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HEAD UNITS
Pioneer’s MOSFET 50 x 4 CD Premier DEH-P550MP receiver plays CDs, MP3’s, and WMA discs, and features Pioneer’s Pop-up Rotary Volume Control. To fine-tune your vehicle’s sound, the unit offer’s Pioneer’s exclusive EEQ, SFEQ, the new EQ-EX, and high-pass and low-pass crossovers. The DEH-P550MP also offers the company’s Supertuner IIID digital tuner for enhanced FM and AM radio reception, and it’s XM-Ready. It also boasts a multi-color LCD display, a steering wheel remote, and a detachable/flap face.
The Real World, CS&P Style
Keeping in the theme of having real people look at real products, we took the Pioneer Premier DEH-P550MP and put it in Jennifer Kissick’s 2001 Honda Civic. At this point, it might help you to understand exactly who Jennifer is: she’s a 20-year-old who works in a popular fast food chain as a manager. She’s also a full-time student in college. So, to say she’s busy and demands a lot of the products that she buys is an understatement. She has owned three new vehicles over the last three years, all modified, by her, and all sport compact cars. Knowing that, let’s move to the car.
With nothing other than the head unit replacing the factory one as the modification to the sound system, we sent Jennifer out about her normal routine. While those of us who have been around products for a very long time might find certain things that we like and dislike, a non-jaded person looks at things from a different, more pure point of view. So let’s take a look at what a real consumer has to say.
When I sat down to talk with Jennifer, the biggest comment about this radio right off the bat was that it stood out. This comment came from everyone that has gotten in her car and from Jennifer herself — this is not to be perceived as a negative thing, it’s simply the first thing commented upon.
"I immediately liked the detachable face and the fact that it simply just pulled off," states Kissick. "One annoying thing," she notes, "was that the volume knob pushed in and out."
Beyond that, Jennifer liked the display of the radio and the info that it gave.
Jennifer states that she also enjoyed the quality of the MP3 playback and that, in her car, she couldn’t really tell much difference between CD tracks and MP3-encoded tracks unless she was sitting still (which she never does). She also notes that the display offered a very cool feature that allowed her to see the ID3 Tags for her MP3’s, including artist, album, and even her comments.
"I really like the fact that the display showed off the titles of songs on CD’s that I burned and the fact that finding titles of MP3’s were easy," she adds. "I didn’t particularly like the green backlighting for the keys used on the display — I was confused as to why a unit with cool blue lighting would even have green."
On the performance side, Jennifer couldn’t be happier.
"The features were easy to use and easy to get to," states Kissick. "And while I didn’t have a need for the active filter options at this point, I’m looking forward to the availability for upgrade that the unit makes available. Overall, operation of the unit has been stellar."
Jennifer had nothing but good things to say about the performance of all of the features and media options. She also liked the availability of all the presets.
Price & Contact: $260; 800-PIONEER; www.pioneerelectronics.com
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