FYI- this is going to be long, so i'll get right to it: DO NOT BUY ONE!!!!

Now that that's out of the way, i'll start the story......
(disclaimer: this is my experience. you might have the same, you might have a different one. use at your own risk.)

A quick tid-bit about the service:
they will email you back and try and help. They don't know a lot about the unit, so you might come up empty handed on some install/operation issues. There service doesn't totally suck, but i would hope for a company that's going to sell something, to know more about it. I've been messing with this thing for nearly 1 1/2 months (returning #2). they say they've had fine working units in the past (2005 model), but for mine (2007 expedition el eb), it was worthless and costly. I recommended they shut down and figure things out why things don't work on it. They told me they were getting a lot of negative remarks and decided to shut down the ebay store to work on their service and products. They've asked me a couple times not to report them to ebay and/or paypal.

The unit.....

i figured i would try one out becuase it looked great, has a ton of features, and a decent price (<$700). I got it, and it came with no instructions....none of them do. it does have a sissy little vague manual that is no help what-so-ever. The unit is fairly plug-in-play, but there is alot of crap to riffle through. It's a wiring headache keeping things straight. Once installed, it did look great and i was happy with it. For most applications (mine was basic/stock replacement) you won't use 1/2 of the wires and plugs it comes with.

At first, nothing worked. Well that's exaggerating....the rear-camera wouldn't work (bought one through them too - sent the wrong one - oh well), the bluetooth wouldn't work, the nav wouldn't work, the AUX wouldn't work, the USB wouldn't work, and probably some more, but you get the point. After some trial and error (i'm trying to keep it short) i was able to get most of it to work. Being there's no instructions, i had the rear-camera wired wrong. I'm not entirely stupid when it comes to these, but it's wired in a way i never would have thought of. They were able to help me with the wiring and i got it to work: turn on when in reverse. (don't plug the camera RCA into the "camera" plug....i know, i know...)

I was able to get everything working (with help from a professional) except for the nav, bluetooth, and the factory subwoofer. Remember, this is supposed to be a factory replacement, plug-in-play. Before i bought it, i asked all the questions about the unit and the factory components. i wouldn't have bought it if i knew things weren't going to work on it. Also, the rear entertainment system won't work with it. Maybe with some additional wiring things would, but not as a plug-in-play. Back to it:

With help from Navitouch, i was able to get the nav working. It required some setting changes in the navigation menu. The only thing not working was the sub and the bluetooth. since the bluetooth is more important (laws) i started on that. Even with professional help, we couldn't get it to work. The issue was that when someone calls in, you can hear them, but they can't hear you. it has both an internal and external mic and we tried both. we even tried another mic and 2 different phones, and nothing.

I paid for return shipping and they sent me another one.

This was worst than the first one! Since i've done this once before, putting the 2nd one in was easy. The sub still didn't work, but the bluetooth worked. turns out, there was a problem with the mic. The new one (#2) worked just fine with their new mic. Other than the sub, everything seemed to be cool and i thought i was ready to go. I made an appt with a professional shop to have them look at it, but for the most part, i was happy with the unit.

was happy.......

(Back fill story: my wife drives the expy. we are getting ready to move, so she doesn't live with me right now. we only get to see eachother on the weekends, so i only get to tinker with the expy on the weekends.)

The next day after the installation of the new unit (monday) she calls me to tell me she has a dead battery. i don't think much of it and tell her how to jump it. she gets it going and i go about my day. the next morning, it happened again. I don't know what's going on and don't have an answer. I tell her to leave it and not drive it for the week. she has to walk back and forth to work (1-2 miles?) and can't do much else. She get's it jumped for her return trip home for the weekend. when she gets here, i take out the unit because i'm fearing that it's draining the battery throughout the night resulting in a dead one in the morning. I get ahold of Navitouch and they don't know what's wrong....they'll get back to me. I get a hold of the pros in town and they're stumped. they're booked for the weekend, so it'll have to wait. Navitouch said i could send it back again, but i really want it to work so i decide to keep it and investigate more. By the end of the weekend, i put the dash and unit back together and my wife drives off. (over the weekend, i had the battery on a trickly charger.)

My wife makes an interesting discovery. She finds out that if there's a disc in the unit (like a cd or dvd) even when the car is turn off and the unit appears to be off, the disc keeps spinning. She also discovers that if the unit is on, manually turning it off before you turn the car off, seems to shut everything down. She doesn't know for sure though. If you manually turn it off, you have to manually turn it back on when you start the car. (PITA) Shortly after, she forgets about this quirk and has a dead battery in the morning.
I have my wife remove the battery and take it to the local auto part store for testing. The store tells them that the battery has been drained so much that it's "bad" and will no longer hold a charge! I'm pissed off now. Everything was just fine, till this juice-sucker got put in. I had up there for the weekend as were going on a road trip (camping), and have to purchase a new battery for it (2007 model remember....not very old) and before we even begin our trip, i'm out $120.

(it's almost over....)
I figure this is a great time to play more with the unit as it does have a ton of features. Throughout the weekend, i kept it on a trickly charger to be safe. After 3 days, it never gets to a full charge.
On the trip i discover that every time you turn the unit off, the nav settings reset back to the default settings. The clock and time zone are screwed and all your personal preferences are lost. Also, only the nav clock can be set as a 12 hr clock (am/pm). The clocks on the other screens are military time. Speaking of clocks, if you put in a destination and have the nav tell you where to go, the clock disapears from the map screen. i don't know why. While driving, all the street names and POI will blink at you and it's very annoying. I don't remember this before, but it's doing it now. It has a mind of it's own.
For the radio, it will also always default to the last programmed station. If you're somewhere new, like we were, and find a local station, when you turn it off and then back on, it will go back to the last programmed station....not the station you were on last. Very annoying.
The bluetooth is only good for speaking, you can't call from it. you can use your phone to call and then speak back and forth on it. you can use the screen to answer and reject calls and stuff, but feature wise, it's just for talking. They have on the screen a keypad to dial and stuff and looks like it should, but it never connects. Maybe with some professional help it might, but this one didn't and i wasn't going to mess with it.

This thing has way to many issues and to many annoying "quirks" for me, so i'm sending it back. It's to bad because i was really hoping for a nice unit. It looks great and has a ton of stuff, but it just doesn't really work worth a crap. I was very disappointed in it.

I'm sure there's more to say, but this post is WAY to long, and i'm getting hungry. they've offered to pay me back the full price of the unit and the inital shipping cost. i would have liked some reimbursment for the dead battery, but no such luck.

I'm taking the unit to UPS to have it shipped back. i don't know how to ship it back (they're from canada) so i'm hoping UPS will help. Navitouch emailed me some pdf files to print off, but didn't explain what i need to do with them. I've printed them and i'm just going to take everything to UPS and hope for the best.

well....i think that's it for now. I'm back to the stock stereo. I've priced some units and the cheapest i could get locally (installed, extra parts, and taxes) was $1200. I'll wait and check around again in a few months. maybe prices will drop better towards the holidays.

 

So basically you are saying.. You get what you pay for.

I'm also looking into adding navigation, but I'm gearing towards a Pioneer, Kenwood or an Eclipse.

I've been on the Craigslist & Ebay watch for a few months now. I may not end up with the newest, but I know but at least I know I will have unit that has documentation and the functionality I'm looking for.

It's always been my worst nightmare to install a non-reputable radio and have the issues that you have resulted in. It only solidifies my conclusion that I will wait until i find something within my price point.

Good luck on finding a replacement!

 

I just rode in my co-workers truck with a brand new Pioneer navigation/touch screen radio. I will say, I was not impressed at all with the navigation OR the radio. A 1/2 to 1 second lag when pushing buttons. The gps interface is very poor. I have seen the OEM Nav and was not impressed either. My $99 Magellan-which I don't like much-kills the gps and a nice Garmin well that is even better.

 

I agree, I heard the interface on the Pioneer's were a bit slow but on the older models. I have yet to test out a newer model. hmmmm...

Currently I use my TomTom 720 or my iPhone with the TomTom app and they work flawlessly. Plus they both can play music and video as well.

 

i was looking at a kenwood...i don't remember the model.
my co-worker who i carpool with has an 09 F-150 with the nav and i'm not impressed with the system. the truck is sweet, but the factroy system sucks imo. i don't like the way it's set up. even he doesn't really like it.

i'll put the stock radio back in and keep my eye on prices to see if they drop.

 

Man that sounds like a complete "C"harlie "F"oxtrot!! Sorry to hear about all your issues bro. I was all about trying to upgrade my EL system to in-dash NAV but when I got my Moto DROID and started using the Google NAV feature..... Ain't nothing out there that can touch it.

In-dash NAV?... No thanks!

 

Damn I'm sorry about your luck.

If your going to go aftermarket, I can recommend from my experience what I've done.
take a moment and take a look at the following,
Pioneer avic x920bt.
Kenwood dnx 6960

Both of these navs are decent with bells and whistles to do everything. There are additional items to purchase if you want cameras, sat and hd radios. As for the Pioneer unit it has decent maps, but the live traffic will be offline in 2012.

The Kenwood unit has really nice maps and uses live traffic through Navteq. If I recall there is no charge for this, unlike the pioneer's subscription service through MSN. Kenwood requires that you purchase an additional part to access the Navteq.

Now the interesting part, for pricing I would look on Amazon, Crutchfield to get a baseline. The try Al and Eds. They are licensed distributors for both and will price match any other supplier. I managed to get the Pioneer this way for my wife at a fairly low price. Sometimes Crutchfield will run sales promotions to get a good deal.

Either way good units and I hope this helps you out.