GPS Navigation Receiver vs DVD Touchscreen

[mornindew]

Hi all,

I am brand new to car audio. I have dabbled in home audio for some time. I am purchasing a new car and decided to build an aftermarket audio system.

I have a question about receivers. I plan to use my phone for navigation and plan to pair it to the receiver via bluetooth. I am finding the GPS units to be about twice the price of the non-gps touch screen (typically DVD) recievers.

If I am planning to use my phone for navigation is there any other reason that I should still buy a GPS unit? Is there any other benefit that I should be aware of? Otherwise I will probably just save the money.

Thank you in advance,

Craig

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[trumpet 5,000+ posts]

I've not tried every brand of head unit, but in my experience you need to have your head unit set to Bluetooth audio in order to hear navigation voice prompts from a phone. This means if you want to also listen to music you have to be able to run the navigation app in the background.

Your decision of GPS vs non-GPS for the head unit depends on the brand. For example, all of Clarion's DVD double DIN head units include navigation, so you can't get around that. They're pretty well loaded for features, and the prices are very competitive, so it's not a bad thing.

I recommend you try to look at head units locally to get an idea of what you like. Every manufacturer does things differently. If you have no local shops to visit with DVD head units on display then at least look up YouTube videos.

 

[clickclickw00t 10+ year member]

I have a pionner P4400BH. When I use my Google Maps from phone, the music vollume is lowered when the GPS voice talks. No bluetooth needed.

 

[mornindew]

Ahh, thank you. I hadn't thought about the fact that navigation will only work with bluetooth pairing (but that makes perfect sense). That is a bit of a limitation. I do plan on using my bluetooth audio a lot but you would think someone would come up with a unit that can listen to a different source and also maintain the BT pairing.

Thank you very much for the insight.

Craig