Panasonic CQ-DF801U Car CD Player
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Similar in In Dash Receivers
- Additional Features: Animated Display
- Player Type: CD
- Controlled Devices: CD Changer
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Panasonic's Silver Surfer
Pros
Powerful, Very Configurable, Great Display, Aux In
Cons
It's Very Silver, Small Permanent Clock Display
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
This is a great high end head unit with standard features done well.
This head unit is Panasonic's premier Single DIN receiver (not counting those crazy DVD players). From a technology standpoint, there is nothing ground breaking like MP3 playback or DVD support. This head unit is the perfect centerpiece to a great conventional car audio system.
Power and Connectivity
I recently picked this head unit up to replace my stock Dual DIN CD/Tape Player in my 2001 XTerra. My old deck had only speaker level outputs at 25W x 4 max. I had recently replaced the stock rear 6x9's with some Alpines (SPOS-6939S), but they had no bass output because they're gluttons for wattage. I could either try to hook up a sub and amp to the stock deck, run a four channel amp to the interior speakers with the stock deck, or get a powerful head unit to drive the interior speakers. I decided on option three.
This Head Unit is advertised at 60W x 4 max and 27W x 4 RMS. It sounds plenty loud and clean for my taste, so I'll probably avoid any future 4 channels amps. But I am about to get a pair of subs soon.
This is where this head unit really shines. They've provided two high voltage preamp outs for front and rear, as well as a high voltage sub preamp out. Some head units will give just two preamp outs, and then let you configure what you want them to support. So I'm going to continue using the four speaker level outputs off of the deck and hook my sub amp to the sub preamp out.
Another nice aspect of this setup, is that the preamp level is adjustable separately from the main volume. This is key for balancing a system with a big amplified sub, but non-amplified interior speakers. And to top it off, they let you adjust the low pass filter for the sub preamp output in their rather intuitive menu system.
Perhaps the biggest draw to this head unit is it's aux in. Many low quality head units have aux in, but few high end decks do. Because of the removable faceplate, they couldn't add the input on the front. Instead they have two RCA plugs coming from the back. You can turn the aux in feature on or off, so you can choose to not see it when you're changing sources.
Aux in was big for me, because I use a portable hard disk mp3 player. I used it through a tape insert with my old deck, but the quality was terrible. So if you've got a ton of music in a digital format, this is a great way to listen to it. There are quite a few head units out there now that will read mp3s from CDR/Ws, but very few high end head units have that support. And the products on the horizon are priced raher high. So this is a great way to get massive amounts of music in your car without investing in a CD changer...which this head unit will also control easily.
Display and User Interface
One of the first things people notice about this head unit (after it's flashy silver and chrome trim, ||yuck|| which is growing on me) is it's blue lcd display. Then entire display consists of pixels, so there are no hard icons. The pixels seem to have a 2-bit color depth, so there are four shades of blue, from very light blue to dark blue.
Some manufacturers have done similar jobs with their displays, but this is the highest resolution display I've seen yet. And Panasonic puts those pixels to use. They followed the same path as others and allowed several nice animations to choose from, but they've also made good use of the display for indicating the essential stats of the head unit: track, time, station, source, etc. Complaint: The time is permanently displayed in the upper right hand corner but it is too small. You have to option of also displaying the time in a very readable font, but it's right in the middle of the display...thus blocking my favorite bird animation.
Perhaps the nicest thing about the display, is that there are several display modes. These modes allow you to determine the perfect balance between information and fluff that your display gives you. After you choose your display mode, you can dial that display in be adjusting the contrast and dimmer level.
Displaying information is the biggest reason for such a great display. But it's also great for the user interface. With so many options, a pure button based user interface would be a nightmare. So they've used the large display in their menu system and allowed the user to change a multitude of settings with just 2 buttons and a four way navigation button. This was welcome, because this head unit is packed with configurable settings.
Construction
The first Panasonic head unit that I owned years ago stunk. I liked it, but the power supply died on it rendering it useless. So I was hesitant to buy another. Well I was quite pleased with this head unit at first, but then the CD mechanism started having a hard time resuming a disc after the truck had been off for some time. An error would be displayed forcing me to eject and reinsert the disc again. This is a simple mechanical problem that really should not exist in a modern CD player, much less a $400 head unit. I also thought the display was a little dim and unreadable because of some weird flickering.
Well I brought it back because of the mechanical problem, and the merchant replaced it. The new unit is devoid of the previous problems, so I'm once again 100% pleased. The display is now remarkably more readable too. It just stinks that such a thing makes it out of the factory.
Power and Connectivity
I recently picked this head unit up to replace my stock Dual DIN CD/Tape Player in my 2001 XTerra. My old deck had only speaker level outputs at 25W x 4 max. I had recently replaced the stock rear 6x9's with some Alpines (SPOS-6939S), but they had no bass output because they're gluttons for wattage. I could either try to hook up a sub and amp to the stock deck, run a four channel amp to the interior speakers with the stock deck, or get a powerful head unit to drive the interior speakers. I decided on option three.
This Head Unit is advertised at 60W x 4 max and 27W x 4 RMS. It sounds plenty loud and clean for my taste, so I'll probably avoid any future 4 channels amps. But I am about to get a pair of subs soon.
This is where this head unit really shines. They've provided two high voltage preamp outs for front and rear, as well as a high voltage sub preamp out. Some head units will give just two preamp outs, and then let you configure what you want them to support. So I'm going to continue using the four speaker level outputs off of the deck and hook my sub amp to the sub preamp out.
Another nice aspect of this setup, is that the preamp level is adjustable separately from the main volume. This is key for balancing a system with a big amplified sub, but non-amplified interior speakers. And to top it off, they let you adjust the low pass filter for the sub preamp output in their rather intuitive menu system.
Perhaps the biggest draw to this head unit is it's aux in. Many low quality head units have aux in, but few high end decks do. Because of the removable faceplate, they couldn't add the input on the front. Instead they have two RCA plugs coming from the back. You can turn the aux in feature on or off, so you can choose to not see it when you're changing sources.
Aux in was big for me, because I use a portable hard disk mp3 player. I used it through a tape insert with my old deck, but the quality was terrible. So if you've got a ton of music in a digital format, this is a great way to listen to it. There are quite a few head units out there now that will read mp3s from CDR/Ws, but very few high end head units have that support. And the products on the horizon are priced raher high. So this is a great way to get massive amounts of music in your car without investing in a CD changer...which this head unit will also control easily.
Display and User Interface
One of the first things people notice about this head unit (after it's flashy silver and chrome trim, ||yuck|| which is growing on me) is it's blue lcd display. Then entire display consists of pixels, so there are no hard icons. The pixels seem to have a 2-bit color depth, so there are four shades of blue, from very light blue to dark blue.
Some manufacturers have done similar jobs with their displays, but this is the highest resolution display I've seen yet. And Panasonic puts those pixels to use. They followed the same path as others and allowed several nice animations to choose from, but they've also made good use of the display for indicating the essential stats of the head unit: track, time, station, source, etc. Complaint: The time is permanently displayed in the upper right hand corner but it is too small. You have to option of also displaying the time in a very readable font, but it's right in the middle of the display...thus blocking my favorite bird animation.
Perhaps the nicest thing about the display, is that there are several display modes. These modes allow you to determine the perfect balance between information and fluff that your display gives you. After you choose your display mode, you can dial that display in be adjusting the contrast and dimmer level.
Displaying information is the biggest reason for such a great display. But it's also great for the user interface. With so many options, a pure button based user interface would be a nightmare. So they've used the large display in their menu system and allowed the user to change a multitude of settings with just 2 buttons and a four way navigation button. This was welcome, because this head unit is packed with configurable settings.
Construction
The first Panasonic head unit that I owned years ago stunk. I liked it, but the power supply died on it rendering it useless. So I was hesitant to buy another. Well I was quite pleased with this head unit at first, but then the CD mechanism started having a hard time resuming a disc after the truck had been off for some time. An error would be displayed forcing me to eject and reinsert the disc again. This is a simple mechanical problem that really should not exist in a modern CD player, much less a $400 head unit. I also thought the display was a little dim and unreadable because of some weird flickering.
Well I brought it back because of the mechanical problem, and the merchant replaced it. The new unit is devoid of the previous problems, so I'm once again 100% pleased. The display is now remarkably more readable too. It just stinks that such a thing makes it out of the factory.
