JVC KD-SX980 Car CD / MP3 Player
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Similar in In Dash Receivers
- MP3 / WMA Playback: MP3 Playback
- Player Type: CD
- Controlled Devices: CD Changer
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What cons?
Pros
Fast navigation, Directory shortcuts, Radio station labels, good power.
Cons
Bogus spectrum analyzer like most receivers.
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
Good brand, best feature set I've seen, and only $178 delivered!
I just got the SX980 from Vanns.com. I've never seen a vendor rated that high on BizRate before (although the free ground shipping from Montana did take six days). I read all the reviews before buying, and now that I have the stereo installed I feel I have to tell people how ridiculous some of the "cons" people mentioned are.
Con #1: Limited to ID3v1 tags
The software I use creates both ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags, so I don't see this as a problem. To the contrary, I'm actually glad ID3v1 truncates album titles to 30 characters, because that would take forever for long names to scroll by to get to the other fields. Either way, I don't see this as a big deal.
Con #2: Faceplate may seem flimsy, easy to break
This comment worried me. The faceplate is, however, much more durable than many I've seen. To put in a CD, the faceplate opens down slowly. To detach the faceplate, you release it from the left and just pull it off. It is actually the most solid faceplate I've seen when it comes to models that lower the face to eject the disc.
Con #3: Manual Faceplate
Huh? You poke the eject button and the faceplate opens down and the CD ejects. You poke the release button and the faceplace releases. What part of that should be more automatic? Were you hoping for the stereo to launch the face into your pocket when you turn off the engine? Less moving parts is a good thing!
Con #4: Faceplate may be too bright for some
Wow. This guy hasn't figured out how his stereo works. Yes, the SX980 is bright enough that you can read it in direct sunlight, but it has a dimmer! If you install it correctly, the face of the stereo dims with the dash (whenever you turn your parking or headlights on). If you don't bother hooking up the dimmer wire, you can still set the dimmer manually. Hold down Select, press right until it says "Dimmer" then turn the dial to set it to On/Off/Auto. Easy!
Con #5: Navigating stops music
Yes, this is true. My brother has a Rockford Fosgate model that lets you navigate while listening to an MP3. The SX980 is a better design. Think about how navigation works. If you want to be listening to something while you navigate, that means you have to find the next song you want to listen to then hit enter. This is very inconvenient when driving, and it's dangerous! With the SX980, there is no enter button to hit. Navigation is immediate. When you hit Prev/Next track or Up/Down directory, the track just starts playing. You don't need to look at the display to find a song.
Con #6: Faceplate folds down
Yes, that's how you put the CD in... If you want a big CD slot on the front, you'll have to get a stereo with a smaller display, you know.
Con #7: The remote may be considered too small
Well, it is a small remote. It's laid out pretty well, though. You can do all the navigating keeping your thumb in one place. I don't even understand the need for a remote control. I have a 2-seat car, but if I had a sedan, I still don't think I'd want the people in the back screwing with the music.
Now, some pros that nobody mentioned:
Pro #1:
Storing 8-character names for all the radio stations in the area is really nice. The SX980 has FM1, FM2, FM3 and AM, and for each one you can store a station for each of the six buttons. The really cool part is that the station labels aren't associated with the buttons, so you can re-assign all the buttons to different stations, and it'll still remember the name of all the stations. So, even though I only have my six favorite stations assigned to buttons, I can still navigate with the Seek buttons and the radio remembers the names of all the local stations. It can store up to 30 station names.
Pro #2:
When playing an MP3 disc, the six buttons along the bottom are shortcuts. If you name the directories on your disc names starting with numbers 01-12, you can quickly navigate to any directory. Directories 1-6 are accessed by tapping buttons 1-6, and directories 7-12 are accessed by holding in buttons 1-6. It's a pretty cool feature, since you can generally fit about 10 albums on a disc.
Pro #3:
It's got a decent amount of power. It's got 200W (not RMS of course) and a big heatsink down the left side of the chassis. If I turn the volume half-way up I feel like I'm going to damage my stock Honda speakers. My point is that it should put out plenty power for anyone without a separate sub. I'm very impressed with how good it sounds with stock speakers.
Pro #4:
This was mentioned before, but it recognizes MP3 CD's very fast. People who have tried out MP3 players know that sometimes it takes a very long time after you put in a CD before it is recognized and you can play it. THe SX980 only takes a couple seconds to scan a CD with 200 songs. Turning off the radio and taking the key out of the ignition doesn't make it forget, either. It won't have to re-scan until you put a different CD in.
The con:
The only con I noticed is a problem that I have with the majority of receivers. They are lying to you by trying to make the display look like it has more elements than it really does. You've got a spectrum analyzer that looks like it is 18 dots wide, but it can only display bars of six dots at a time. It just looks a little dumb, because for a second you expect it to look like WinAmp's spectrum analyzer with several groups of bars, but it only actually has three.
It's nice that they let you turn off the clock in the corner of the display (for those of us who already have a clock in the dash), but it doesn't really give you useful information. It'd be good to have the title scrolling across the top and the elapsed time in the corner, but turning off the clock just shows you the track number in the corner. To see the elapsed time you have to hit the DISP button and turn off the ID3 display.
Con #1: Limited to ID3v1 tags
The software I use creates both ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags, so I don't see this as a problem. To the contrary, I'm actually glad ID3v1 truncates album titles to 30 characters, because that would take forever for long names to scroll by to get to the other fields. Either way, I don't see this as a big deal.
Con #2: Faceplate may seem flimsy, easy to break
This comment worried me. The faceplate is, however, much more durable than many I've seen. To put in a CD, the faceplate opens down slowly. To detach the faceplate, you release it from the left and just pull it off. It is actually the most solid faceplate I've seen when it comes to models that lower the face to eject the disc.
Con #3: Manual Faceplate
Huh? You poke the eject button and the faceplate opens down and the CD ejects. You poke the release button and the faceplace releases. What part of that should be more automatic? Were you hoping for the stereo to launch the face into your pocket when you turn off the engine? Less moving parts is a good thing!
Con #4: Faceplate may be too bright for some
Wow. This guy hasn't figured out how his stereo works. Yes, the SX980 is bright enough that you can read it in direct sunlight, but it has a dimmer! If you install it correctly, the face of the stereo dims with the dash (whenever you turn your parking or headlights on). If you don't bother hooking up the dimmer wire, you can still set the dimmer manually. Hold down Select, press right until it says "Dimmer" then turn the dial to set it to On/Off/Auto. Easy!
Con #5: Navigating stops music
Yes, this is true. My brother has a Rockford Fosgate model that lets you navigate while listening to an MP3. The SX980 is a better design. Think about how navigation works. If you want to be listening to something while you navigate, that means you have to find the next song you want to listen to then hit enter. This is very inconvenient when driving, and it's dangerous! With the SX980, there is no enter button to hit. Navigation is immediate. When you hit Prev/Next track or Up/Down directory, the track just starts playing. You don't need to look at the display to find a song.
Con #6: Faceplate folds down
Yes, that's how you put the CD in... If you want a big CD slot on the front, you'll have to get a stereo with a smaller display, you know.
Con #7: The remote may be considered too small
Well, it is a small remote. It's laid out pretty well, though. You can do all the navigating keeping your thumb in one place. I don't even understand the need for a remote control. I have a 2-seat car, but if I had a sedan, I still don't think I'd want the people in the back screwing with the music.
Now, some pros that nobody mentioned:
Pro #1:
Storing 8-character names for all the radio stations in the area is really nice. The SX980 has FM1, FM2, FM3 and AM, and for each one you can store a station for each of the six buttons. The really cool part is that the station labels aren't associated with the buttons, so you can re-assign all the buttons to different stations, and it'll still remember the name of all the stations. So, even though I only have my six favorite stations assigned to buttons, I can still navigate with the Seek buttons and the radio remembers the names of all the local stations. It can store up to 30 station names.
Pro #2:
When playing an MP3 disc, the six buttons along the bottom are shortcuts. If you name the directories on your disc names starting with numbers 01-12, you can quickly navigate to any directory. Directories 1-6 are accessed by tapping buttons 1-6, and directories 7-12 are accessed by holding in buttons 1-6. It's a pretty cool feature, since you can generally fit about 10 albums on a disc.
Pro #3:
It's got a decent amount of power. It's got 200W (not RMS of course) and a big heatsink down the left side of the chassis. If I turn the volume half-way up I feel like I'm going to damage my stock Honda speakers. My point is that it should put out plenty power for anyone without a separate sub. I'm very impressed with how good it sounds with stock speakers.
Pro #4:
This was mentioned before, but it recognizes MP3 CD's very fast. People who have tried out MP3 players know that sometimes it takes a very long time after you put in a CD before it is recognized and you can play it. THe SX980 only takes a couple seconds to scan a CD with 200 songs. Turning off the radio and taking the key out of the ignition doesn't make it forget, either. It won't have to re-scan until you put a different CD in.
The con:
The only con I noticed is a problem that I have with the majority of receivers. They are lying to you by trying to make the display look like it has more elements than it really does. You've got a spectrum analyzer that looks like it is 18 dots wide, but it can only display bars of six dots at a time. It just looks a little dumb, because for a second you expect it to look like WinAmp's spectrum analyzer with several groups of bars, but it only actually has three.
It's nice that they let you turn off the clock in the corner of the display (for those of us who already have a clock in the dash), but it doesn't really give you useful information. It'd be good to have the title scrolling across the top and the elapsed time in the corner, but turning off the clock just shows you the track number in the corner. To see the elapsed time you have to hit the DISP button and turn off the ID3 display.
