Pioneer

A Pioneer multimedia unit displaying some of the iPhone apps it is compatible with.

Pioneers of car audio…pun intended!

The really cool thing about Pioneer radios is that you can always count on them to have new, cool and exciting features to them and the simple fact that have been a product that you can rely on for performance and longevity is pretty cool too.  Not long ago, Pioneer unveiled AppRadio, the first radio ever in the US market to allow you to connect your iPhone via a cable to it and give you the use and control of apps stored on the phone.  It was very, very cool in theory, but unfortunately it was riddled with issues and had a very irritating iPod interface.  Now, they have revamped the AppRadio interface, fixed the glitches and got rid of the slow iPod interface, using instead the renowned iPod interface found on the couple of multimedia and navigation unit in which they included the AppRadio software.  So now, you get the best of both worlds with all of the cool features of AppRadio and your iPhone, while maintaining a smooth and intuitive iPod interface.  This functionality can be found on the AVH-P8400BH, the AVIC-X940BT and the AVIC-Z140BT.

Party in your car!

In addition to the double din multimedia units discussed above, Pioneer also makes a large selection of high quality, feature rich single-din CD players as well.  One great example is the sound quality oriented DEH-80PRS which features 3 sets of 5 volt preouts, Burr-brown 24 bit D/A converter, 3 way active crossover and a left/right independent 16 band

A Pioneer single din radio with BT, HD radio and Mixtrax.

equalizer, all of which makes this deck a great source unit to build a system off of.  However, they do offer some more basic units that are connectivity driven with features like Bluetooth and Pandora control.  Another cool feature that is a Pioneer exclusive is Mixtrax, which flashes the lights on the radio in different colors and adds mixing sounds in between songs to really give your car that club feel!