 I was using an old cassette deck in my jeep and I ... Strengths: Good sound. Plays mp3s, lots of programmable stations.
Weaknesses: Amost unusable. How the heck do you change the time? What are all those buttons? Why the goofy graphics?
Summary: I was using an old cassette deck in my jeep and I finally decided to do a serious upgrade to a cd player that could play mp3s. The salesman told me that the clarion dxz545mp had good sound, and was better at picking up mp3 file names. Sounded good so I bought it. Clarion is a well established company right?
The functions are all there, but be prepared to read the manual a lot. The only functions thet were easy to figure out was the volume control and the station selection and setting. Other than those you are on your own. The initial led setting was so bad that I couldn't even see the important information like the radio station or what track was playing in regular daylight. Took me a while to figure out I could change the led display to something usable. Sure, I suppose I should carry the manual around at all times, but that should not be required. I've worked on consumer devices myself and I can tell you this is one of the worst experiences I think I ever had with an electronic device.
Lowlights:
- 6 buttons smaller than an eraser head. How am I suppose to find that button when I am trying to drive?
- The function button always cycles through the AUX feature, which I don't have.
- how do you change the time? I read it once but honesty I forgot how.
- My Mac written mp3 cd songs play but their titles don't show up? Nice.
- Face plate feels like it's going to break every time I put it back on.
- Goofy graphics say hello and goodbye with nice large font, and then I get to see goofy dancing graphics during songs. How about showing the station in the same font? How about getting the mp3 file name up there?
Hey Clarion, ever heard of a book called "The Design of Everyday Things"? Why don't you get your marketing people and engineers to read it. I can barely believe people can actually think this kind of design is good. Spend more time on a display that has useful stuff on it, and less on all those goofy graphics. How about two dials, and maybe put a good solid click push on one of them to select functions. I don't like fishing around for that FNC button.
Final part of my rant. The whole face plate idea is bad. What is the point? Stop theft. Why not give the owner a dongle to put on their key chain which unlocks and enables the deck? Make something on the deck nice and visable so that thieves know it has a dongle security mechanism. Isn't that a lot cheaper than a removable face plate? I know people who can do this kind of engineering. I'm almost fed up enough to do it myself, and that says a lot by itself.
 64% of People (14/22) found this review helpful. Was this review helpful or unhelpful for you?
 There are no comments for this review. Post a comment.
| 
Report this as 