Better than the "Big Name" brands
After some research I found some other radios I was looking at (even the big name brands selling for 50-80$ more) had USB ports that only supported drive 2GB and smaller, or had a limit of 250 files no matter the size of the drive. This radio said it supports upto something like 47,000 files per drive so that sold me.
The HD radio sounds great, even out away from the city it comes in on a few channels. It automatically will goto the HD broadcast after its gotten a good signal for about 5 seconds, thats good since it keeps it from going back and forth all the time like some other radio I looked at. Once at an HD station, if it says HD1 they have more than one channel available, then you can goto HD2 or HD3 for music you cant hear at all on regular radio.
2010-03-17
Good for the price, with some reservations....
I bought a JVC HD radio (KD HDR 50) for my daughter's car, and thought it was great, but I didn't like the controls on it much. (You have to go through several steps to just to change to a preset station!) So I decided to buy this unit for my semi so I could enjoy HD radio during my work day.
First off, let me say that HD radio is a wonderful thing, not just for the improved quality (which is not that much better) but for the variety of stations and the option to have the artist and song title displayed while your listening! Unfortunately, if more people don't jump on the HD bandwagon I don't think stations are going to be willing to spend more money to keep these stations operating if nobody's listening!
Anyway, on to this unit: I gave it 4 stars because you get a lot of bang for your buck with this item, ie; HD radio, decent amp, USB port, CD, etc.
The drawback is the display, which can be hard to read at times as others have mentioned, and the hoops you have to go through to display the artist and song title. You can't have both at the same time, it's either song title, or artist, or station call letters or clock. And it won't remember from one station to the next. If you switch stations, you have to switch the display unless you just leave it on clock, which is what I do mostly, because it's a major pain when your trying to keep an 83 ft. truck on the road to be constantly messing with tiny buttons on your radio.
The HD tuner seems to have some issues, also. I can get my HD stations within about a 50 mile radius (sometimes more) of Seattle, but my little "HD" icon is constantly flashing and most times the artist/song info is not available although the station is obviously locked in and playing fine. This is really annoying since I quite often hear a song I either vaguely remember or have never heard and would really like to know what it is and who did it!
This could be just an issue with my unit, but I tend to think it's a design flaw.
In hindsight, I think I might have been better off to buy the JVC unit for a bit more and live with it's annoying interface. It at least never had the above issues. Always had aritst/song title info, and it scrolled both without having to press the "display" button constantly because it would stay in that mode until you switched out of it.
The Dual does sound good though, and the USB port is nice (JVC has the same thing). I have a 16GB flash drive with countless hours of music on it. Who needs a CD changer?
2010-02-12
Too many nuisance issues
Pros:
-Price
-USB and Aux inputs
Cons:
-only a slow fast forward option (barely 2x speed), which means you better not lose your place in a 1 hour long podcast
-small selection of EQ presets
-Lack of overall functions
-no manual control of HD/standard tuning. HD radio sounds good, but it automatically tries to tune to HD if possible. Problem is, when you lose reception quality it switches back to standard radio. Sometimes this leads to constant switching between HD and standard which is incredibly annoying. So annoying in fact, that I would gladly give up the HD radio altogether or disable it completely if possible.
2010-02-08
Good product but it needs some improvements
In general, I would recommend a buy given the price and the features it offers.
However, first, Amazon and/or Dual should have made it clear that:
HD radio is not perfect. There is no option for me to disable HD radio entirely, much less for a particular radio station. Some stations play horribly under HD radio. I would like to listen to those stations the old fashioned way (analog) but I am not given a choice.
Moreover, I lose a couple of stations (especially HD radio stations) for no apparent reasons. My guess is that the Dual unit is very susceptive to radio signal. It will drop a station if the station' signal is not strong enough.
Second, every Dual button is too tiny. I understand this is a single DIN head unit. Dual has very little space in designing the buttons. Yet, the LCD screen of this unit is rather large compared to those tiny buttons. I would prefer Dual makes the LCD screen smaller and buttons bigger.
I have not used the AUX input and USB port yet.
2010-02-07
