Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

A passable stereo for the money. It plays MP3s off of SD and USB pretty well, if you don't mind that it cuts off the first half-second of each file (which is pretty jarring if your MP3s don't have a lot of silence at the beginning). It at least saves your position, playback continues where you left off, automatically. The controls it has are as good as you could expect for a simple car stereo (about the same as a good CD player) but no comparison to the full-featured in-dash screens with scroll wheels and an array of on-screen options. Fast forward and rewind are responsive, and work as they should, as does jump forward/back, skip +10/-10 songs, random play, etc., which isn't always the case for cheap MP3 players. There was clearly some thought put into user-friendly operation. When the SD or USB card isn't inserted, it will skip over those options as you change the "mode". And when you plug-in an SD or USB drive, it automatically opens it and starts playing. And it's never been unresponsive to input... All the buttons work quickly, no matter what mode you're in, or what the player is doing. The (amplifier) sound quality isn't impressive, but for this price, it's probably only slightly worse than you'd expect... Better than cheap amplified computer speakers, and good enough not to matter in a fairly noisy car. But you'll notice your music just doesn't sound right. Particularly with AUX input, you should expect substantial noise and distortion, but while you're moving, the road noise partially masks it. If you want to add bluetooth to wirelessly stream music from your phone (as well as turn-by-turn navigation directions), you only need to spend another $5. It sticks way out from your dash, but it's no worse than every other name-brand "bluetooth ready/compatible" stereo: * Amcctvshop USB Bluetooth Music Receiver Adapter 3.5mm Stereo Audio for Iphone4 4s 5 Mp3 I'm not bothered by the LCD brightness... It's not very bright, but it's visible, even in sunlight, while viewed through sunglasses. Yeah, the clock won't stay up there for long, but hitting the button works fine, and automatically switching back to the song/station info is more user-friendly, and definitely the way I prefer it to work. The LCD EQ even looks nice. FM reception isn't very good. Only the booming local stations are coming through well enough to listen to. Any station that doesn't overload a decent radio is hard to hear on this thing, behind a wall of static, or just fading in and out enough that it's unlistenable. I've tried swapping antenna connectors and such without any luck. Since others have complained about reception as well, I don't believe it's just me. I found the Local/DX option, but toggling it does NOTHING, but I leave it set on DX. The scan up/down is very sensitive, and AMS does its job, auto-programming all the available stations to the preset buttons, but that's cold comfort with such poor FM radio reception. If you want a radio, none of these cheap no-name units does the job. You're just going to have to spend twice as much for a name-brand car stereo (JVC/Pioneer/etc.). But my biggest complaint is that the USB port is useless for charging a phone... It was GREAT having a USB cord dangling from my dash, ready to go all the time... not having to hassle with $2 cigarette lighter chargers constantly. That is, until I noticed my phone wasn't charging at all. This stereo is putting out a steady 5V on the USB port, but as such a low current that my phone gets drained, rather than charging at all. This while the charging light is on, fooling you into thinking it's doing something. Since even a $2 cigarette lighter adapter can do a decent job of charging, and this $30 stereo can't, this is pretty inexcusable, and a huge missed opportunity, which could and should have been a killer feature. It works well enough as an MP3 player that I'm not going to send it back, even as disappointed as I am with the AUX input sound quality, zero-power USB port, and the terrible radio reception. UPDATE: My original XD103 survived for 4 years. First the power button broke, then zero radio reception, then it freaked out and wouldn't shut off. I ordered an XD107 to avoid the hassle of wiring up a different harness. The remote works nicely, Bluetooth works fine for music but proved problematic for calls. But two big changes are that FM radio reception is now quite good, but unfortunately the (fragile) SD card only goes half way in, sticking out so it looks like cheap trash, and is vulnerable to being damaged from casually being bumped by your hand. The other improvements are nice, but the SD slot is awful, and I wouldn't have bought it if I had known. Two steps forward, one step back. XO Vision just can't seem to get simple things right.