Top car stereos: the best options available in Russia | Articles | Audio and video equipment

Pho­to: cnet.com

It seems that in the catch­phrase about Rus­sians and fast dri­ving, one impor­tant ele­ment is miss­ing … music. “What Russ­ian does­n’t like to dri­ve fast to good music?” — so it would be worth adapt­ing the famous rhetor­i­cal ques­tion from “Dead Souls” for mod­ern real­i­ties. But how will you lis­ten to music in the car? Cer­tain­ly not from a mobile phone. And mod­ern radio tape recorders can also sug­gest the way, which is also impor­tant for our coun­try. In this com­pi­la­tion, we have col­lect­ed for you the top best radio tape recorders in the car.

The main characteristics of radio tape recorders for cars

Car radios (also called “head” or “head unit”) have sev­er­al impor­tant char­ac­ter­is­tics, but first of all, you need to pay atten­tion to the size, which deter­mines whether the select­ed mod­el will fit your car.

Con­ven­tion­al­ly, all types of radio tape recorders can be divid­ed into sev­er­al main types accord­ing to size and form fac­tor:

• 1DIN radio with­out addi­tion­al mon­i­tor;
• 1DIN radio with retractable screen;
• 2DIN radios.

There are radios with and with­out a sound proces­sor, radios on Android and their own oper­at­ing sys­tems.

We under­stand what tech­ni­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics affect what.

1DIN and 2DIN

1DIN or 2DIN — the basic char­ac­ter­is­tic of the radio, which you need to know about when buy­ing. It indi­cates the stan­dard mount­ing hole size for a car radio.

• 1DIN refers to radios with a size of 180 x 50 mm.
• 2DIN for radios with a size of 180 x 100 mm.

Typ­i­cal sin­gle din radio. Pho­to: znaiauto.ru

The seat­ing depth is not stan­dard­ized, approx­i­mate­ly all 1DIN and 2DIN radios have a seat­ing depth of around 160 mm. How­ev­er, your vehi­cle is com­pat­i­ble with either one or both sizes.

The size is dif­fi­cult to deter­mine by eye, espe­cial­ly in mod­ern cars. It is best to find the nec­es­sary para­me­ters on the Inter­net in advance by enter­ing the query “radio recorder stan­dard size (car mod­el)” into the search engine.

If the car uses a 1DIN car radio sock­et, then only a 1DIN radio will suit you, but with a 2DIN sock­et, you can choose any option. How­ev­er, not all man­u­fac­tur­ers use DIN sizes — an adapter frame may also be required to install uni­ver­sal radio tape recorders. Non-stan­dard sizes are found in BMW, Hon­da, Toy­ota and oth­er brands.

Maps with nav­i­ga­tion can be dis­played on a large screen 2DIN radio. Pho­to: market.yandex.ru

What size is bet­ter? It all depends on your needs. In terms of basic sound con­trol func­tions, there is no dif­fer­ence. 2DIN radios have more space for the user inter­face and are there­fore eas­i­er to use. For obvi­ous rea­sons, 2DIN mod­els are more often equipped with a touch screen, but there are also options for 1DIN radio tape recorders — more on that below. A good car radio can be of any size.

Display

The dis­play plays a huge role in the func­tion­al­i­ty, usabil­i­ty and appear­ance of your stereo sys­tem. More advanced mod­els have high res­o­lu­tion and cus­tomiz­able back­light.

Almost all 1DIN radio mod­els on the mar­ket today use a mul­ti-char­ac­ter and mul­ti-seg­ment LCD dis­play. Old-school dot-matrix dis­plays have prac­ti­cal­ly gone into obliv­ion and are already of inter­est to col­lec­tors rather than ordi­nary motorists. If you’re look­ing for a 1DIN radio, look for devices with mul­ti-line dis­plays that can dis­play artist and song title infor­ma­tion at the same time.

An old school radio with a dot matrix dis­play on top and a mod­ern radio with an LCD dis­play on the bot­tom.

There are also 1DIN radios with a retractable screen, although their pop­u­lar­i­ty is grad­u­al­ly declin­ing due to the tech­ni­cal vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of the retractable mech­a­nism. For these mod­els, the screen leaves the case and turns over. It is these radios that can be equipped with a touch screen, which allows you to use the touch­screen, even if the car only has a 1DIN sock­et.

This is how a sin­gle-din “head” with a retractable screen looks like. Pho­to: osoko.ru

2DIN mod­els are equipped with full col­or dis­plays of var­i­ous sizes. More com­pact radios usu­al­ly have a screen with a diag­o­nal of about 6 inch­es, larg­er ones — from 7 and above. Most radio tape recorders have a res­o­lu­tion of 800x600 pix­els, high-end devices can have an HD screen with a res­o­lu­tion of 1280x720 or more.

Less expen­sive options use a so-called resis­tive touch screen. The dis­play of these devices is cov­ered with a thin plas­tic film with a mat­te anti-reflec­tive coat­ing. More advanced mod­els use a capac­i­tive touch screen, like smart­phones — you direct­ly press the glass on the front of the device. The advan­tage of capac­i­tive screens is that they are much sharp­er and brighter, and can read mul­ti­ple pres­sure points at the same time. This is nec­es­sary to con­trol ges­tures — for exam­ple, to swipe or zoom with two fin­gers.

The touch inter­face offers a range of ben­e­fits:

• eas­i­er to adjust the sound and click on the menu;
• con­ve­nient inte­gra­tion with a smart­phone, espe­cial­ly with mod­els equipped with Apple CarPlay or Android Auto;
• eas­i­er to con­trol the GPS nav­i­ga­tor.

Such radios are often more dif­fi­cult to install — you have to con­nect a few addi­tion­al wires.

Many mod­ern car radios can please with addi­tion­al RGB back­light­ing. It is con­trolled by adjust­ing col­ors and bright­ness. You can choose com­bi­na­tions that fit the inte­ri­or of the car.

Power

Pow­er is an impor­tant char­ac­ter­is­tic when choos­ing a radio. With­out an exter­nal ampli­fi­er, the pow­er out­put of a car stereo is what ulti­mate­ly deter­mines the loud­ness of the sound.

Typ­i­cal­ly, car radios have two pow­er out­puts:

• The max­i­mum (peak) out­put pow­er is the max­i­mum pow­er that the car stereo can deliv­er for short peri­ods of time. It will be trans­mit­ted to your speak­ers (no exter­nal ampli­fi­er).
• RMS (Root Mean Squared) out­put pow­er is the pow­er at which the sys­tem can oper­ate con­tin­u­ous­ly or for an extend­ed peri­od of time. This is a clos­er approx­i­ma­tion to real­i­ty.

Often, man­u­fac­tur­ers indi­cate exact­ly the peak pow­er (for exam­ple, 4x50 watts), but this is only a nom­i­nal val­ue. More real­is­tic RMS pow­er is always less (for exam­ple, 4x15 watts). It is impor­tant that the pow­er of your sound sys­tem (speak­ers and/or sub­woofer) exceeds the pow­er of the car radio.

Interfaces and formats

Mod­ern “heads” are real media com­bines that can repro­duce sound from a vari­ety of media. Which inter­faces you need will depend on how (or rather, from which device) you lis­ten to music.

Here are the most pop­u­lar options:

• FM radio. With the FM radio, every­thing is more or less clear — it is present in almost every radio.
• CD/DVD play­er. If you still have a col­lec­tion of your favorite CDs, it’s a sin not to lis­ten to them dur­ing the trip. These play­ers play music in var­i­ous for­mats, includ­ing CD and DVD, CD‑R/RW, MP3, AAC, WAV and WMA.
• 3.5 mm audio jack (AUX). This is a stan­dard head­phone jack, through which you can con­nect a vari­ety of devices — play­ers, smart­phones, etc.
• blue­tooth. You con­nect your smart­phone via Blue­tooth like a portable speak­er — a pop­u­lar and easy way.
• USB port. You can lis­ten to music from your smart­phone and charge it at the same time. Or con­nect a flash dri­ve or exter­nal hard dri­ve with record­ed tracks.
• SD card. A choice for spe­cial con­nois­seurs, but why not. In addi­tion, in some mod­els, it is the SD card that is used for the data­base of the nav­i­ga­tor.

Most radios can eas­i­ly han­dle stan­dard dig­i­tal for­mats — MP3 and WAV. If you want to lis­ten to music in a loss­less for­mat with­out los­ing qual­i­ty, please note that the radio must sup­port FLAC or APE.

Additional functions

Apple CarPlay inter­face. Pho­to: iphones.ru

• CarPlay and Android Auto. Apple CarPlay and Android Auto sys­tems allow you to use your smart­phone in the car with­out tak­ing your eyes off the road. With their help, you can use the satel­lite nav­i­ga­tion sys­tem, make calls, send and receive mes­sages, lis­ten to music, etc. Every­thing is cus­tomized for use in the car. Nat­u­ral­ly, to work with appli­ca­tions, the radio must have a touch screen. Apple promis­es that this year will begin pro­duc­tion of car mod­els that can be opened and start­ed using the iPhone.
• blue­tooth. Even if your radio does not sup­port CarPlay and Android Auto, but it has Blue­tooth, you can make calls and lis­ten to music from your smart­phone.
• GPS nav­i­ga­tion. Mod­els with a built-in GPS-nav­i­ga­tor have their advan­tages. For exam­ple, the screen of any 2DIN radio is much larg­er than that of a smart­phone or DVR, so using such a nav­i­ga­tor is much more con­ve­nient. Often built-in nav­i­ga­tors are equipped with addi­tion­al fea­tures.
• Equal­iz­er. In addi­tion to pow­er, it is impor­tant to be able to con­trol the shape of the out­put sound. With the equal­iz­er, you can boost or cut spe­cif­ic fre­quen­cies to best opti­mize the sound for your car. The more bands the equal­iz­er has, the more pre­cise­ly you will be able to adjust the sound. Almost always there is a set of pre­sets for dif­fer­ent styles of music.
• Video view­ing. Of course, watch­ing videos while dri­ving is not the best idea. But some­times you need to wait for some­one in the car — this is where you will have time for your favorite series or a cou­ple of YouTube videos. The advan­tages over a smart­phone are the same — a large screen. And you won’t have to wor­ry about the bat­tery.
• sound proces­sor. If you need a tru­ly high-qual­i­ty sound, pay atten­tion that the built-in proces­sor is present in the mod­el. The sound proces­sor allows you to prop­er­ly adjust the acoustics in the car with the desired time cor­rec­tion for each speak­er and sub­woofer. At the same time, set­ting up the proces­sor is not an easy task, and some­times an exter­nal ampli­fi­er is also need­ed to obtain the desired effect.

The best car radios

In the top of the best radio tape recorders, we will con­sid­er only mod­els that can be pur­chased in Rus­sia. For your con­ve­nience, we divid­ed them by size, form fac­tor and impor­tant addi­tion­al fea­tures.

The best 1DIN car radios without additional display

If the sound is the most impor­tant thing for you, and for every­thing else there is a smart­phone, then a high-qual­i­ty 1DIN radio tape recorder with­out an addi­tion­al screen will suit you.

Alpine CDE-193BT

Every­thing is good, but it’s a very tiny screen. Pho­to: audioimages.co.uk

Cost: 15,000 rubles

Pros:

• great sound;
• high qual­i­ty FM radio recep­tion;
• the abil­i­ty to con­nect reg­u­lar but­tons on the steer­ing wheel.

Minus­es:

• small screen;
• incon­ve­nient oper­a­tion with some Android smart­phones.

Alpine CDE-193BT is more expen­sive than most rep­re­sen­ta­tives of its class, but it boasts excel­lent sound, a bunch of set­tings and almost com­plete omniv­o­rous­ness. You will find a CD dri­ve, USB, AUX and Blue­tooth inter­faces. You can play FLAC, but only via USB. The “head” has a full-fledged proces­sor, so you can fine-tune the sound to suit your acoustics.

Most user com­plaints relate to the small screen and soft­ware. Of course, a small screen is a prob­lem for many sin­gle-din radios, but in such an advanced mod­el from such a respect­ed man­u­fac­tur­er, one could try to opti­mize some para­me­ters bet­ter — for exam­ple, the font size, due to which words often do not fit entire­ly on the screen. Also, some users crit­i­cize the Android appli­ca­tion and the qual­i­ty of the Blue­tooth con­nec­tion with Android smart­phones, but most like­ly it depends on the phone mod­el.

Sony DSX-A212UI. Bud­get Alter­na­tive

The sig­na­ture “X‑shaped” design is one of the attrac­tive fea­tures of this bud­get head. Pho­to: sony.ru

Cost: 4,000 rubles

Pros:

• user-friend­ly inter­face;
• nice brand­ed design Sony.

Minus­es:

• lack of Blue­tooth.

An inex­pen­sive but high-qual­i­ty radio tape recorder from Sony, which invari­ably col­lects good reviews from car own­ers and is includ­ed in the tops of bud­get radio tape recorders.

The smart­phone can be con­nect­ed via USB, but there is no Blue­tooth, although giv­en the price range, this is not sur­pris­ing. You can con­nect the device through the jack, while you will not find a CD play­er. The FM receiv­er works flaw­less­ly.

In gen­er­al, despite the very afford­able price, the Sony DSX-A212UI pro­duces a very good sound with enough pow­er. There is a nine-band equal­iz­er to adjust it, and the sound of the “head” is quite “bass” with a lot of bot­toms. The mod­el reads FLAC — for lovers of loss­less for­mats.

Best 1DIN Retractable Screen Car Radios

If only a sin­gle-din radio will fit into your car, but you still want a large screen, “heads” with a retractable screen are a com­plete­ly log­i­cal option. The main vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of such devices is the retractable mech­a­nism and the train, which are sub­ject­ed to addi­tion­al load when the machine moves.

Pio­neer AVH-A7100BT

A con­ve­nient touch­screen dis­play on a sin­gle-din “head” is not fan­tas­tic. Pho­to: positronica.ru

Cost: 30,000 rubles.

Pros:

• many func­tions;
• good com­pat­i­bil­i­ty with large exter­nal dri­ves;
• omniv­o­rous in terms of audio and video for­mats;
• equal­iz­er with fine tun­ing.

Minus­es:

• may not reach the pow­er for lovers of “loud­er” — you will need an exter­nal ampli­fi­er;
• no GPS nav­i­ga­tion sys­tem.

Per­haps the best 1DIN radio with a retractable screen avail­able now in Rus­sia. You can con­nect Android and iOS devices via USB (for lis­ten­ing to music and charg­ing, but with­out CarPlay and Android Auto sup­port). There is Blue­tooth for hands-free calls, you can con­nect two devices at once. Also, a rear view cam­era is con­nect­ed to the Pio­neer AVH-A7100BT.

The retractable 7‑inch touch screen did­n’t force Pio­neer to ditch the CD/DVD dri­ve, to the delight of all con­ser­v­a­tives. “Head” qui­et­ly repro­duces almost all for­mats of audio and video, includ­ing MKV.

One of the main fea­tures is a very high-qual­i­ty sound with the abil­i­ty to fine-tune. There is a 13-band equal­iz­er and FLAC sup­port up to 192kHz/24bit. In gen­er­al, every­thing for music lovers in the car. Of course, some­one may not have enough built-in ampli­fi­er (5% THD at a nom­i­nal pow­er of 22 watts per chan­nel), but sup­port­ers of the “loud­er” can always install an exter­nal ampli­fi­er.

Mys­tery MMTD-9122S. Bud­get Alter­na­tive

Mys­tery gives out a boot logo depend­ing on the brand of the car — a tri­fle, but nice. Pho­to: market.yandex.ru

Cost: 11,000 rubles

Pros:

• good func­tion­al­i­ty at a low price;
• choice of col­or and bright­ness of the back­light;
• full func­tion remote con­trol.

Minus­es:

• slow­ly reads exter­nal dri­ves;
• unsta­ble con­nec­tion on FM radio;
• qui­et enough.

Of course, in today’s con­di­tions, even bud­get devices some­times look not so cheap, but we tried to find the best options for you in terms of price and qual­i­ty ratio. The Mys­tery radio has a large 7‑inch screen, which, as with Pio­neer, did not inter­fere with the instal­la­tion of a CD dri­ve. Music and movies can also be played via USB, although many users com­plain about “thought­ful” read­ing from flash dri­ves.

Despite the rel­a­tive­ly afford­able price, the build qual­i­ty and mate­ri­als are at a high lev­el, and the screen is firm­ly fixed. You can con­nect a rear view cam­era — this option is not always avail­able for bud­get mod­els. Mys­tery MMTD-9122S can be con­trolled with a remote con­trol. Adjust­ing the col­or and bright­ness of the back­light is a nice bonus.

The radio has a good sound, but, as in the pre­vi­ous case, not too loud. Unlike the pre­vi­ous radio, fine-tun­ing the sound for your­self and the car will no longer work. This mod­el is a com­pro­mise, but giv­en the low cost, the com­pro­mise is very ben­e­fi­cial.

Best 1DIN car radio with powerful sound processor

Let’s fin­ish our rat­ing of 1DIN radio “head” with a cool sound and a pow­er­ful proces­sor. Bud­get mod­els with pow­er­ful proces­sors are still an oxy­moron, although among the more bud­get options we rec­om­mend tak­ing a clos­er look at the Pio­neer DEH-S5000BT. In the mean­time, our win­ner:

Pio­neer DEH-80PRS

Old man with top sound. Pho­to: pioneer-mea.com

Cost: 34,000 rubles

Pros:

• great sound;
• pow­er­ful proces­sor;
• qual­i­ty mate­ri­als and body assem­bly.

Minus­es:

• dis­play and menu items are not easy to read;
• dif­fi­cul­ty nav­i­gat­ing while dri­ving;
• no FLAC sup­port.

Per­haps this “head” is still one of the best sound­ing on the mar­ket. Despite its ven­er­a­ble age, it eas­i­ly out­plays most of the newest com­peti­tors. This is reflect­ed in the price: more than 30 thou­sand for a sin­gle-din radio with­out an addi­tion­al dis­play is no joke.

Pio­neer DEH-80PRS sup­ports Android and iPhone smart­phones via USB (2 con­nec­tors) and Blue­tooth con­nec­tion (there is a micro­phone includ­ed for calls), reads CDs, is equipped with two AUX inputs and an SD card slot.

Cool pow­er­ful sound can be adjust­ed with a 16-band equal­iz­er, which also allows you to sep­a­rate­ly adjust the lev­els for the left and right chan­nels. How­ev­er, there are spots on the sun, the ven­er­a­ble age affects: the device does not sup­port FLAC, so loss­less files will have to be con­vert­ed to WAV first.

Best 2DIN Touch Screen Car Radios

Today, many 2DIN radios are equipped with a touch screen, so this top will be com­mon for 2DIN radios, and for mod­els on Android and with a built-in GPS nav­i­ga­tor, we have com­piled a sep­a­rate rat­ing.

Pio­neer DMH-Z5350BT

This “tablet” has every­thing you might need from a car radio. Pho­to: pioneer-mea.com

Cost: 37,000 rubles.

Pros:

• capac­i­tive touch dis­play;
• cool proces­sor and auto­mat­ic sound tun­ing for the fea­tures of the cab­in;
• Android Auto and Car Play.

Minus­es:

If you already choose a top-end 2DIN “head”, then again you can­not do with­out expen­sive “Pio­neers”. Below is a sig­nif­i­cant­ly more bud­get-friend­ly alter­na­tive, but for now let’s see what you get for your mon­ey.

And you get a full-fledged sound proces­sor with delay set­tings (it would be quite pos­si­ble to put the mod­el in the top proces­sor radios), a crossover (fre­quen­cy divider for dif­fer­ent car speak­ers) and auto­mat­ic fre­quen­cy response adjust­ment for inte­ri­or fea­tures. And also very high-qual­i­ty sound with fine tun­ing using a 13-band equal­iz­er and con­ve­nient pre­sets. “Head” under­stands any for­mats (includ­ing MKV for video and FLAC for audio) and con­nec­tion meth­ods. Android Auto or Apple CarPlay is auto­mat­i­cal­ly acti­vat­ed when a smart­phone is con­nect­ed.

The pic­ture is dis­played on a 6.8‑inch screen with a res­o­lu­tion of 2400×480 pix­els. The capac­i­tive touch dis­play works like your tablet, so you get a ver­sa­tile mul­ti­me­dia stu­dio. As a result, this is the top mod­el of the new gen­er­a­tion, which will dec­o­rate any car.

ACV AVD-6600. Bud­get Alter­na­tive

Few mod­els can com­pete with the AVD-6600 in this price range. Pho­to: citilink.ru

Cost: 9000 rubles

Pros:

• excel­lent fea­ture set;
• built-in nav­i­ga­tor;
• RGB back­light

Minus­es:

• some users com­plain about the lack of high fre­quen­cies.

ACV turned out to be a well-equipped bud­get mod­el. A good 6.2‑inch touch­screen dis­play received a stan­dard res­o­lu­tion of 800 by 480 pix­els. Not to say that this is the best choice for watch­ing videos, but it will be clear­ly more con­ve­nient than a smart­phone.

The radio has a CD/DVD dri­ve, Blue­tooth, a USB inter­face and a microSD card slot.

The AVD-6600 also has a GPS nav­i­ga­tor from Navi­tel. To acti­vate, you need to buy and down­load a road map from the offi­cial Navi­tel web­site, burn it to microSD, and then install it in the radio.

The “head” gives out quite a decent sound, although on the net­work you can stum­ble upon the opin­ion that the device lacks the “tops” a lit­tle.

The best 2DIN car radio on Android

Many users are accus­tomed to the Android sys­tem on their smart­phone, but Android also has its own radio. The most impor­tant advan­tage of such mod­els is their ver­sa­til­i­ty. You can install on it the same appli­ca­tions that you use on your smart­phone. The dis­ad­van­tages are appro­pri­ate — the sys­tem can fail and slow down, but a com­pe­tent choice of mod­el will save you from such prob­lems.

INCAR TSA-9110

A domes­tic prod­uct for which it is not a shame. Pho­to: muzon-auto.ru

Cost: 28,000 rubles

Pros:

• top set of options;
• 24-band equal­iz­er;
• GLONASS sup­port.

Minus­es:

• con­fus­ing inter­face.

This is a full-fledged advanced Android tablet in your car. Inside is an 8‑core 1.5 mega­hertz CPU (not to be con­fused with a sound proces­sor) and 4 giga­bytes of RAM. Although 4 GB of RAM may seem a lit­tle small com­pared to many mod­ern smart­phones, this is more than enough for a car stereo. Plus 64 GB of inter­nal mem­o­ry — for music, movies and maps. You can throw every­thing you need and no longer think about con­nect­ing a smart­phone or flash dri­ves. All this can be viewed on a 7‑inch dis­play with a res­o­lu­tion of 1024 by 600 pix­els. The device is run­ning the tenth Android, which can be updat­ed as new sys­tems are released.

The sound is adjust­ed using a 24-band equal­iz­er, which you will not find even in top-end “pio­neer” devices. The sys­tem reads FLAC and MKV, so you won’t have any for­mat restric­tions.

It is inter­est­ing that in the radio there is not only GPS, but also GLONASS — for fans of the domes­tic nav­i­ga­tion sys­tem.

MRM-A788. Bud­get Alter­na­tive

Want an inex­pen­sive 4G tablet in your car? — MRM-A788. Pho­to: ozon.ru

Cost: 7,000 rubles

Pros:

• Inter­net con­nec­tion via SIM card;
• ver­sa­tile slim body.

Minus­es:

• 1 GB RAM;
• The OS is not updat­ed.

An inter­est­ing low-cost alter­na­tive among Android devices is the MRM-A788, which is 20 thou­sand cheap­er than our last nom­i­nee. The cheap­er mod­el has a sim­pler screen, proces­sor, and only 1GB of RAM, but for $700 you get a device-inde­pen­dent net­work con­nec­tion, as well as a super-slim body that will fit almost any car.

The radio has a pre-installed nav­i­ga­tor, as well as 16 GB of inter­nal mem­o­ry for down­load­ing maps and media files.

Users dis­agree on the sound qual­i­ty, leav­ing con­flict­ing com­ments. Before buy­ing, we rec­om­mend lis­ten­ing to the sound and form your opin­ion on this mat­ter.

The best car radio with GPS navigation

A GPS nav­i­ga­tor can be found on most Android radios, but most often you will have to pay a lit­tle more for a pop­u­lar oper­at­ing sys­tem. In addi­tion, not all Apple tech­nol­o­gy users will appre­ci­ate an Android device in their car. There­fore, we offer you an alter­na­tive “head” in the mid­dle price seg­ment with a GPS nav­i­ga­tor.

Pro­l­o­gy MPN-D510

A sep­a­rate large “twist” for vol­ume is a nice addi­tion to the touch inter­face. Pho­to: sbermegamarket.ru

Cost: 13,000 rubles.

Pros:

• com­bi­na­tion price-qual­i­ty;
• sup­port for steer­ing wheel but­tons;
• nav­i­ga­tor from Navi­tel.

Minus­es:

• not very user friend­ly inter­face.

The Pro­l­o­gy MPN-D510 is a tru­ly ver­sa­tile machine with USB, Blue­tooth, CD/DVD dri­ve, 3.5mm audio jack, SD card slot, touch screen and rear view cam­era con­nec­tion. The pow­er of the “head” is stan­dard, but there are no com­plaints about the sound qual­i­ty. The mod­el is prac­ti­cal­ly “omniv­o­rous”, with the excep­tion of some video for­mats like MKV.

The car radio uses the well-known nav­i­ga­tion sys­tem from Navi­tel with the abil­i­ty to update maps and soft­ware.

In gen­er­al, this is a strong mid­dle peas­ant — with­out any par­tic­u­lar­ly out­stand­ing fea­tures, but also with­out jambs. This makes it an excel­lent choice for any­one look­ing for a car radio with inte­grat­ed GPS.

Results

What­ev­er radio you choose, the main thing is that it does not dis­tract you from dri­ving. Pho­to: bestproducts.com

So, when choos­ing a radio, first of all you need to decide which size is suit­able for your car — either only 1DIN (small), or both 1DIN and 2DIN (large).

The next thing to con­sid­er is whether you need a large dis­play and a touch inter­face. A large dis­play can also be found in 1DIN mod­els — in them it is installed using a retractable mech­a­nism. If you buy a radio sole­ly for the sake of music and radio, then, in gen­er­al, you may not need a large screen.

If you plan to occa­sion­al­ly watch videos (just don’t do it while dri­ving!), use maps or spe­cial appli­ca­tions, you can’t do with­out a large screen. And the pres­ence of a touch inter­face great­ly sim­pli­fies the set­up of the radio and menu nav­i­ga­tion.

For con­nois­seurs of sound, “heads” with a sep­a­rate sound proces­sor are bet­ter suit­ed, which allows you to adjust the delay between the car’s speak­ers, there­by cre­at­ing the cor­rect sound pic­ture.

Pay atten­tion to the pow­er of the car radio, the pres­ence of the nec­es­sary inter­faces (depend­ing on what media you are lis­ten­ing to music from), decide whether you need a built-in GPS nav­i­ga­tor.

We have includ­ed mod­els of dif­fer­ent sizes and form fac­tors in our top radio tape recorders for car audio. Among 1DIN radios with­out a screen, we rec­om­mend pay­ing atten­tion to the Alpine CDE-193BT — you will get great sound and a full set of nec­es­sary func­tions for 15 thou­sand rubles. Sony’s more bud­get-friend­ly alter­na­tive, the DSX-A212UI, unfor­tu­nate­ly lacks Blue­tooth, but for the mon­ey it’s a very wor­thy option. Pio­neer’s vet­er­an DEH-80PRS boasts a pow­er­ful sound proces­sor and excel­lent acoustics.

If you have a 1DIN foot­print but need a touch screen, Pio­neer offers their top-of-the-line AVH-A7100BT solu­tion. The Mys­tery MMTD-9122S will cost almost three times less, but there are com­pro­mis­es in sound and per­for­mance in the mod­el.

The top 2DIN head unit is led by Pio­neer: the DMH-Z5350BT has almost no draw­backs, except for the high price. A cheap­er mod­el with a good touch screen is the ACV AVD-6600. Anoth­er 2DIN radio with a touch screen and a built-in nav­i­ga­tor from Navi­tel is the Pro­l­o­gy MPN-D510.

Among the two-din “heads” on Android, we sin­gled out a mod­el from the domes­tic brand INCAR — TSA-9110. For 28 thou­sand you get the tenth Android, a pow­er­ful proces­sor, a lot of mem­o­ry and a 24-band equal­iz­er. If you are not ready to spend that much mon­ey, and the Android sys­tem looks like an attrac­tive option, the MRM-A788 with its own Inter­net access will cost 7000 rubles.