Pioneer DEH-5000UB USB AUX Car Stereo Mini Review

[joshwa]

Well, I've been looking for a neat car stereo with USB, that would match my car's interior (black with red / blue lights)...

And I think this is the closest I'm going to get... the Pioneer 5000UB... especially as it lets you choose the colour of the buttons and screen... it even lets you choose a CUSTOM colour! You can choose Red, Green, Blue values from 0 to 4, so my basic maths works out that there's 64 colour options!

The stereo is about £115 from Amazon...



It plays MP3, WMA, WAV etc CDs, has AUX in (at the back), has USB in (at the back), and has a clever radio that will auto tune to the music style of your liking (eg Popular, Classic, etc)...

It has pre-out for a sub woofer...



And an enormous amount of sound customisation options too many in fact! My old Sony A250 was simple, you just boost the bass a little bit and then everything sounds great... with the Pioneer 5000UB I've spent all evening trying to get the sound to my liking...

There's preset equaliser settings, and there's custom settings: I can change LOW, MID, HIGH, these can all be set to change a different frequency, eg LOW can change 40hz, 80hz, 100hz, 160hz, MID can be set to change 200hz, 500hz, 1khz, 2khz, and HIGH can set 3khz, 8khz, 10khz, 12khz... and you can even adjust the equalizer curve!!!

Then there's a Loudness mode which can be LOW, MID or HIGH...

Then there's a seperate BASS boost mode...

And that's ignoring the subwoofer settings, which lets you set the cutoff (50hz - 125hz for example), and there's even an option to set the main speaker cutoff (50hz - 125hz?) so that your main speakers are trying to reproduce sound that your subwoofer is supposed to be doing!

(there are more options than these, but these are the only one's I can remember off the top of my head). ... looking at the manual there's also a "Sound retriever" setting that's supposed to improve the sound quality of compressed digital files...

So how does it actually sound? It sounds pretty good! Although so far I've played MP3s, some fast stuff, and it doesn't seem to be able to keep up as well as the Sony did, but I'm yet to try the original CD, and I'm not sure if I've got all the settings right!

Overall though it seems to sound very good...

There are some negatives though... most noticably:
- there's no USB extention cable provided
- there's no AUX extention cable provided
- there's no remote control provided
- it's lacking a pause button!! (you need the optional remote control to get this feature!)
- and if I'm being picky, the CD drops a little when it's been ejected, rather than being held vertically.

It also seems to have the typical flaw of playing MP3s in "computer order", eg I've got my tracks labelled as 1 - track 1, 2 - track 2 ... 10 - track 10, 11 - track 11, but instead of playing 1, then 2, it will play, 1, 10, 11, then track 2

The clever stuff:
- Custom colour to match your car
- USB 2 supports USB Hard drives upto 250gb! (devices upto 500ma)
- Very good subwoofer support
- MOSFET 50w x 4



I'm not hugely impressed by the volume control / joystick thing - it's a bit small to start with - and trying to change options is sometimes a bit awkward due to the number of menus and settings and fiddly-ness of the control.

It doesn't support M3u playlists (although personally I'm not bothered).

More pics here:
Joshua Waller's Gallery (http://joshwaller.co.uk) :: Pioneer 5000UB installed into VW Passat

[Howard]

You didn't fancy the 7000UB then? I have a 30GB drive hooked up to mine and it's ace.

It plays the tracks in the order that they were written onto the media BTW.

I'm surprised you think it sounds worse than the Sony. Sony stuff is usually pretty rubbish

[joshwa]

You didn't fancy the 7000UB then? I have a 30GB drive hooked up to mine and it's ace.

It plays the tracks in the order that they were written onto the media BTW.

I'm surprised you think it sounds worse than the Sony. Sony stuff is usually pretty rubbish

Yeah, the 7000UB looks very nice, but I wanted red buttons

I'll need to listen to it some more today - try it out with some more stuff.

[kalniel]

Thanks, useful review as I've been looking for a head unit for some time.. and this isn't the one for me I think.

[Howard]

What sort of functionality are you after, Kalniel?

[Butuz]

I've got to get a head unit too - but it's a minefield.

Want something of good sound quality and not gimmicky. Where do I start? Was thinking Alpine as I always thought they tended to do more simple head units.

Butuz

[kalniel]

What sort of functionality are you after, Kalniel?

1) Sound quality, especially for classical music. Odd as it sounds, the blaunkpunt that came with the car is fantastically well matched with the speakers and the sound quality is very good across the range. Problem is it's only radio so I'm limited by the quality of the signal.

Classical music doesn't require any tinkering with, aside from natural compensation for the shape of the car and car noises. Too many supposedly better systems sound really awful for classical music - all I want is something that's good quality throughout, without lots of things to adjust. It needs to be especially good and detailed with quiet sounds.

2) Easy to adjust volume control that covers a wide range smoothly. One problem with classical music is it has a very wide dynamic range - while I can cope with some systems that reduce dynamic range on the fly, there will still be lots of times when I want to adjust the volume to get it 'just right'. Again the inbuilt radio has a fully analogue volume control which suits me fine.

3) Required Functions: Slot load CD/MP3CD-player, FM/MW/LW radio player - AM radio is a must.

That's it really - I want something quite simple but good quality, without spending a lot of money! Some of the Alpine units might be my best bet.

[Howard]

The alpine units are geared towards audiophiles yes. They have plenty of parametric EQ, crossover and time alignment etc adjustment so this would indicate to me that the only tinkering that goes on is in the interest of sound quality

[joshwa]

This does support FM/AM/LW radio, and the volume control is a rotary dial, but it's definitely a digital volume control. Aren't they all digital these days?

I think nearly all car stereos are overly complicated - the Sony A250 was easier to use than this Pioneer - and would let you pause music - albeit using the button labelled "6" ! the mind boggles...

[joshwa]

I've got to get a head unit too - but it's a minefield.

Want something of good sound quality and not gimmicky. Where do I start? Was thinking Alpine as I always thought they tended to do more simple head units.

Butuz

Thanks, useful review as I've been looking for a head unit for some time.. and this isn't the one for me I think.

I thought I'd post this up as I thought it could be useful to people - I searched all over to try and find a review of this stereo - and couldn't find anything! I can find 10+ reviews of a digital camera, but there's literally no reviews of new car stereos!

[joshwa]

I've just connected up a 160gb USB hard drive and it works fine (formatted at Fat with a Mac) - it's a WD1600BEVE drive - they're only £40 odd quid from Scan!

The sounds is actually pretty good - it's just obviously different to the sound from my Sony...

[joshwa]

Small update: The random feature doesn't seem to work properly - it'll only play another random track IF you let the current song play to the end... if you try skipping it because it's rubbish, it plays the next song in the folder, meaning you have to skip manually all the way through the album if you don't like the band pretty annoying...

[stevie lee]

has it got a fast-forward button? try pressing that - in theory it should fast-forward to end of the track then skip to next random track and resume at normal speed. worth trying.

[joshwa]

has it got a fast-forward button? try pressing that - in theory it should fast-forward to end of the track then skip to next random track and resume at normal speed. worth trying.

This does work but is fiddly.

After using this stereo for a couple of months now, I've got to say I wouldn't recommend it...

The main control / volume control is SO fiddly / small, it's such a pain in the arse to use.

To program the stereo you have to use the menu system, there are no programable buttons, and I can only ever find one station at a time, then if I move the control accidentally it looses the station.

And the fact that random only works when you go through the whole track is really annoying!

[Raz316]

I've just connected up a 160gb USB hard drive and it works fine (formatted at Fat with a Mac) - it's a WD1600BEVE drive - they're only £40 odd quid from Scan!

The sounds is actually pretty good - it's just obviously different to the sound from my Sony...

Sorry to hear the stereo isn't quite as good as you were hoping! Anyhoo, is that a drive that's powered over USB, or did you have to get a power source from elsewhere?

And to anyone else really, if you were to buy a car stereo with a USB interface, what would you go for?

[99Flake]

I'm surprised you think it sounds worse than the Sony. Sony stuff is usually pretty rubbish

I am surprised you say that. I would agree that Sony speakers are normally pretty naff and so are their xplode amps but I have had a Sony headunit for years (all MD units) the last one I had was the recordable one and they have all sounded fantastic.

In fact they have all sounded much better than any Alpine I have listened to (never liked Alpine stuff, always sounds far to harsh and clinical).