiness, but generally speaking, I have had great success with Blaupunkt head units. They must have a user interface person on staff (a bad one at that, but better than engineers at all the other companies doing UI), because there is at least a tiny bit of thought as to how the buttons differ from one another and work while operating a big dangerous car.
The best setup I had was a wireless remote on the steering wheel with just a few often-used functions that was cleverly designed so that every button felt different. Basically this meant I never had to look at the stereo while driving in order to operate it.
Ebay might be the place to find a factory unit at a reasonable price. Barring that, put a wanted ad in the buy sell and trade, anyone who may have replaced their factory unit with a flashier model may be glad to unload their factory unit.
I would echo the ebay suggestion. I bought my last CD/MP3 playing head unit on ebay brand new for about $300, and it was going for right around $500 in the local shops. Just be careful to pick a retailer with loads of good feedback and many sales going (you want a guy with a business license that can buy stuff cheap and is going for volumne on sales at really low prices).
It took me about a week of going to various stores (Best Buy, Circuit City, ad infinitum) before I foundly found a car stereo with an interface that I actually could stand. It’s a Panasonic model that was apparently recently obsoleted, sadly enough. Its interface is essentially a reworking of the classic two-knob construction found in old cars before all this fancy schmancy digital stuff happened. Totally awesome, and it plays mp3s off CDs to boot.
I’m the same way! I hate car stereos cause they just look way too flashy for any kind of car I’ll ever end up driving. (I guess some people need stuff to match the neon lights taped up in their rear windows though…)
I’ve been on a quest for the longest time to find the “cheapest car cd player in existence” so I’ll have something that no one will ever consider stealing. I don’t like to lock my doors.
You may also want to check out used auto parts dealers, such as Livingstones in East Royalty and Brackely U-Pick. I once scored a factory Nissan unit from Livingstones. They have a whole rack of ’em.
Au contraire mon frère, you need more of The Flashing Lights in your life!
Can you get Becker head units in Canada? They seem to be more elegant than most…
I feel the same obout over-hyped products. That’s why I like my Grundig Car Stereo. Simple and not as flashy as the other stuff you find out there. I really praise german design…
About cellphones, I really like my Nokia 6610. Clean, useful color design.
About sneakers, if you don’t like the ones on stores, how about designing your own for a measly $100?
Wouldn’t focusing on eastern european aftermarket vendors promise some fairly utilitarian models?
I completely agree. I’d shop for a stereo based on how well I can operate it wearing gloves while watching the road than on how flashy it is. My few-years-old Alpine receive does a good job of this, where each button has either a different size, shape or bump on it, especially the volume and track/preset skip.
Even if the controls were laid out like a dream, I’d still turn off the moving displays. I don’t need any more distractions while driving. But unfortunately, I think I’m in the minority. Or at least that’s how it seems looking through Crutchfield.
Try a junkyard
I’d also recommend the Becker CD players. The appearance is very tasteful, they are easy to use and the sound quality is par excellence.
A[nother?] vote for simple stereos. If I was getting a replacement, I wouldn’t mind something that looked cool, but I want something that looks like it’s supposed to go in my car, not appear in the future.
Then again, I did a “slick” phone. It’s still very simple, with a clean interface and XP/OSX-ish illustrated icons which are really quite easy to read. Yea, I do have a big color screen, but I still get 3-5 days on my battery.
Yay simplicity.
What would be good is if the people in the “norm” who don’t like Flashy Lights go and draw up their perfect, easy-to-use high quality car CD player/stereo. Then, send it to your favourite car manufacturer or car stereo manufacturer and state its purpose.
How effective is that?
I know this thread is months old, but see the following URLs for non-flashy car stereo options:
These are designed for the heavy-duty truck market. They are more expensive than your typical Best Buy Bling-Bling CD player, BUT they will last much longer too, since they’re heavy-duty (resistant to vibration and extremes of temperature). Nobody will want to steal them, either.
The only thing that may be a problem is that Toyota and Nissan both use “ISO-DIN” mounting whereas most other cars and all heavy-duty trucks use “Euro-DIN” mounting, so these may not be able to be mounted the ISO-DIN way.
how can you not find sneakers?
it’s all about the Puma’s baby
If you’re still in the market for a non-flashing-light CD player, check out Eclipse. They aren’t cheap, but even the low-end units sound incredible and are built to last. Eclipse seems to be the only company focused more on sound quality and build quality over eye candy and bling.
http://www.eclipse-web.com/