I tend to be pretty harsh, too, doubly so if I had bought the product, but is the designer an employee, or one of the people that founded the whole thing? And is there enough money to hire a really capable person?
I'm just glad to see people willing to spend some time on our niche, but yeah, it's disappointing when it comes up short. I kinda got used to it when I was an Atari ST fan.
What banks if I may ask?
And yeah, is it still worth the money? One possible issue is the lack of FLAC-support. The majority of my 103 GB library is FLAC... Converting formats? I'd rather not...
I actually might run across the border to pick up, as Gothenburg is ~4 hours away... Hmmm...
So it has been a few weeks since the early buyers installed these units. Now that the large screen novelty has worn off, honest opinions so far?
Still worth the money? Uncovering any more glitches?
Would also love some real reviews from a "user" viewpoint instead of an "install" viewpoint. Very on the fence about getting one and some real-life reviews would really help a lot of us who are still undecided.
So I further checked out the site... On the bottom it says "Payson" and "Svea". I don't know of Payson, but Svea is a reputable bank!
Probably a hiccup somewhere if you can't get through?
Like asked before:
Any users with feedback who now have used the system for a couple of weeks? Any glitches? Annoying bugs/missing features?
Is everyone still positive about this system?
I'm still in doubt if this system is a good option for my car and if it's worth the money.
Overall I'm pretty pleased. I haven't experienced many bad glitches/crashes aside from the time I tried to load 700GB of mp3s off of an SSD and it just, like, failed (and froze the following day when I turned it on).
Maybe 1 in 100 times I start the car, the unit fails to power on, showing NO SIGNAL on the screen. It won't even display the car menu from the ICM when this happens (though the fan controls still do work). Re-starting the car or opening the glove box and manually powering the unit off/on usually solves it. Note to anyone trying to troubleshoot things: make sure the engine is running; just having the key in position II is not sufficient for some odd reason.
There's an annoying bug with the screen brightness though. Have you ever turned on your car at night and had to wait 15-20sec for the radio screen to dim? That happened to me a lot in the past. Now the BLP-990 seems to detect the brightness level within the first 5sec of booting, and then just holds it. So I've become very familiar with navigating to the Settings page and turning down the screen brightness.
And then on the following day, if I haven't removed my sun shade before starting my car, the exact opposite occurs.
But not always! Only sometimes.
I finally figured out how to turn off the reverse cam the other day, since I don't have one installed. The option in English is named "Close" rather than "Off", which was not immediately obvious to me.
Sometimes audio continues playing even after you've turned the car off, for ~15sec until the power is cut. This seems to be related to how quickly I turn the key. If I turn it quickly to OFF, then it continues playing maybe half of the time. If I turn it to position I, wait a second, then turn OFF, the unit more reliably receives the OFF signal to power down on its own. Not a big deal, imho.
Having to double-tap to select folders and files is weird and old-school. Silly WinCE.
This post seems to have come off a bit negative, so I want to emphasize that overall I am happy with this unit! I spent nearly 4 hours cruising around today listening to music off of a USB stick and podcasts on my phone via BT, and I couldn't be happier! I used to hate long drives in my car. Not anymore.
Thank you for being honest and giving an extensive review!
Does anyone know when the next batch will be produced and shipped? Are there any current known delivery times?
You haven't documented your install by any chance have you? (asks a fellow Californian)
This definitely intrigues me but seems like a lot of work over my head. Have they mentioned anything about upgrading the OS? Looking at the demos I have to agree with some folks that the UI could use some work. It would be amazing if they released an SDK!
Here is an essential piece of software that you should have for your USB stick or SD card: DriveSort.
Without it, the files on your memory stick appear in the order that you copied them over, not alphabetically. Very nice to have.
If your car is a 2009 model, then it may already have Bluetooth and MP3 capabilities. If so, I would not bother buying this unit.
If you're stuck in the previous century with nothing but a CD player and an FM radio, then hell yes, buy buy buy.
Are there any alternatives to the Blupower head unit? I don't know if I want to wait a lifetime to take a risk of a largely unknown product or company, and all I really need is an aux or bluetooth set up. I know there's a thread for the basic sound system, but mine is premium sound.
The cheapest way to get those in any car is a small radio transmitter. As replacement HUs go this seems to be the only one except of going for original Volvo parts. Though doesn't the premium already offer at least aux?
Yeah, apparently that GROM unit is only for the single disc CD player.
I guess I'll just wait for BluPower. That's the unit I want, but I was hoping to have it installed and ready for my road trip to Yellowstone.
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