Dual XDM6825 In Dash CD/MP3 Player

Great radio, terrible CD player

Strengths: lots or radio presets

Weaknesses: CD player broke after 2 months, overly bright blue display, cannot be dimmed

Summary: I bought this stereo from Best Buy during the beginning of September 2006. My mistake was thinking that this stereo would be as good as a similarly priced Sony stereo. Not true!

At first, I loved this player; great controls, bright screen, lots of radio presets. It even promised to play mp3s. After about 45 days, it stopped playing CDs. I would put in a disc, factory compact disc, not a burned CD rom, and it wouldn't play. Best Buy stated it was a manufacturing problem and refused to refund me. Be warned, my stereo broke in less than two months. No more Dual products for me, ever! I ended up buying a JVC player as a replacement.

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Dual (aka Namsung) XDM6825 car stereo

Strengths: Worked initially, decent sound, good instructions. Most controls lit.

Weaknesses: Rather bright lighting, faceplate switch failed in a month. Buttons small and multi-functional, radio programming not obvious.

Summary: I bought the unit from Autozone on 3/7/07. I noticed a few weeks later that one of the front panel switches had failed. Autozone was unable to replace the unit under warranty, being unable to find another in their inventory. So I contacted Dual at dualav.com. To their credit, an message to their warranty support email address (cs@dualav.com) got a reply in minutes, with an address to ship the faceplate to for replacement.

I think the unit is actually made by Namsung in Korea. I've never thought it was necessary or advisable to market behind a different name.

The stereo sounds OK, although there is some noticable distortion. It's marketed as a 200 watt unit, but it's actually rated at 15 watts continuous per channel, for four channels. It played my home-made MP3 cd's without problems, although it doesn't let you select folders for specific albums or titles. It does find the files in those folders, and sorts all titles on the disk alphabetically by file name.

I keep the manual in the glovebox for reference. Still have not figured how to program the radio pre-selects. The instructions were clear about installation, and it works the power antenna on my car without problems. I paid about $80 for the unit, which was the only one that played MP3's in that range.

I'll ship the faceplate in and see how long it takes to send me another one. I see a replacement panel for five bucks on Ebay also, so they're available.

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