Is it worth it to change the head unit?

[tommybrown 10+ year member]

I have a 2009 camry and I'm going to be chaning out the speakers for sure and getting 2 JL Audio amps, and 1 JL Audio 12" subwoofer. The factory head unit is decent and plays mp3's. The guy at the shop told me that I don't have to replace it but if I did it would cost more money since they have to use a new wiring harness and wire it so I can still use the steering wheel controls. Is it worth it to change the head unit and if so, would it make any difference in how the system would sound?

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[Skits89 10+ year member]

I have a 2009 camry and I'm going to be chaning out the speakers for sure and getting 2 JL Audio amps, and 1 JL Audio 12" subwoofer. The factory head unit is decent and plays mp3's. The guy at the shop told me that I don't have to replace it but if I did it would cost more money since they have to use a new wiring harness and wire it so I can still use the steering wheel controls. Is it worth it to change the head unit and if so, would it make any difference in how the system would sound?

Well the way i thought of it when i did mine was that i'm spending the money to upgrade my car stereo so i might as well go all the way. Many of the headunit these days have built in amps, they have really cool features for example mine is sattelite ready, when i hook up an ipod to it it actually shows the ipod screen instead of using the ipod to scroll, and i can also hook up my USB flash drive to it and i have all my music preloaded on it, and it lists my artists and names of songs. Also way more tuning capabilities. In the long run yes i think it's worth it. But it's your decision. Hope this helped.

 

[hornedfrog1985 5,000+ posts]

Huge difference if you get a nice deck.

 

[tommybrown 10+ year member]

yeah I think doing all that and then leaving the factory head unit seems kinda half-assed.