Alpine CDE-9870 Car CD / MP3 Player

I bought this model to replace my broken radio/CD player of my Honda Accord. Since it's an old car, I didn't want to spend much money replacing the radio/CD Player. But I wanted the extra feature of iPod integration, since I planned to buy an iPod.

So, my main criteria for purchasing were price and iPod integration. I went to a local audio dealer and in 5 minutes picked the lowest priced. I also spent the extra $30 for the iPod cable. In another 90 minutes I was off and running with the new equipment.

The next higher priced Alpine has essentially the same features, except that the volume dial is a manual twist button, instead of the digital up-down button available in this model. It turned out to be an annoyance not to have the circular dial. The response of the up-down digital button is slow -- and when you're driving you want the response to be immediate. In retrospect I would have spent the extra $25 and buy the higher priced model to get rid of this annoyance.

The unit performs fine for all the features: radio, CD, and iPod. Controlling the iPod is straightforward if you just want to play whatever happens to be playing. You hook your iPod up, and voila the sound appears from the speakers. But if you want to browse through the playlists, podcasts, etc., it can be tricky. I looked up the manual and was able to do it but it took several days before I remember everything.