Best car stereo under 200 bucks?

Yes. Go with a Pioneer.

 

I friend once told me that Pioneer machines will play any disc you can throw at 'em ... and I think that's true.

 

I would highly recommend Alpine. I've had a few over 10 years and they were trouble free.

Bill

 

The problem is the way their decks are created. At least with a Pioneer, Alpine or Kenwood, you are getting a company with an engineering department and a point of view. With these second tier companies, it's someone else's engineering.

Say you have a company and own the Pyle Audio name. That's about all you own. You don't have the money to design decks just for yourself. In fact, why should you? Instead, you go to the Far East, probably China, to an electronics manufacturer. In a boardroom the Chinese manufacturer rolls out a Powerpoint presentation with their boilerplate line of car stereos. You say that's nice but you like red lights. They agree to change the blue lights in their standard decks to red. You say you want to have a bigger display. They make it bigger. You say you want twelve square buttons on the front panel instead of eight round ones. They add extra buttons. You then negotiate a price with the manufacture for making this line of car stereos with the Pyle Audio name on them. After you reach an agreement with the company, you write them a check and in about a year, you get a couple of container loads of decks, complete in boxes with the Pyle Audio logo that will look good on the shelf of a Walmart store, delivered to your warehouse. You have car stereos ready to sell.

Walmart sells Kenwood. I'd buy one of their decks. It won't be as flashy as one of the other decks you've mentioned but it will have more solid construction, probably last longer and most likely will sound better, too.

 

The cheapest Pioneer cd player you can buy with a USB port, and the best pair of Infinity speakers you can afford.

 

I also recommend a pioneer head unit. It's usually what I end up buying for my vehicles. Never had a problem with them.

Last pioneer unit I bought was from Crutchfield. Great Company.

 

I bought a decent Sony FM/Cd player for my old truck for about $100 that sounds just fine. My days of crazy money for vehicle sound are over. I think I bought it at WalMart or maybe Best Buy.

 

Most $100 unit's play cd's and music files fine. It's the processing and signal strength that costs much more. I personally can't have a car stereo without time correction to account for the uneven speaker distances. It makes such a huge difference in sound stage that once you hear it, you can't go back. Unfortunately, they don't offer that in the lower priced head units.

 

Ive had the same Kenwood the last two and a half years, no trouble. Lucky I guess.

 

heatherly, if it isn't obvious by now, the moment somebody says XYZ is a great car stereo, another guy will say they've had nothing but problems. So much of how well a car stereo works is its installation, often that can be a factor. When I owned my stereo store and somebody didn't like a car stereo they bought from us, if it was a self installation, I did whatever I had to do to get the customer to let one of my installers look at their work. Usually the solution was there.

I do agree with Jim Tavegia upthread. Sony should have been on my list of better car stereo companies and should be on your short list of possible Walmart replacements.

 

I imagine all these brands are made at the same Chinese factories these days, so it's probably all about luck with every brand. The dealer who sold me my current Kenwood swore up and down his customers have had a lot more problems with Pioneers, but I've had to replace my Kenwood twice (under warranty, fortunately). My personal experience with previous Kenwoods and other brands is that Kenwoods are less reliable than others, but that's just anecdotal and says nothing about the larger picture. I have no idea whether your experience or mine is more common, but I not intend to get another Kenwood

 

While this is true, real bottom of the barrel brands like those talked about are many times DOA out of the box or destined for a short life, good install or not.

 

Pioneer, if you can install it yourself you'll save about 100 bucks.

 

Bought a Pioneer from Amazon for $119 and love it.

 

Alright thanks again for the advice!

I ended up cancelling the Power Akoustic and am gonna settle for a regular CD player and just buy a cheap portable DVD player for the road.

These are the ones I'm leaning towards.
http://www.walmart.com/ip/New-Sony-...Receiver-Stereo-Bluetooth-MEXN5000BT/39403778

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Pioneer-Single-din-In-dash-Cd-Receiver/23703092

http://www.walmart.com/ip/DNP-Blitz...Direct-Control-for-Apple-iPod-iPhone/38335639

Thanx again!

 

I bought this a while back.http://www.crutchfield.com/p_130X560BT/Pioneer-MVH-X560BT.html?tp=5684 No cd,all the the plugs are in back for a clean look.$129.