JVC KD-X320BT I bought Something - from a SHOP

I bought something new, and from a shop. You should be shocked, since I prefer secondhand off the net.

I went into Repco* and bought the cheapest stereo in the place. I am genuinely impressed. Its cheaper than the list price of my old stereo, is packed with features supports so many new digital things I had to Google what a Pandora was. In addition to wma, mp3, Bluetooth USB etc, it supports flac, yes flac and various streaming apps about which I couldn't give a stuff.

The Radio is far better than the old one - all for 100bucks from a shop. What's the catch? Well there isn't one - unless of course you still own some outdated laser readable 80's beer coasters. No CD player. The shop assistant, and were talking Repco here so not an old fella, looked at me quizzically and said "you do know it has no CD player" I said I knew, and that it had been a number of years since I'd owned any CDs. This brings me to why it was the cheapest in the shop. I suspect the world is not ready for the Winamp generation. Or at least not in their cars. Cassettes survived in cars long after they'ed gone from all other walks of life. Radio too is a medium that suits the car. Now either shake proof cd drives are expensive, which is possible given they are fiddly and mechanical, or these have not sold well. I suspect a lot of the latter, the guy on the desk who emphasized the lack of cd sounded to me like they're had a few returns. Anyway, the JVC KD-X320BT is a bloody good car stereo.

I've been running "Chinese double din" touch screen stereos in the work ute, bloody awful things, a big touch screen is not a substitute for good interface design. As well as being, buggy, slow, and badly built.the Bluetooth, when it worked, made me inaudible. This applies to the 4 of these I've seen - only 2 are still "working". The romantically named KD-X320BT, doesn't have a 7 inch touch screen, the mic for the Bluetooth is external. Now the first time I drove with it, no I didn't read the manual, Matt called me and I was able to work out how to answer we could hear each other. It actually managed to voice identify 'MATT' and would have dialed - if my contact list hadn't been so much of a train wreck.Yes it has short wave. I'm yet to try this but SW? In this day and age, I must try and get the world service. Pressing the source button toggles the screen and only after a second does it switch, so you press 3 times it goes from FM to Bluetooth with out stopping at static or silence on AM and USB on the way through. Neat. In all I think I prefer good physical buttons to crap touch screen.

The un pause button was a bit hard to find, but other than that I'm really happy with it.

And since there is now a box under the single din stereo, plan is to gut this QI wireless charger and put it under this slot, wire it to battery #2 always on so I can throw my phone in and it will charge. Bet even your new Bentley don't do that.

* for Pommies that's like a more professional version of Halfords.