Alpine CDA-9855 Car CD / MP3 Player
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Not worth it
Pros
Great display
Cons
Unresponsive, hard navigation
Recommended it?
No
The Bottom Line:
Don't buy it if you plan to use it with your iPod.
I bought this deck with the plan to use the ipod interface KCA-420i. I have a 3rd Gen Ipod. I've had this set up for about 5 months now.
I'm not happy with the deck at all.
Summary:
- Great display
- GlideTouch will not function when cold
- GlideTouch requires concentration to use
- Forward/Back (song) buttons aren't responsive
- iPod display of ID3 tags doesn't show Title and Song on the same view
- iPod play doesn't remember suffle setting after turning off car.
Details:
The main navigation is through it's GlideTouch feature. First, it is a very quirky interface. For example, when searching for a song you can either advance one song at a time, or a block of songs at a time; it's quirky because when you slide your finger across, sometimes it'll do a song at a time, or the block...so you have to concentrate in how your sliding your finger across it...which defeats the supposed ease of use and can be very detrimental to your attention to the road.
Again, with the GlideTouch...there were reports of this thing getting too cold to function. It's true. I live in Colorado and when first getting into your car on a cold day, the GlideTouch is rendered useless for the first few minutes. This is annoying because when you want to switch playlists, you can't do it. You have to wait until it becomes warm enough to be used.
Ok, here's another annoying thing, and amazingly it's not with the GlideTouch. The deck itself has a "Forward" and "Back" buttons to move your current song forward or back. You will most likely use these buttons for that type of function over the GlideTouch because with the GlideTouch, you first have to hit the bar first, and then select the second set of functions for it, and then finally hit the appropriate 'section' on the GlideTouch. So anyways, sometimes you want to move up a bunch of songs...well, in all other decks that I've owned, you can repeatedly hit the forward button as fast as you possibly can, the deck handles it just fine. Not with the 9855. If you repeatedly press the button..1) it doesn't advance as fast as you press the button. Your additional presses seem to go unnoticed by your deck...but that's not the case, it seems to actually queue up those presses. But not all of them. So what happens? It loads up the next song, and immediately after that, the next song, until those queue of actions are done. That's extremely annoying because you'll hear the song you wanted to get to, but then all of a sudden it keeps moving to the next song. You end up playing tug-of-war with the deck. You end up losing and more often than not, you will refain from hitting the back/forward buttons and you have to hit it one at a time.
On mp3 cd playback, this is probably the best feature of the deck, except for one thing. When you have it M.I.X. mode (shuffle play), you cannot hit the back button to play the previously played song.
On ipod mp3 playback, here's one annoying thing. When displaying the ID3 tag values of the current song, there's different 'set's of information you can show, however, no set contains both Song and Title. This means, if you have to pick which display set is most meaningful to you. To me, Song/Title is, but it's not supported. There's Song/Album and then Title/(something else, can't remember atm). Also, I'm not sure if it's the deck or the KC420 interface, but it will not remember that you set it at shuffle. So you end up hitting the GlideTouch 3 times to set it to a full shuffle. And when you want to do this, and it's cold outside and the GlideTouch isn't working, believe me, it's virtually impossible to do so.
Also, when playing a playlist from an ipod, you cannot go back to the list of songs to pick out a different song, while the current song plays. To do so, the only thing you can do is go through the motion of picking the same playlist again, which ends up playing the first song again, but that's the only way to bring up the songs in the playlist to pick from it.
The display on the deck is great, though.
At this point, I don't even hook up my ipod to it anymore because playing an mp3 cd is much easier to work with. It's much more responsive and has a better display of information (i.e. it displays song/title).
I'm not happy with the deck at all.
Summary:
- Great display
- GlideTouch will not function when cold
- GlideTouch requires concentration to use
- Forward/Back (song) buttons aren't responsive
- iPod display of ID3 tags doesn't show Title and Song on the same view
- iPod play doesn't remember suffle setting after turning off car.
Details:
The main navigation is through it's GlideTouch feature. First, it is a very quirky interface. For example, when searching for a song you can either advance one song at a time, or a block of songs at a time; it's quirky because when you slide your finger across, sometimes it'll do a song at a time, or the block...so you have to concentrate in how your sliding your finger across it...which defeats the supposed ease of use and can be very detrimental to your attention to the road.
Again, with the GlideTouch...there were reports of this thing getting too cold to function. It's true. I live in Colorado and when first getting into your car on a cold day, the GlideTouch is rendered useless for the first few minutes. This is annoying because when you want to switch playlists, you can't do it. You have to wait until it becomes warm enough to be used.
Ok, here's another annoying thing, and amazingly it's not with the GlideTouch. The deck itself has a "Forward" and "Back" buttons to move your current song forward or back. You will most likely use these buttons for that type of function over the GlideTouch because with the GlideTouch, you first have to hit the bar first, and then select the second set of functions for it, and then finally hit the appropriate 'section' on the GlideTouch. So anyways, sometimes you want to move up a bunch of songs...well, in all other decks that I've owned, you can repeatedly hit the forward button as fast as you possibly can, the deck handles it just fine. Not with the 9855. If you repeatedly press the button..1) it doesn't advance as fast as you press the button. Your additional presses seem to go unnoticed by your deck...but that's not the case, it seems to actually queue up those presses. But not all of them. So what happens? It loads up the next song, and immediately after that, the next song, until those queue of actions are done. That's extremely annoying because you'll hear the song you wanted to get to, but then all of a sudden it keeps moving to the next song. You end up playing tug-of-war with the deck. You end up losing and more often than not, you will refain from hitting the back/forward buttons and you have to hit it one at a time.
On mp3 cd playback, this is probably the best feature of the deck, except for one thing. When you have it M.I.X. mode (shuffle play), you cannot hit the back button to play the previously played song.
On ipod mp3 playback, here's one annoying thing. When displaying the ID3 tag values of the current song, there's different 'set's of information you can show, however, no set contains both Song and Title. This means, if you have to pick which display set is most meaningful to you. To me, Song/Title is, but it's not supported. There's Song/Album and then Title/(something else, can't remember atm). Also, I'm not sure if it's the deck or the KC420 interface, but it will not remember that you set it at shuffle. So you end up hitting the GlideTouch 3 times to set it to a full shuffle. And when you want to do this, and it's cold outside and the GlideTouch isn't working, believe me, it's virtually impossible to do so.
Also, when playing a playlist from an ipod, you cannot go back to the list of songs to pick out a different song, while the current song plays. To do so, the only thing you can do is go through the motion of picking the same playlist again, which ends up playing the first song again, but that's the only way to bring up the songs in the playlist to pick from it.
The display on the deck is great, though.
At this point, I don't even hook up my ipod to it anymore because playing an mp3 cd is much easier to work with. It's much more responsive and has a better display of information (i.e. it displays song/title).
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