Sony CDX-GT61UI Car CD / MP3 Player

I bought this radio for our Ford Explorer after its last aftermarket radio died. I liked that I could hook up an Ipod and control it through the radio, as well as the multitude of auxillary inputs.

I installed the unit myself, which was very easy. It was actually the easiest part of owning this unit. The buttons and their labels are very small and cumbersome to operate while driving. Sony has loaded this unit with buttons that require you to study the owner's manual and keep it in the car with you at all times. Several buttons are labeled acronyms that are Sony proprietary and don't mean anything to the average user such as "BTM" and its secondary function "CAT". There is a 3 band equalizer button which has over-the-top descriptive settings such as "Xplod, SPACE, GRAVITY, EDGE, VOCAL, CRUISE, OFF, and CUSTOM". Is there really any room left for customization on a three band equalizer that has six settings? With only three bands what's the point? Why not just add a treble and bass button? This is obviously marketed for teenagers or something. Several buttons have shared functions depending on what auxiliary input you're using, such as the preset buttons sharing functions with CD buttons like Rep, Shuf, Pause, etc. Some secondary functions aren't even labeled (such as preset button 5 has a secondary function but there wasn't room to label it). At first glance while driving, these secondary labels are very hard to read and do not light up at night. For driving safety, you just have to know where they are and what they do. Of all these buttons, there still isn't a mute button.

As far as the screen goes, it tells a multitude of information, such as what track you're on, what the label of the track is (if in Ipod mode), and things like artist, genre, etc. It displays the equalizer settings as well. There is a scroll mode that allows the information to scroll over the screen. Using the Ipod functions are difficult because the screen doesn't display much at any given time. You just get a snapshot of the artist's name. Cycling through genres, artist, playlist, or whatever requires hitting the "mode" button several times, then cycling through using the "1" and "2" presets, which double as "-GP/ALBM+" till you get what you want. I find it much faster to plug the Ipod into an FM modulator and use the click wheel (with the added bonus of being able to see most of your lists at once on the Ipod's screen instead of line by line).

There is an Aux port as well as a USB interface allowing multiple ways to get your music to play through the speakers. When turning the unit off, it goes into store display mode advertising all the modes it has on the screen. Other than turning the engine off, there doesn't seem to be a way to actually completely turn it off. When you turn the car off it gives some sort of security beep I guess to remind you to take the detachable faceplate off. I don't bother to do so. If somebody steals this thing it'll be a great day.

Sound quality is not very good on this thing. I have to dig through the owner's manual to figure out how to balance the sound between all the speakers on the car. It seems to predominately come from the back. Most of the quality can be blamed on the factory speakers, but the volume maxes out on the head unit much earlier than the old CD player and the speakers are not even close to being pushed to their limits. Unless of course you're in the "XPLOD" equalizer setting which simply adds a bunch of bass, mid, and treble, to everything and starts immediately distorting speakers.