SIRIUS Sportster 5 Satellite Radio Receiver with Vehicle Kit

This is my 3rd unit, and the first Sportster as the other 2 are Starmates. The dial is much better than the buttons for forwarding and advancing the stations. The background option matches almost any interior. The sports ticker is excellent and does not take up any memorized slots like it did on the Starmate. I had to tie it into the radio directly to get quality sound. The antenna is much nices as well being more of a silver dollar size and not the square. The only downside is that I had to get a bracketron to install ($20) and the buttons are quite small... other than that, it is excellent !

This radio is ok, but it seems that you have to warm up the unit before the display will work. I'm not sure the optimal operating temperature, but you would think that they would avoid using liquid crystal display for a unit that's designed to stay in your car. I've found that simply warming up the unit isn't enough, nor is turning it off/on. You have to remove it from the car docking station, then warm it up, then re-attach it to the dock before the color display will function. I suppose in the summer this won't be a problem, but if you live in a climate where the temperature gets below 40 degrees, your display might have this problem. If you take the unit inside with you every night, you can avoid this I guess. I don't have a home dock so I leave mine in the car.

Also, I noticed that this unit doesn't go as low as previous units on the FM transmission scale. My previous unit was set to 87.9 because that is the only station in my area that doesn't have programming. The Sportster 5 only goes as low as 88.1. Now I can't get a clear channel and my truck's in-dash radio has no external auxiliary sound jack, so I'm screwed. I'll need to pay for a professional to wire the unit to my in-dash radio. Take this into account when you calculate the total cost of ownership.

Other than those two issues, I'm pretty happy with the unit so far. Hopefully it won't break after about 2 years of ownership like my last Sirius receiver.

Update 11/19/08:
After my song notifications started acting up, I sent my reciever back to Sirius Warranty Support, they sent me 4 different radios (each time I sent back) before I got one that seems to work ok. This one doesn't have the problem with the cold. I also spent about $50 to get the parts I needed to hard-wire the radio to my truck antenea. It works great now.

I purchased the Sportster 5 about a month ago and it's the first sat radio I've owned. Out of the box, it comes with everything you need to install in your car. It's a breeze to install yourself for most people, unless you've never installed anything in your car before. If worse comes to worse, ask someone you know for help before you pay $50 to get it done. Don't use the FM transmitter if you can help it though - I've heard and read a lot of horror stories about them. My head unit didn't have a AUX input, but it did have a CD disk changer input in the back of the unit. I just purchased a cable that takes that disk changer input and converts it to an AUX input, for a direct connection. It works amazingly well.

Navigation is straight forward. There are some cool features like a thin profile, 15 different color combonations and a small remote control that's actually more useful than you might think because it allows friends or picky wives and/or girlfriends to change the channel without reaching across you. There's also Sports alert that will notify you when one of your favorite teams are playing (selectable in a menu) and the score will display even when you're listening to a music channel. You can store favorite artists and/or songs and the radio will alert you when a song or artist from your list is playing anyhere and anytime. The radio will also store 30 channel presets. There's also a function where you can pause and rewind music you've listened to up to 45 minutes, then fast forward.

Some complaints that I have are I wish the remote had a backlight. I also with there was a "previous channel" button. The antenna is also finicky sometimes when you drive under a bridge in traffic or through a McDonalds drive-thru, but it's bearable and a necessary evil. It doesn't always lose the signal, but I thought it's worth mentioning. The radio wouldn't be worth anything without the service, and I have to say that Sirius is excellent to say the least. It's worth every penny and I'd recommend it to anyone and everyone.

I upgraded to the Sportster 5 from the SIRIUS ST4-TK1 Starmate 4 Plug-and-Play Satellite Radio Receiver with Car Kit. I have to say the new Sportster 5 is the best radio they have released and far superior to the Starmate 4.

Sound quality is comparable between the two units. I choose not to use the FM modulator. I'm in the DC area and there are far too many strong radio stations. Plus, using the auxiliary jack provides all-around better audio quality.

The big improvement for this generation is the color display added to this very thin radio. Very nice looking and customizable for basic text and background colors. Text is clear and the screen provides plenty of information on the 6-line display. Makes a huge difference on legibility. The multi-color display also allows Sirius to display more text information without appearing to clutter the screen as much.

One of the innovations I particularly like is the "game-ticker" feature that has been added in addition to "game alert". The ticker places the score for your favorite game on the main display of the Sportster in color, regardless of whether you are tuned to the sports channel or not. So, you can monitor your game scores while listening to music.

On the downside it would be nice if you could choose a greater variety of display colors and different background images. Also, the menu and memory buttons are a bit cramped around the tuning knob and need to be spread out. But, this is a distinct improvement over previous models.

Note: Current radios are selling from various vendors for less than $160 w/o a rebate.

UPDATE: The turnaround of the customer service was faster than what they told me. Might have something to do with numerous phone calls with customer care supervisors. As of now, they probably have the item in stock. So I would give the item 4 stars. Also the contrast and brightness act funny when left under the sun, but still works..


I got the radio 1,5 months ago and it died on me when I unplugged it from the power without turning the unit off for the first time. Warranty service told me I should have turned off the unit before unplugging it. However, my car provides constant power thru the lighter output. On the other hand, I know many cars don't do that and the power shuts off when the engine is turned off (thus if you don't turn off the unit before shutting off the engine, yours might burn too). Since that doesn't sound very possible, the reason why the unit completely dead cannot be what they told me it is (Mine might be a lemon in this case). Anyhow, the warranty service said they will ship a new one out in 24 to 48 hours, when I called 3 days later, they said it was back-ordered and won't be shipped until 2,5 more weeks and they didn't offer anything to have a temporary replacement.
I am not sure if that's a common problem or not but it died on me when I unplugged it.
Other than that, the unit is easy to operate, the remote is very handy, most of the screen colors are useful (you cannot read the titles on some color schemes), FM radio reception is working fine (but it also depends on the quality of your radio that's installed in your car, I'd say hard-wire the unit if you have the means).
Sirius advertises the radio as "100% commercial free" music, but beware, the entertainment channels (actually anything other than the music channels) are full of commercial that drives me nuts.
If you are spending a little too much time in your car, this radio is fine, but the customer service isn't.