Car stereo upgrade

July 1, 2015 2:49 PM

So I just made the decision to keep my old 2002 Subaru Outback rather than buy a new (to me) car. It's a great car and runs well, so I should be able to get another few years out of it. But it occurred to me that one thing that would significantly improve my enjoyment of the car is if I upgraded the audio system. Problem is, I don't even know what possibilities are out there. Can you look at my list of wants and tell me which are possible/what I should buy?

Current setup: I use a cassette tape adapter to play music from my iPhone. The car has a cassette player, a single disc CD player, AND a six disc changer, so assume that I have as much space available as any product would need.

Wants:
* When I play music on my iPhone I want to see the track name and artist on the stereo display. I also want to be able to hit a button on the stereo face to advance to the next track. This should work with Amazon's music app as well as Spotify.
* Music would start playing as soon as I started the car. Possible?
* Bluetooth would be nice, but I almost never make phone calls in the car, so it's not a necessity.
* If I got a backup camera, could the image from that be shown on the screen if the stereo had one?
* Is there any way to display the map from my iPhone on the stereo's screen?

Do NOT need:
* CD player
* Cassette player
* Satellite radio
(It's fine if there's a stereo with all the features I want that has these, but they're things I never plan to use.)

I have access to Best Buy and Fry's Electronics for in-person buying/installation.

posted by MsMolly to Technology (6 answers total)

alpine and pioneer have stereos with carplay compatibility available for installation by a 3rd party, which sounds a lot like what you're looking for.
posted by koroshiya at 3:02 PM on July 1, 2015

Back in my car stereo modding days, crutchfield.com was the go-to site for finding out what the options were for your specific model of car, and what you would need to install them.
posted by jferg at 3:08 PM on July 1, 2015

Have you tried looking at Crutchfield? Even if you don't end up buying from them, they have a pretty good "what fits my car?" system that will show you what your options are. Their selection is much more exhaustive than what you'll find at a brick and mortar store. A caveat, however, is that they are geared towards self-installation and you might not be comfortable with that. An upside though, is that if you *are* comfortable with that, their system will figure out what additional parts you'll need and they also provide free DIY instructions for all the steps involved.
posted by strangecargo at 3:10 PM on July 1, 2015

Bluetooth may not matter from a phone call perspective, but it's the easiest way (when it works) of linking your phone's output to the car's input. My $100 JVC unit does #2 and #3 reasonably well. I think it does forward and backward skips, but I never use that. It sort-of displays the track name and artist, but that's clunky, even for an 8 character alphanumeric display.

As for CarPlay - it may have gotten better, but when Jason Snell (formerly chief editor of MacWorld - not somebody who hates Apple) reviewed a Pioneer CarPlay unit back toward the start of the year, he was not impressed. Not at all impressed. Or maybe we could say that he was impressed by how clunky and poorly it worked. I'd wait at least another generation of CarPlay devices before getting a Carplay device.
posted by wotsac at 5:10 PM on July 1, 2015

I came to the same conclusion about my 2002 Passat. Keep it and save money, but install stereo to make it seem nicer. I got this, installed it myself with backup camera. A little spendy, but again, cheaper than a new car. I like it and recommend it (or something similar).
posted by Fortnight Bender at 8:57 PM on July 1, 2015

Carplay is now, Android Auto is coming soon. I'd say, wait another 3 months or so.
posted by kschang at 9:35 PM on July 1, 2015