Alpine iDA-X305S - Review

[monsterman 10+ year member]

This is my first time reviewing and I have only a few hours of user time on the unit. I also have the Alpine Bluetooth installed.

Pros:

-The sound quality from Pandora is actually very good and crystal clear with zero skips so far. Better than the quality I have on a vast majority of my Ipod ripped music.

-Beautiful colors and nice display. Easy to access Subwoofer level control.

-Build quality is very good as expected from Alpine head units. The buttons are firm and not a hint of 'wobble' in any physical feature.

-Significant integration with iPhone in many facets to numerous to make note.

-Overall, it's very user friendly and a pleasure to play.

-Bluetooth functions seamlessly.

- iPhone Cable is thick and very high quality showing no indication of wearing out within any short span of time.

Cons:

- I had trouble getting the Bluetooth initiated but found answers in the Manual's and made it work.

- A number of times I received various error codes but have figured out what 'not to do'. But the solution was usually as simple as restart the vehicle a few times (weird right?) and restart the iPhone itself.

-Currently have trouble finding music quickly on both the iPod function and Center Knob makes it difficult to get what I want quickly. Most likely a user function. There are various ways to scroll through text but it's not intuitive.

-It's not as snappy as I expected. When I select 'next track' on iPod it takes just longer than a cd player. It's something that you can get used to but I noticed it and bothered me.

Overall:

I am very pleased with this unit for $300 shipped brand new and it's total integration with my iPhone is truly a must have for all iPhone users. Excellent unit and Alpine has yet again done something well. Not perfect but very good.

UPDATE:

It turns out when the iPhone is connect to the headunit via iPod cable, the bluetooth will create interference and cause both Pandora and iPod sound to not be played, it works but not sound output is present. This is because the iPhone's bluetooth function has internal priority over anything connected to it. This means, If you want to use Pandora via the cable connection and get all that significant sound quality... you have to have your bluetooth off. You can keep the iPhone disconnected and have the music stream via bluetooth but that is very lame. I will be in touch with Apple to try to work out a solution.

Click to read more...

 

[monsterman 10+ year member]

UPDATE:

In order to make the Bluetooth work while having iPhone connected via cable you must: 1.) start car 2.) wait awhile for iPhone to make Bluetooth connection i.e. Bluetooth icon turns blue on phone display 3.) Now you can plug iPhone in to work properly with cable. This is all a matter of about 45 seconds.

 

[Whatnissan]

Have you had any issues with it dropping usb connection??? I just got mine and it dropps the usb conection. You will be using the ipod listning to music and then all of a sudden it says no usb.

 

[Whatnissan]

Im about to actually send mine back because of this

 

[administrator Administrator]

Good review! Too bad about the ipod issue.

 

[///KM]

Good review. I have this unit also and am very pleased with it overall.

I love the Pandora feature - being able to rate & skip songs as well as bookmarking. Audio quality is good with the 192kbps option enabled.

To add to the Cons:

2V preamp output - this hurts, and in order to get 4V you need to buy the Imprint processor add-on.

While the screen is nice, the screen is too glossy and sunlight makes it unreadable.

Sometimes the iPod/iPhone connection goes awry and when I disconnect/connect my iPhone, at times the track remains in a paused state and won't resume. Turning the head unit off/on usually solves this but it's slightly annoying.

Every once in awhile the Pandora goes awry, the track still plays but you can't give it any input (skip, rating). Changing the source and back again usually solves this.

To change tracks, there's maybe a 1s delay at the start of each song where the skip/next track input doesn't work. If you rely on Playlists on Shuffle like I am, this is kind of annoying when you want to skip tracks often.

Even with these cons, coming from a Pioneer head unit's rather porous iPod/iPhone interface, the X305S is great for playing songs off the iPod. The interface is very intuitive and the Pandora feature lets me find new songs (and bookmark them for download later) while stuck in traffic.

 

[ocdadhd]

Good review. I have this unit also and am very pleased with it overall.
I love the Pandora feature - being able to rate & skip songs as well as bookmarking. Audio quality is good with the 192kbps option enabled.

To add to the Cons:

2V preamp output - this hurts, and in order to get 4V you need to buy the Imprint processor add-on.While the screen is nice, the screen is too glossy and sunlight makes it unreadable.

Sometimes the iPod/iPhone connection goes awry and when I disconnect/connect my iPhone, at times the track remains in a paused state and won't resume. Turning the head unit off/on usually solves this but it's slightly annoying.

Every once in awhile the Pandora goes awry, the track still plays but you can't give it any input (skip, rating). Changing the source and back again usually solves this.

To change tracks, there's maybe a 1s delay at the start of each song where the skip/next track input doesn't work. If you rely on Playlists on Shuffle like I am, this is kind of annoying when you want to skip tracks often.

Even with these cons, coming from a Pioneer head unit's rather porous iPod/iPhone interface, the X305S is great for playing songs off the iPod. The interface is very intuitive and the Pandora feature lets me find new songs (and bookmark them for download later) while stuck in traffic.

:facepalm:

The most sought after SQ headunits of all-time use 250mv pre-outs.

If you have a half way decent amplifier you don't need 4v of pre-out, 2v is more than enough.