... I purchased a small cable from Blaupunkt for about £5, which plugs into the rear of the unit. Simply tuck the cable carefully around your dashboard so it pops out the front somewhere and plug in to your MP3 player. Although it doesn't support changing tracks from the front panel of the unit, ... Read review
Advantages: Panel Release - Lots of Features - Great Price Disadvantages: Screen susceptible to Glare.
...purchased a small cable from Blaupunkt for about £5, which plugs into the rear of the unit. Simply tuck the cable carefully around your dashboard so it pops out the front somewhere and plug in to your MP3 player. Although it doesn't support changing tracks from the front panel of the unit, it offers an inexpensive and uncomplicated solution to releasing your iPod in your car! The slot at the rear of the unit for the MP3 cable can also be used to ... ...one later!
As mentioned above, the only possible downside to this unit is the glare in the sun. If the sun shines directly on the front panel, the white display becomes hard to read, although I'm sure this is the same for other white-on-black head units!
All in all, a superb CD Head-Unit for your car - Looks great, sounds great and with minimum fuss. Installation took 10 minutes! Thoroughly recommended!
I bought this head-unit over a year ago now for about £80. It's now much cheaper than this, but at £80 it was great value.
The front panel is attractive and looks great on the dashboard. It looks striking but doesn't use garish colours like other popular brands, Alpine, Sony, Clarion etc. The white on black display is also very nice, but is susceptible to glare if you're using it in the midday sun!
Feature-wise, the San Remo CD34 is rich. It features a great EQ allowing you to manipulate Bass and Treble, and also what's called X-Bass, which is a nifty tool for creating harmonics above a certain sub-bass note which allows the ear to perceive lower harmonics than are actually present. Great if you have speakers unable to replicate deep bass frequencies. It also has 3 EQ presets, Rock, Classical and Pop, which are useful for quick switching.
The four 45 Watt outputs are handy for standard speakers in your car - I still have the factory speakers in mine! The outputs also act as pre-amps if you ever decide to install a more powerful amplifier, which is great!
The appearance of the unit at night is extremely pleasing. The outer circle of the volume control glows red as does the horizontal left and right buttons. This compliments the blue and white glow from other buttons.
The unit features lots of other nifty enhancements including Traffic alerts and pause function for CDs.
The CD player is tucked away behind the front panel. A small panel release button on the top left of the unit causes the panel to fall 90 degrees to its normal position to reveal a slot-loading CD unit. As well as CDs, you can also use an external MP3 player like an iPod with the unit. I purchased a small cable from Blaupunkt for about £5, which plugs into the rear of the unit. Simply tuck the cable carefully around your dashboard so it pops out the front somewhere and plug in to your MP3 player. Although it doesn't support changing tracks from the front panel of the unit, it offers an inexpensive and uncomplicated solution to releasing your iPod in your car! The slot at the rear of the unit for the MP3 cable can also be used to cable up a CD changer if you decide to add one later!
As mentioned above, the only possible downside to this unit is the glare in the sun. If the sun shines directly on the front panel, the white display becomes hard to read, although I'm sure this is the same for other white-on-black head units!
All in all, a superb CD Head-Unit for your car - Looks great, sounds great and with minimum fuss. Installation took 10 minutes! Thoroughly recommended!
