GPS Navigation System: Pioneer AVIC-U220 Add-On Navigation Device

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1. Dan says:

   03/01/2012 at 9:13 pm

   9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

   
   Good navigation, but safety feature are a pain!, January 17, 2011

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   Dan (Folsom, Ca) –

   Amazon Verified Purchase(What’s this?)

   This review is from: Pioneer AVIC-U220 Add-On Navigation Device (Electronics)

   If i hadn’t gotten a few amazon gift cards for Christmas, i probably wouldn’t have bought this, due to the fact that you can get a navigation deck for $300-400 and they want $250 for the add on navi. I have it hooked up to the Avh-P3200dvd. Installation was fairly easy, plan on putting it somewhere very easily accessible (I’ll explain in a bit)

   When i first installed it and drove around for a bit, i realized that the Avic-U220 bypasses the parking brake bypass that I installed on the 3200dvd. So i can no longer view movies while driving. The easy solution to this, is to have the U220 unplugged (out of its cradle) before you start your car. After you start your car and the deck powers up, plug the U220 into its cradle and then the parking break bypass will still work, and you’ll be able to view movies (thats why i installed it below the shifter in my car). I’ve done research and found that others have used a PAC TR7 module and had it setup to have a 5 second delay before powering up the U220.

   The second thing that i dont like about the U220 is that it has an accelerometer/gyroscope that knows when you’re going faster than 10mph and you cannot enter destinations or search for POI’s until you go slower than 10mph. Hopefully someone will figure out how to bypass the accelerometer/gyroscopes, but i doubt it.

   I like the idea of being able to add on navigation to my deck, but i wish i would have just waited and purchased one of pioneers higher-end navigation decks, instead of adding bluetooth and navigation on to a base model.

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2. BayPharm "Baypharm" says:

   03/01/2012 at 9:41 pm

   6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

   
   Pioneer AVIC-U220 Add-On Navigation Device, February 19, 2011

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   BayPharm “Baypharm” (USA) –

   Amazon Verified Purchase(What’s this?)

   This review is from: Pioneer AVIC-U220 Add-On Navigation Device (Electronics)

   Good in theory but in practice leaves alot to be desired. Installation is easy enough and the female voice is extremely easy to understand. “She” speaks slowly enough to be understandable. And the voice quality is the best I’ve heard: human like in every way. Routing is pretty accurate. The two areas I dislike vehemently are the AVIC feeds software and screen resolution. Pioneer leads you to believe screen resolution is tack sharp – not so. It is blurry and has a high degree of aliasing. The screen looks like a 1980′s supertwist lcd. The AVIC feed software is Windows only – so Mac’s are out of luck. However this where it really gets strange: I have yet to be able to download the AVIC feeds software to take advantage of the many cool features that Pioneer claims in their ads. Documentation is zero so it’s pretty useless. And there is no mention about how to update the maps.

   Had I known these issues before I would have not purchased the module. I think these built-in navigation units are overrated anymore because smartphone technology is so much better and the cost for updates is free. I prefer to use Google Maps on an Android phone. Crystal clear maps with turn-by-turn routing. Pioneer has a good thing in theory but in practice leaves more to be desired than they deliver.

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