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Strengths: Strong sound, great display, user-friendly menu, sufficient buttons for functions
Weaknesses: Color/brightness is not adjustable
Summary: Car: 1999 Mercedes C230 Kompressor I had a CDA-9847 before the display messed up and had it replaced by this CDA-9851. This is an all-around great head unit. It has enough juice to power all 8 of my factory speakers and even at half volume, it's more than loud enough. The MP3 feature is great, I can store plenty of music just on one disk. There are plenty of scroll settings (title, artist-title, file name, etc) and it is easily readable under most conditions (sometimes the glare is too much, but this doesn't occur often). The head unit looks great in my car - it fits right in. Its sleek design makes it look like it came with the car instead of being an eyesore. All of the controls are on the driver's side of the car. This is a no-brainer feature Alpine includes in their head units. I drove my brother's car with a Kenwood and reaching across the head unit to change tracks was not a pleasant experience. The buttons are perfect. Personally I hate the analog stick for skipping tracks. These buttons are easy to blindly find and certainly easy to push. The volume knob feels like it has notches instead of a smooth scroll so you know when you increase the volume one level without looking at the display. All of the descriptions on the buttons are self explanatory, unlike my brother's Kenwood (I never could find his mute function). All menu options are accessible through the head unit - you don't have to use the remote control. It also displays the bitrate of the track in kb/sec while it's playing, a neat little feature. Playback is very smooth, I don't think it's skipped once in the 6 months I've had it. I only use 3 or 4 CD-RW's, all of which have noticeable scratches on them, and they play fine. I don't subscribe to satellite radio and don't listen to radio unless I forget my CD's, so I can't comment on its reception. Also, I don't have an Ipod for the interface. Overall, it sounds great. I highly recommend it. It is louder than the CDA-9847 and Eclipse I had. The buttons make it much easier to operate the head unit and drive at the same time. If this model is outdated by the time you're reading this, consider this a general review of Alpine head units priced in the $250-300 range. Buy Alpine!!!
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