Originally Posted by silver98m3
Hi, I'm also very interested in that unit. I have some questions for you if you have some time:
Would you be able to post some pics of the headunit in your car? Closed and Open?
Is there another unit you would now rather have? How does the color scheme look? It has blue back lights, correct?
Did the sound improve from the stock speakers? Did you try to use the headunit's amp to see if that would improve the stock speaker's sound?
As of now it is the only unit I know of that is 1 din with a hard drive based navigation all in one. It also has a 7" screen and time alignment which I like.
Thanks,
Dave
Hey Dave, I don't have pics handy, but I will try to post them before I put my baby in its winter condom this weekend.
The Eclipse AVN7000 has switchable blue or red backlight. I have mine on blue. Since neither match, it doesn't look bad, but it won't fly if you plan to show the car.
Initially I was very disappointed with the unit. I still am, but now I am more used to it. Unfortunately, I can't recommend any other units to replace it. There's not much available for a single DIN with nav, and I don't have any experience with any of the others. I briefly considered installing a CarPC. I have one in my other car that I put together and installed myself. Of course, I like it a lot better, but I should, since I designed it myself.
You can get a pre-made single DIN car computer with pop-out 7" touch screen for about $1,500 from
www.mp3car.com. Check in their store for the "Stage 3 Car Computer Full Package Deal." One thing to note is that there is more stuff to mount somewhere in your car than just the single DIN. So you would end up mounting the "PC" part of it in the trunk. It's not very big 8.3" x 10" x 2.2" but it is a concern if you don't want to mount things back there. The nice thing with this unit is that it does nav, mp3's, movies, and just about anything else that a normal PC can do. With a 120 gig hard drive in it, you can store a lot of music. I'm not sure, but I think you can tether it to your cell phone and use the internet, like you might do with a laptop.
I'm strongly leaning toward doing that next summer when I have some more cash.
As far as the sound goes, I don't think it changed. Since I'm wired into the factory amp, I am still getting bass frequencies through my door speakers. The guy that install my system said I didn't need bass blockers, but I think he's nuts. I bought them and will put them in next spring.
Good luck with your search! Whatever you do: DO NOT PAY $1,600 for the Eclipse AVN7000. It's not worth it. Old nav data is a MAJOR fault if you ask me. The data in the unit is from 2004 (nominally 2005), and there are NO updates for it! And when I called Fujitsu (Eclipse) they told me that they don't plan to ever update it. Now that's some nice customer support! It's good to see that they support their products after they're out the door. Then they have the audacity to charge you for an update disc (like $300) in you own one of the newer nav head units. Sheesh! I'll never buy another Eclipse head unit if that's the way they treat their customers.