Recommend me a car radio

[paxxus]

I'm under the impression that you guys are relatively mature of mind and age so I thought I'd hear what you have to recommend.

I need a relatively cheap car radio ($300 tops) with CD which can read RW-CD/MP3 and so forth, the usual stuff, front USB would be nice but it's not a requirement. My problem is that EVERYTHING I see seems to be designed for teenagers and infantile car-modders, weird space age design with bright blue/red/green buttons and stuff moving around in the display and what not. I don't want any of that, but I want the basic features - just no light-show and weirdly shaped Klingon asymmetrical buttons.

I'm beginning to think that it simply doesn't exist. Can you guys recommend me a brand/model for adults?

PS.: Some of them even has a remote!?

[raggie33]

i think this is a nice head unit for the price i preafre sony but this is nice for the price
http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Jense...oductDetail.do

[geepondy]

After doing a fair amount of research, I bought the Kenwood Excelon KDC-x492 from Crutchfied and am extremely pleased. It does have a USB front port in which I put about 30 cds worth of music on a 4 gig flash drive. This and most any play mp3s/wma loaded cds as well. The sound quality is very nice with several presets but what really impressed me about this radio is the AM and FM reception and quality. It certainly blew away my Honda Fit factory head unit. I also replaced the front speakers which made a huge improvement as well even though the replacement speakers were less then a hundred dollars for the pair. Of course you can continue on and add an amp, subwoofer, etc. but for less then $300 total (well I did also pay someone to install it for me), I got a system that was vastly superior then what came with the car.

[paxxus]

Thanks for the suggestions, I had actually looked at both these units - good candidates. But I ended up placing an order for this unit hoping that the red light is not as bright as the blue. I also liked the styling better (relatively speaking). Also it plays ACC which is nice since I have an iPod.

Edit: Uh, and it has a remote!

[will]

The biggest improvement is almost all cases is replacing the factory speakers with aftermarket units.

[cslinger]

I really like Alpine head units. I recently installed this in my Honda S2000 and I am extremely happy. Both IPOD and USB music connections (Play off a thumb drive) great output power and relatively easy to use. It made my S2000 stock speakers sound immensely better then the stock craptastic head unit.

I pretty much only use thumb drives for the music. 40 albums or so on a couple GIG drive, no space taken up, no worry of theft. It has a front loading CD player as well but frankly I don't use it. This is my second Alpine over the years and neither has disappointed.

http://www.alpine-usa.com/US-en/prod...model=CDA-9886

[FredericoFreire]

http://www.nakamichi.com/home.html

[shakeylegs]

I've been through several brands and have been most satisfied with the performance of Kenwood and then Sony units. I live in a rough area for radio reception. These brands outperformed all the others I tried (Clarion, Blaupunkt, Alpine, Pioneer, and Panasonic). Sound reproduction of the Kenwood and Sony units was superb with wide dynamic range. The Sony had lots of options but a somewhat complicated, less than intuitive, interface. Ultimately, I've been most happy with Kenwood units. These reproduced anything I could throw at them - from Opera to Bluegrass to Jazz to Jerry Jeff Walker to Neil Young's Arc & Weld to spoken word. About the only thing it can't handle is Ethel Merman bringing her moon over the mountain. But then, who can?

[paxxus]

The biggest improvement is almost all cases is replacing the factory speakers with aftermarket units.

Yeah, I ordered new speakers too.

Wow, some of those Nakamichi units looks really nice.

[paxxus]

I've been through several brands and have been most satisfied with the performance of Kenwood and then Sony units.

My current unit is a Sony and it can't read CD-RW's anymore and sometimes, with regular CD's, it begins to emit noise - you then have to reload the CD and it'll play some more. That's why I'm replacing it. My brother has the same Sony unit and it also broke. So I kept away from Sony this time.

[metlarules]

Blaupunkt used to be the good ones that looked the most like a factory radio.

[RyanA]

Any with a cd/mp3 option and a thumb-drive bay should be pretty handy.