7034C

Let me paint a picture: I've been toying for a while with the idea of buying an aftermarket touchscreen radio for my 2005 Honda CR-V... until my battery died and I didn't have the code to reset the original radio. So here I am needing a new radio. After a bit of research on Amazon I came across this one. Cheap, good reviews, let's give it a try. My process was kinda rushed, so I had no idea what the installation was gonna be like, nor what other things like "trim kits" were or wiring harnesses. I bought the radio alongside the recommended antenna adapter for my CR-V. Well, turns out I didn't need the antenna adapter, take note if you have the same car. I then proceeded to buy some quick crimp connectors alongside with the crimper/wire cutter tool. Ok, a bit more elaborate than I thought. Now, I do think I am quite a bit more handy than the average, but this was a first for me too. I removed the original stereo and unplugged the 2 wiring harnesses going into it and the antenna cable. Turns out that one harness was not needed at all. Good, less work for me. The antenna cable was good for the new radio too. BUT the next set of wires that went into the radio was going to be quite a bit of work. This is when I would have loved to know that there are such things as wiring harness adapters. They basically connect the wires that went into your old stereo and arrange them so that they'll work on your new radio. Plug and play basically. Unfortunately I can't tell you what wire harness works for you as I didn't use one. What I did do was cut the existing wiring harness to free all the terminals. I then stripped them all and crimped the quick connectors in place. One by one. Then I surfed the web to find a wiring diagram. Great, found one! Too bad that quite a few wire colors were wrong/mixed up, and to make it worse, some of the wires on the car were basically identical. I crimped the wire terminals supplied with the stereo and then connected the wires together looking at the diagram online and the booklet that came with the new stereo. First try, no luck, turned on for 2 second and then turned off. But at least it turned on. Turns out that it would have been nice to have a better diagram with he right colors. I switched a couple of wires and bam, the radio turned on, but the music only came from 1 out of 4 speakers. Not too bad. Switched some other wires and shazam! Music from all the speakers. Ok, great, now let me close everything up. Yeah, uhm, so that's what trim kits are for. Turns out that without trim kits you'll see the edges of the radios that should be hidden. Not ideal. Bought a cheap trim by Metra that was supposed to fit. Aaand, it didn't. Had to hack it and cut the frame short to make it fit, put some take to hide the cut and that's how it remains now. Still not the best fit, but good enough for me not to loose my mind when looking at it. All in all the process took me about 3 days having to work for an hour at a time as I didn't really have the time. If you truly take a whole day or weekend off and dedicate it to this project, you'll most likely make it work. That is if you're average in handiness. I don't really have the time to mess with the backup camera, yet, once I have more time I'll try to get into it. But it should be a fairly easy process. The audio is pretty good and I'm happy with it. The radio doesn't work in you're in CarPlay mode, and that's a bit of a bummer. CarPlay only works if you plug the phone in with a cable. I'm happy with the purchase and the process. My car looks a lot smarter now that I have the touchscreen. The installation problems were not due to the stereo itself, but rather because of the poor wiring diagrams from my older car. Your wiring diagrams might be spot on and make the process so much smoother. I'd buy it again.

Updated April 29: The seller contacted me to make things right. I’ve got to say, this company has great customer service. My radio was not functioning properly and the CarPlay and MirrorLink wouldn’t work. Along with that, the radio looked dated and not very good looking at all. However, the company reached out to me to send out a new unit. It came in 2 days and it’s honestly really nice. If you wire things up properly, you have yourself a really nice radio! The CarPlay looks decent, the mirror link works well, and the Bluetooth is also a nice feature. I really think they went above and beyond to make me happy and I really appreciate it from a customer standpoint. For the price, this radio is super nice. It may not be the absolute fastest and high resolution, but for the unbeatable price I feel like there is really no competition with big brands. If you’re looking to upgrade your stock radio, this is defenitely a good option. The only downside is that you need the right mounting trim if you care about looks, as well as a module for the wires, but that’s standard for all aftermarket radios out there. — Original Review: 1 stars Overall, the radio works. Backup camera won’t work even after taking it to a local auto shop that specializes in stereo systems. When i connect my phone to the USB, the radio just turns off and restarts which requires a full vehicle restart to work. The Bluetooth does work. The sound quality is surprisingly decent.. another issue is that I’m not sure what version I got of this radio, but all of the other reviews look different. there’s no button to change the user interface on the screen and it’s stuck with portrait photos of landscapes, as shown in the video. Overall not too bad if you just need a replacement but too bad that the CarPlay dosent work for mine.

The dashcam didn't work when first installed. After talking to support a few days later, the troubleshooting required pulling the unit out to check things on the back. I wasn't able to do that for a couple of days (a friend installed it and wasn't available until the weekend). Before then it stopped working at all. Add to that, there was no way to power it off without removing it, so I had to disconnect the battery at night to keep it from draining the battery. While it was working, it had one problem after another, it wouldn't connect to Bluetooth or it would lose the connection randomly while driving, the screen was dim making it difficult to see, and the backup camera sometimes stayed on after shifting to drive. A wireless android auto adapter didn't work. It was a constant series of problems. It's cheap for a reason. I returned it and bought the one I should have bought in the first place.

Rating this as a 3 star. It's a great budget friendly head unit if you're wanting to use Android auto or apple car play FM/AM radio work great and has good sound quality Android auto works amazingly and is surprisingly responsive. When listening to music through AA with a compatible cable it sounds great. Display looks good and doesn't look grainy/blurry. I can't speak for the apple car play side of things as I have an Android phone but if AA works good then so should AC Bluetooth: Bluetooth sound quality is bad. Extremely distorted and lots of static. My unit may have a bad Bluetooth receiver but since wired AA works so much better then I probably won't use Bluetooth at all because of this. Cameras, I haven't installed them yet so can't really speak on this feature. I'll update my review when I test them.

Where to start? This head unit somehow delivers on a functioning head unit with working Android Auto for $60. That on its own is amazing, especially considering that most Android "Auto" head units under $200 are just weird oddball Android tablets in stereo form and not actually Android Auto (or Carplay) capable head units. $200+ is the entry price to bargain-basement brand AA/CP heads, and $300+ for name-brand head units that you'd start to find at big-box electronics stores when they're on sale. I bought this head unit to go into a temporary car that I picked up to avoid renting a car that I didn't know if I'd be reimbursed for (Kia engine went kaboom, that's a whole other story) and figured I'd give it a whirl. Pros: Actually has working Android Auto and I assume Apple Carplay (no fruit phone to test). Adequately powers speakers to high volumes without distortion, even though amplifier power ratings are nowhere to be found Comes with a backup camera, even though I didn't test mine Wiring harness diagram stuck on the bottom of the unit Shallow mounting depth, advantage from no optical drive Front USB port is nice, especially since you'll never want to pull it out of your dash to change any connections in the rear after you finally get it mounted Cons: Slightly larger than true double-DIN, so it'll interfere with your dash if clearances are tight (almost half an inch wider AND taller than DDIN standard) Dimmer/brake/reverse lines are labeled on non-standard colors in the provided stereo-side harness (did not use these wires so not sure if they were labeled correctly) Doesn't connect consistently to phone to start Android Auto- you often have to unplug/replug 6-7 times for everything to recognize and start correctly Off-axis screen viewing not great- hard to see screen info from the driver's seat when mounted in the center of the car Color contrast on screen not great- streets on Google maps sometimes blend into the background Does NOT provide enough power to charge phone while being used for navigation and music Physical control buttons (volume, source selection) get stuck Microphone is in the upper left corner of the outer frame but I think it's actually located in a toilet in the next state somewhere You can see from the pro/con list that this head unit is a totally mixed bag. It's an amazing value because it actually WORKS as an AA head unit, but that's about it. Once AA is up and running, it runs smoothly. The maps track quickly, music plays well, touch controls on-screen work fine, etc. I used it for just over a month and a half and it had to come out. After initial install it would connect to my phone and start AA immediately, over a few weeks it started to deteriorate and required more and more disconnects/reconnects to force AA to start. Buttons started to stick. The head unit started to reboot on its own sometimes. Then on the first 5 hour road trip, it drained my phone battery from 100% to zero in 3 hours flat, even with the phone screen off after I dropped below 60%. My normal usage is Google Maps navigating on the head unit and Spotify up on the phone- none of the half-dozen plus Pioneer or Kenwood head units I've installed in my cars have allowed any of my phones to drain while plugged in and running Android Auto. Oh, the microphone is complete trash- don't expect anyone on the other end of a phone call to understand more than a thurd (yes, thurd like turd, not third) of what you say, and definitely don't expect voice commands through Google Assistant to work. Yelling obscenities at it doesn't work either, but I guess that's not an advertised Android Auto feature anyway. All of this, coupled with the fact that the dash opening needed to be enlarged to fit the head unit (I ran open dash, guess that's like a modern day PC running janky open case which was cool in the 90s but not anymore, but I didn't care on a 25 year old temporary car), meant the cheapo head had to come out before buttoning up the car to sell it. If you're looking for an Android Auto / Carplay head unit at a dirt cheap price that actually has working AA/CP, and you don't mind chopping up your dash a bit to fit everything in, and you don't drive for more than an hour or two at a time before charging up your phone, then I guess this is a good deal. For my trip back across Texas after Thanksgiving this week, I ran with the phone connected to direct power and audio only through Bluetooth on this head unit... kinda defeats the purpose of buying a cheap stereo to get Android Auto working in a car you don't want to burn hundreds of bucks on for stereo equipment.

It's a complete, functional, and modern stereo system that combines entertainment, connectivity, and safety. Perfect for those looking for convenience and technology in their vehicle at an affordable price.

Update (09/23/2023): They followed up with me shortly after my first review (below). After I cleared with them that this is definitely not cabling issue they sent me a new unit for no charge and in no time. Quick, correct and honest customer support! The new unit was and easy swap and now it's working again, so giving back five stars as the unit still well worth the price, hope this one is gonna last longer than the first (see below). Old review (09/01/2023): It was working fine for about 2 months when it's actually stopped producing any sound. It's still working cuz it switches on and can connect to Bluetooth whatnot but no sound is actually coming out of the unit. This is not the car as I have to switch back to the old radio which is working fine also the fuse is okay so looks like the output sound is just broken inside the unit for some reason. Otherwise good product for the price it's actually doing all the thing that is advertised with just fine, however now I cannot use it obviously. If there is any negative on the UX side of things is that there is no volume buttons on the touch screen only physical ones on the side but those are pretty small so hard to find them when you actually drive.

Fits perfect and works good. Touch screen not laggy or anything. Took 5 minutes to install. Easy to work with the volume settings.