Planet Audio P9640B Car Audio Stereo System - 6.2 Inch Double Din, LCD Touchscreen, Bluetooth Audio and Hands-Free Calling, CD Player, DVD, USB, SD, AUX in, AM/FM Radio Receiver

I bought this unit and installed it in place of the factory radio on 1995 Tacoma 4x4 Ex cab. This is an old car (made almost 20 years ago) so I expected to have some issues fitting the modern radio it in. I was surprised the issues were not that big and the radio fit with little changes:1. The standard 2-bay sleeve does not fit in my truck. The original radio is mounted with factory made brackets that do not follow current mounting standards. Also only two holes in Toyota-factory brackets matched threaded holes in Planet Audio radio's case. To assure solid "grip" I enlarged other two holes in the factory brackets so they mate with threaded holes in the radio's case. That did the trick and Planet Audio P9640B fit perfectly in the opening. There is no need for supplied frames as the original dash panel fits over the front panel of the radio. It looks like the radio was built for this truck.2. The radio bay in my Tacoma is not very deep. There are air vent ducts behind the radio. P9640B fits in the opening as long as you don't use standard RCA plugs on the back. The original radio antenna is OK but I wanted to use a backup camera which should be connected to RCA input on the back. If standard RCA plug is connected, the radio is sticking out about 1/2 inch. I made a custom L-shape RCA plug for backup camera and that solved the problem. It is tight fit without much space left but it works. Other connectors and wires (including additional wire harness to plug into Tacoma plugs) fit behind and below the radio without problems. Back USB connector was put in the glow box.Now about the functionality of the radio. The user manual does not tell you all things this radio can do. So this is what I found so far:1. Radio boots-up in reasonable time around 5 seconds. It only can be "annoyingly long" when you start the car and want to use back-up camera. You have to wait and stare at Planet Audio logo for 5 seconds before you can see what is behind your car. There is additional 2 seconds delay for "sourcing" the signal so actually it is 7 seconds from turning the key in the ignition and hearing the first sound from the radio. I'd love to have no delay, but understanding that it is not a "just the radio" but a "computer" I must accept it. It's still faster than booting up any of the my "computers" (smart TV, cell phone, tablet or PC).2. Screen visibility is much better than in my Samsung Gallaxy S4. The glare is almost not there. In my truck the radio is quite low and mostly hidden from direct sun so I can't tell how direct sun affects the display visibility. The touch is responsive even through original protective film (I had no need to take it out yet). Hard-wired buttons are easy to press and the volume knob feels "right". For night driving the screen can be turned off and blue lights around buttons are not distracting.3. Radio plays CD, VCD, DVD. DVD is not region free but it is matching the region selected in the "Radio region" menu. So if you want to watch DVD from US you need to select your radio region to US. In this setting you will not be able to play DVDs made for other regions. For example to play DVD from Europe, you need first set the radio frequencies to Europe standards. This is not described in the manual, but it works.4. Bluetooth easy paired with my Samsung Galaxy S4 in phone and audio mode. All sounds from the phone are played on the radio (using phone controls) so you can listen to the music (I listen audio books) from the phone's music player or streaming (Pandora, TuneIn etc.). Phone controls work from touch screen on the radio with addition of "hard-wired" "Hung-up" and "Answer/Dial" buttons on the right site. The "pre-amp volume" can be set in radio setting (BT volume) so you can pre-set the volume of the phone without turning the volume knob. The BT sound quality is great - the driving noise does not affect the sound quality when talking on the phone (before I could not use speaker phone on Samsung Galaxy S4 while driving). I placed the external mike on the steering column and it picks up my voice with no background noise.5. Before playing from USB and micro SD card the radio will will scan the content of the card (or stick) quite fast. 16G SD full of audio books (over 2 thousand "songs") are scanned in reasonably time. The MP3 tag is shown while playing together with "long" file name. However you can play songs in order they are in folders, not from MP3 tags. The bad thing is that you can't see the "long" folder name or file name - only "short" name ("8-dot-3" format). So if your folder with the whole album has name "The Rolling Stones, Now!" it will show up on the navigation panel as THEROL~1. The same format is used to display file names in the folder ("8-dot-3" format). Play from USB and SD card has "auto-start" meaning the radio will start playing the first song as soon as it finishes "scanning". The radio scans USB (or SD) every time it is selected to play from it (or resuming after turning the radio on) however the radio "remembers" where it was playing before being turned off and if the USB or SD content didn't change the radio resumes from the last played note.It took me a while to figure out that you can't navigate between folders while song is playing. In order to change folder you have to stop (not "Pause" but "Stop") playing and then you can navigate to different folders using touch screen. However after you start playing again, the little icon (broken arrow) remains on the left top of the screen. This icon represents the "one level up" navigation allowing you to navigate around the folders while the previously selected song is playing. I just found it few days ago.6. Radio is quite sensitive - and sound quality is better than factory Tacoma radio. I confirm that the radio has RDS. The radio clock is synchronized automatically with the time received from RDS signal. I found some radio stations are not good at keeping their clock in sync with world clock so when changing the radio station I found the clock on the radio is changing by few minutes as well. This was one of the "What the heck?" moments.7. The amplifier in the radio is standard what you can expect from the radio. Actually it is a bit louder than my factory radio. I never had a need to run it in full blast and even driving the truck at 75mph (where speed limit allows :-) the road noise allows me to listen to the books at volume around 30 (out of 40 max).The bottom line is I am very happy with this purchase. For less than 200$ I upgraded my truck radio to all functionality I could think of. Before I started shopping for a radio I listed all functions I wanted (backup camera input with 6 inch screen, SD, USB, Aux, DVD with VCD and "region free", RDS radio, BT for phone and audio, rotary volume control, and illumination not distracting while driving at night). I wanted the radio that is hard mounted so it will look like it was "factory installed". All these features I found in Planet Audio P9640B.EDIT: 2014-09-15Just few days ago I found, that you can navigate around folders on USB stick (I did not try that trick on CD-ROM), while the song is playing. It looks like you can't navigate after the initial "autoplay" starts, but after you stop "autoplay" and the select song to play, the "one level up" navigation icon stays on the screen allowing you to navigate around folders. Good thing that after turning the radio on the radio "resumes" playing from USB or SD. I have also timed the speed of reading the content of 2GB USB drive (very old). The drive contains 17 folders (albums) total about 180 songs. It took 3 seconds between switching the "source" to USB and start playing the music. Within this time radio took about 0.7 second to switch to "USB" screen, than was about 0.5 second pause and the rest was showing the progress of reading (number of songs and percent of completion).EDIT: 2015-02-22After several months of using this radio I'm still very fond of it. If someone fro Planet Audio reads these reviews, there are two suggestions from from me regarding product firmware. These are the only things that annoy me:1. Backup Camera Volume. There is a setting where you set the radio volume, when the backup camera is active. I think the idea was to be able to set lower volume (or even turn the sound off) when you are focusing on the driving in reverse. What annoys me is that this setting is "absolute volume level", regardless of what you are listening too. I found that the radio signal is very loud and when I turn on the radio, I set the volume to about 8, and that is loud enough. On the other hand, the MP3 music I have recorded on my phone (BT input) or micro SD card is on the mild site, so I use the volume about 30 for that. For the "Backup Camera Volume" I set the volume to 12 so when I listen to audiobook (MP3 from the phone)and I'm backing up I don't miss the reading. But when I'm listening to the radio and put my truck in reverse, everybody (including me) jumps out of their seats with the "what the heck" moment - that how loud the radio is at volume 12. I wish the "Backup Camera Volume" can be set to the percent of normal volume instead of "absolute value". Then it would make more sense.2. Micro SD card is read and played the order, how files and folders are put on the card - or maybe it is alphabetic order of 8dot3 file names. In any way it is annoying when you use Windows for copying files and folders to micro DS card. Windows copies files in "random" order and if I want to copy the entire audio book (which is something like 600 files) all files are played like randomly, not in long file names sequence. The best would be if MP3 files are read and organized in by the radio using MP3 tags, but I know it would take much longer than reading all directories and file names and sorting them for playing. So at least it would be nice if radio sequences files for playing using long file names.These two things are not really "show stoppers" and can be lived with, but it would be much nicer radio if the firmware could be updated by that.Keep in mind, that these are all "undocumented features", and other manufacturers might have similar problems (including Big Brand Names), even they don't advertize them. Most of current electronic products are controlled by microprocessors and are very complicated with specific functionality depending on the programmers, who wrote the firmware for them. And because some specific details are not in "functional design", they are programmed by the best understanding of the programmer, and of course they are never documented.EDIT: 2015-08-07I have added some photos of my radio installed in 95 Tacoma. It's over a year since I've installed the radio. It still works and looks like new. I haven't even piled of the screen protection yet.Now looking at the stock photo of the screen I guess Planet Audio updated the firmware as my screen looks different (see the photo). Unless I'm missing something. And they dropped the price a bit. Nice.I wonder if the firmware can be updated without sending the radio to the factory (maybe there is an option to update the firmware via SD). I would really like to have the annoying thing with 8-dot-3 file names from SD/USB updated to long file names and fix the volume change when switching to reverse.EDIT: 2015-09-01There were some questions regarding playing m3u files and camera installation. So i short:1. m3u are not recognized on USB or SD card.2. Backup camera is Esky EC170-06 World Smallest HD Color CCD Waterproof Vehicle Car Rear View Backup Camera, 170 Degree Viewing Angle Rearview Camera(0.86*0.65*0.50 inch) installed in trailer hitch plug (it is removable in case I would need to tow something)3. The camera does not have "night vision" but like you can see on the picture the image is quite OK even in the worst conditions (street light is blinding the camera). BTW the image on the monitor is a little bit better than shown on the picture as the camera used to take this picture added its noise (it was dark).4. I have attached pictures of what the monitor is showing when the truck is parked next to the wall in the parking garage. And the picture showing the distance between the bumper (and camera) and the wall5. Yesterday I noticed one feature this radio does not have when playing CD. I go the latest Pink Floyd CD "Endless River". When playing it on Planet Audio in my Tacoma the screen shows just the track number and track duration (see the picture). However when I put the same CD into my 2012 4Runner factory radio (basic model radio) I could see the album name and song title. It must be somewhere on this CD that 4Runner factory radio can read it and Planet Audio not. I just thought I might share it.EDIT: 2017-08-10It's been almost 3 years and the radio is still like new. Actually I have never removed the original screen protector as touch screen is easy visible and responsive with that plastic on it..After 3 years of using it the only annoying thing is that 7 seconds delay from starting the engine to being able to see the backup camera image. I've driven cars with backup camera in factory units and they solved the long boot issue by what looks like hard-wiring backup camera to screen bypassing the internal computer. I mean the radio might still not finish booting up but the image on the backup camera shows up in less than a second from starting a car. Planet Audio unit doesn't work like that. It has to boot completely before switching the mode to backup camera view.As I said, this is the only complain I have to this unit. I don't know how other competing radios work around this issue as nobody advertise how backup camera works or what is the boot time.On the other note, E-sky backup camera worked flawlessly but after 2 years lenses got scratched by road debris making the image fuzzy. I replaced it with the new one for now, which seems to have issue randomly switching from color to black/white image (not related to night vision). I'm thinking of swapping the camera for true 180 degree view unit and mounting it in different place for better image.

This was really good and I loved it. Did exactly what it said it would and didn’t have any issues with it. Would purchase again.

I decided on this model due to the perfect fit in my 1998 4Runner. The first one I bought as a Amazon Warehouse deal listed as "pristine condition" when it arrived it was obvious it had been installed and was missing some small items. I installed it for a test run and sure enough it was a dud. It had many issues with the screen not working and the computer freezing up. I returned that one and bought a new one this time. the new one arrived and it had all the pieces and works perfectly. These are a perfect fit for the 1998 SR5 4Runner with the single disc cd player unbolt the factory mounts off of the factory radio and bolt on to this one. Ok here are some issues I found. On a 4Runner you have little extra room in the back of the radio so if you plan on using the RCA jacks buy 90 degree adapters. If you plan on using any of the rear outlets (USB,AUX) wire them up before finishing the install once the radio is in it is nearly impossible to reach them. In certain light situations the glare will make it hard to see the screen. Now radio specific issues. Mine does not like homemade burned discs. It will play them but sometimes wants to read them as a DVD and messes up the screen. The computer is limited on processing so switching from mode to mode quickly will make it hang. Playing music from the Bluetooth or USB has lack luster sound. Aux sound is great. Phone calls sound great and the mic cord is long enough to mount anywhere around the dash. If your like me and just looking for a good replacement at a decent price this will work perfectly.

I hate to admit it, I should have just spent the money for a more reputable brand. I figured that because it had decent ratings here on Amazon it would be good buy. Unfortunately in my case there are multiple issues with this unit. First for whatever reason this unit sporadically goes silent when going into reverse, and does not comes back on until the key is in process of being turned to off. Secondly the EQ on this unit is in a word, pathetic. Now I will admit I do have a stock Bose system so perhaps I was accustomed to a nice clean sound, This unit destroyed that. There are three preset settings that make pretty much all genres sound horrific(this is not an understatement). I had this installed at a local radio shop with a solid reputation, I also had pay for an additional $100 for an module/adapter because I have an Esacalade, In retrospect ,perhaps that was Cadillac's way of discouraging owners from putting junk in their vehicles? The primary reason I purchased this unit was so that it could play DVDs and possibly have it in sync with the other monitors in my vehicle......I'd have had a better chance of winning the California lottery, now the other monitors/system are not working properly. Lastly even though this has the steering wheel control option, it also requires an additional module so i of course I no longer have yet another option that I had previously with my stock unit. So hmm let me see do I recommend this unit that has reduced a fully functional decent sounding audio system into a sub-par visual display with the sound and functions of a 1970's 8track player with water damage? NO. Currently every time I am in my vehicle I fight the urge to take a screw driver and pull this unit out myself.