There's a small but important battle going on in the overall navigation market between portables and in-dash units. As a majority of consumers reach for those inexpensive and sometimes easier to use portables, companies that produce in-dash nav head units are continuing to up the ante with superior devices that do a lot more than their lightweight competitors.
If it were simply a matter of choosing a portable or in-dash, the decision for consumers would be easier. But within each side of the market you have competition among a plethora of companies, especially on the portable side. Now Alpine has joined the ranks with a transferable nav system. Of course, Alpine's being Alpine, they have to go one better with the optional dock (look for a review on that when product becomes available). The company continues to make its NVE nav, but like everyone else, sees the huge potential on the portable side. Thus you have the Blackbird, possibly the best device of its kind on the market. It'll be interesting to see how it does against major manufacturers such as Garmin, Magellan and TomTom, et al.
On the in-dash side of late it has mostly been a head-to-head competition between Eclipse and Pioneer in the States and in Japan. The last generation AVIC-D1 double-DIN from Pioneer couldn't really compete with Eclipse's higher end AVN units, except in terms of the MSRP. But now Pioneer has produced a high-end double-DIN nav unit of its own and as competition dictates it does more than the AVN. The good news is that this is great for consumers who love feature-rich products. For the price of some of these products, they better be able to do a lot of things. If you read Chris Yato's glowing review of Eclipse's AVN7000, the single-DIN HDD nav source unit in the last issue, then you know these two companies aren't making it easy for you to decide which one is the best value. Oh, and don't forget all those portables you still might want to consider...
Portable vs. In-dashUpsidePortablePrice! A decent portable nav unit costs anywhere from $600 to $900Transfer it fromcar to carSimple to useRuns cordless on battery chargeSome units have hard drives for file storageNo installation
In-dashMore overall features-entertainment, Bluetooth, music file storage ... and everything is built into your unitMore navigation features-voice recognition, various map viewsBigger screensFaster satelliteAcquisitionIntegrates into the car for factory look
DownsidePortableInconvenient to attach and detach (Awkward mounting devices)Small screen sizeSome units slow to acquire satellite signalWhile you can listen to music files on the go-the audio quality isusually poor
In-dashCan't transferFairly expensive, starting at around $1,500 areaLearning curve: the myriad features can be intimidating to someconsumers
Pioneer AVIC-Z1Raising the Bar on the All-in-One Double-DINWhen we heard about Pioneer's AVIC-Z1 we thought it might be too good to be true. The Z1 seemed to do everything except read your mind. It's not that far off though: Just tell it what you want to do and the unit, a little like HAL from Space Odyssey: 2001, asks for information and then fulfills your request. Before we get into any details about the voice recognition feature of the Z1 we'll first cover the different functions of this double-DIN unit.
Music, Music, MusicComparisons to Eclipse's AVN products is unavoidable here. Like its competitor, the Z1 has a music library which allows you to record songs from a CD into the hard drive, about 200 CDs worth of material. You can set it up for auto recording to the entire disc or record manually when you hear a song on a disc that you would like to add individually to the library. This is a terrific feature to have. Once songs are placed in the library they are organized automatically, thanks to Gracenote software that recognizes and labels practically any saleable CD you own. The caveat here is Pioneer's compression method can cause some loss of audio quality, so we don't recommend this feature for songs you like to use for auditioning new high-end speakers you may want to buy to complement the Z1.
With the optional iPod adapter you can also access that library as well. Using the menu is more than adequate for finding your favorite artists, albums or songs. Scrolling through long lists to find a particular song can be tedious, but not too bad a test of one's patience. And frankly, we prefer to use our iPod on shuffle mode since it's a little difficult to remember all 250,000 songs we've loaded on to it!
If you get bored with the aforementioned music options you can turn to XM Satellite Radio. You'll need the optional GEX-P10XMT and a subscription of course to get satrad content, including NavTraffic. If you're going to buy the Z1, it doesn't make sense to pass on XM. One practically demands the other. Without it you lose out not only on another entertainment option, but more importantly, the traffic info that complements route guidance.
The Z1 also plays DVDs; and of course there's ol' AM and FM, for you traditionalists. Altogether, that's quite a thorough entertainment package.