ssb88374
05-29-2007, 03:28 PM
Here is my take on the VR3 model VRCD400SDU after 2 months of use. First I want to say I bought this unit from WalMart for $75 after I took back a Sony deck I had purchased from BestBuy for $140. The Sony deck was never installed or used but I rather impulsively bought it because I really liked how it looked and it was supposedly on sale. I was in a big hurry and made assumptions about the Sony that turned out to not be accurate as I read more in the instruction manual about the Sony’s “features” or lack thereof. The last time before this that I bought a car stereo was in 2001 when I got a Blaupunkt CD player and I had not kept up with them much since as to what has changed. Apparently if you are buying a Sony, Kenwood, Pioneer, or even a Blaupunkt these days not much has changed since 2001. I assumed ALL the modern stereos would not only read MP3’s but would read them off of Data DVD’s. I guess it is too much to ask the big companies for nearly 5 Gigabytes of data capacity rather than the ancient 700 MB CD-ROM’s. Certainly it is not a matter of any significant increased cost – I just bought a Samsung DVD/CD burner/reader with lightscribe for $28 delivered so I am not going to buy into that it costs too much for these guys to bring their technology up to the early 2000’s level and make their stereos read MP3’s off of Data DVD’s. Better yet though, how about getting completely away from the easily scratched discs and go solid state altogether where there is no real factor in terms of either scratches or bumpy roads. Sorry, but I’m just not paying premium money for a stereo from the major brands when they simply refuse to bring their product up to within even five years of the technology that is out commonly and cheaply out there. I cannot believe the average consumer is putting up with this crap either!
This is why I decided to give the VR3 unit a try more than anything else. No, the VR3 doesn’t read MP3’s off of Data DVD’s either but it is made up for by having the SD card reader function (and the USB thumbdrive reader is cool too). Also, the “satellite ready” garbage on the Sony unit I had bought really made me mad. My old 8-track am/fm car stereo from a 1970-something Ford LTD was as “Satellite Ready” as these newer decks are that claim that crap. Having to buy a separate module for satellite for twice as much money as the cheaper satellite tuners is just ridiculous. I bought an XM Roady II brand new for $30 two years ago. I’m not spending $60 for an add-on module to allow the stereo to tune in satellite when they should already have a built-in satellite inside the deck tuner since they claim to be “satellite ready.” What a bunch of crap! I swear these marketing guys need to be RICO prosecuted. The VR3 does not claim to be satellite ready while not receiving satellite programming, which is a plus. Unfortunately though the VR3 does grossly embellish their power claims for the unit which is just as misleading and is discussed more below.
I got the VR3 unit two months ago with a three year extended warranty and “no-lemon” refund guarantee so in case of multiple issues I will get a refund so I feel confident about not getting burnt if it is junk as the “you get what you pay for” crowd insists. On the whole “you get what you pay for” issue is all I can say is the 260,000 trouble-free miles I have put on my Mitsubishi truck that I paid $5000 for in 1993 makes me not give a lot of credit to that particular nugget of wisdom. Perhaps the 5+ years of totally reliable and trouble-free service I have gotten from my $200 Ryobi 18-volt power tool set, of which I use daily in my job as an electrician, also makes me willing to not think paying more always means getting a better product. I have seen numerous people have problems with their $20,000 trucks and their $500 drill sets as well. Quality is no longer just a matter of price. Yes, it can be a fair indicator but that is all. Cheap no longer necessarily means poor quality and expensive no longer necessarily means high quality. I have been burned with deals in the past that were too good to be true but at the same time I have also been profoundly disappointed in some so-called “high quality” expensive items that frankly were junk as well.
Impressions of the VR3 itself are that it looks OK but neither great nor bad. The Sony unit I took back did look nicer. The VR3 does look much better than some of the name-brand units I saw at BestBuy though. Some of those units might as well have been from Playskool with their huge, tacky knobs and buttons. I give the VR3 OK on looks. The display should have smaller characters to allow for more information without it having to scroll to see the entire artist name and song. That is my biggest beef with the display. The unit appears to be of good build quality externally. I did not open it up to see the inards and likely that would not have revealed much anyway. I used to be an electronics tech and I doubt even I could “see” if the circuit board and components were well done or not (unless of course there is some extremely obvious manufacturing deficiency but that is pretty rare anymore) as manufacturing materials vary greatly and ultimately the only way to really know quality is to test over time. Once installed, which went as well as any of the many other stereos I have installed over the years, the VR3 is working flawlessly. The am/fm tuner is actually a damnshot better than the factory stereo was in my 2005 vehicle with much better reception using the same antenna. Two months, 3,000 miles, and every function works and has worked flawlessly and I almost always have it on when I am driving. I tested to make sure the USB thumbdrive reader worked and it did but I never use it now as I do not like the drive sticking out like that to get bumped. I worry I would hit it and break either the thumbdrive or the VR3 USB input. I especially like that the VR3 reads my SD cards really fast and it only takes about 5 seconds from insertion and I am good to go. My portable MP3 player also has an SD expansion slot so I can pop the card between the two. I will likely just buy another SD card though in the near future as cheap as they have gotten. There is no indication as to if there is a maximum size for SD card though. I am hoping I can get and use like an 8 GB SD card at some point. Right now I have a 4 GB and it works fine. I also tried the input for an MP3 player/walkman type device and it works fine but again I was just testing to see if it worked and I don’t use that function. I like being able to jump around the MP3’s quickly with the +/-10 selection and think that is a nice feature. The detachable face is also nice and easy to take off and put on, and goes on securely. I had grown partial to flip-down faces because I find them easier to put on and off but with the VR3 this is not an issue as the detachable face works great. It reads CD-ROM disks fine and DATA CDROM’s with MP3’s on them. It reads everything very fast and switches between modes quickly.
On the negative side – I really would like a better display as previously mentioned and the clock function is just messed up with it displaying the time as “12 ’ 35” instead of “12:35”. I have a dash clock anyway but this would really annoy me if I was actually using this clock as my main time-keeping piece. Scanning radio stations is a pain with this stereo. I still haven’t figured out how to get it to just go to the next station without automatically adding the next station to my presets. This is annoying to say the least. Maybe I should read the manual I suppose but usually that is a pretty straight-forward process. I also learned that the volume knob should always be on the left-hand side and on my model it is on the right-hand side. I never knew this would matter much until I got this stereo as it is the first one I have had with it on the right side. It is just that little extra bit of reach to adjust the volume that I find to be a real pain sometimes, especially with almost a thousand MP3 files and many at different volume levels. Though the VR3 will do it I find scrolling through and “exploring” your files by artist and/or song names is a bit tedious to realistically do safely while driving. I have this same issue with my portable MP3 player and satellite radio though as it is just so much information to have to read and is very distracting to safe driving so I guess this is not a fault of this particular stereo. Overall I do like it and would make the purchase again given all the circumstances, especially since they are the only game in town using 2002 era and beyond technology.
Lastly on the negatives, would someone please start criminally prosecuting these companies that LIE about how much power their units really put out (and being “satellite ready” too while you are at it). On the box the VR3 states 180 Watts power. In the literature inside the box it states 16 Watts per channel. What they apparently did was take the Peak-to-Peak voltage, something that actually is not a real thing by the way as it never occurs at the same moment in time and is only a measurement used on occasion to calibrate equipment; they multiplied that by the maximum current to get the 180 Watt figure. Right off the bat since we know there really is no such thing as Peak-to-Peak because only one Peak ever occurs at a time we have to divide the Wattage figure by half so we get a maximum true peak power level of 90 Watts. If we then use the industry standard RMS power rating we have to multiply 90 Watts by .7 which gives a much more accurate power level of around 63 Watts (on all four channels combined). No big coincidence then that 63 divided by four (four channels) is 15.75 or the 16 Watt power per channel level they finally admit to once you have made the purchase and opened the box. Now here is the funny thing – I am perfectly happy with 16 Watts per channel. It is far more than I need. So there was never any reason to try and defraud me by misrepresenting your product in the first place! I have half a mind to return it now for their blatant misrepresentation but then I would have to pay a lot more money for something that doesn’t even read flashcards like most every other consumer music device made in the last five years does. Overall, I am happy with it despite their fraudulent marketing claims about the max power output. The VR3 works as it should and does what I want it to do. It has gone through its burn-in phase and still works like new so I suspect it will work well for quite some time. If not, I will use the no-lemon warranty I paid $15 for and get my money back. I will probably then put the factory cassette player back until the big companies want to offer acceptable features instead of their grossly overpriced and under-featured stereos.
This is why I decided to give the VR3 unit a try more than anything else. No, the VR3 doesn’t read MP3’s off of Data DVD’s either but it is made up for by having the SD card reader function (and the USB thumbdrive reader is cool too). Also, the “satellite ready” garbage on the Sony unit I had bought really made me mad. My old 8-track am/fm car stereo from a 1970-something Ford LTD was as “Satellite Ready” as these newer decks are that claim that crap. Having to buy a separate module for satellite for twice as much money as the cheaper satellite tuners is just ridiculous. I bought an XM Roady II brand new for $30 two years ago. I’m not spending $60 for an add-on module to allow the stereo to tune in satellite when they should already have a built-in satellite inside the deck tuner since they claim to be “satellite ready.” What a bunch of crap! I swear these marketing guys need to be RICO prosecuted. The VR3 does not claim to be satellite ready while not receiving satellite programming, which is a plus. Unfortunately though the VR3 does grossly embellish their power claims for the unit which is just as misleading and is discussed more below.
I got the VR3 unit two months ago with a three year extended warranty and “no-lemon” refund guarantee so in case of multiple issues I will get a refund so I feel confident about not getting burnt if it is junk as the “you get what you pay for” crowd insists. On the whole “you get what you pay for” issue is all I can say is the 260,000 trouble-free miles I have put on my Mitsubishi truck that I paid $5000 for in 1993 makes me not give a lot of credit to that particular nugget of wisdom. Perhaps the 5+ years of totally reliable and trouble-free service I have gotten from my $200 Ryobi 18-volt power tool set, of which I use daily in my job as an electrician, also makes me willing to not think paying more always means getting a better product. I have seen numerous people have problems with their $20,000 trucks and their $500 drill sets as well. Quality is no longer just a matter of price. Yes, it can be a fair indicator but that is all. Cheap no longer necessarily means poor quality and expensive no longer necessarily means high quality. I have been burned with deals in the past that were too good to be true but at the same time I have also been profoundly disappointed in some so-called “high quality” expensive items that frankly were junk as well.
Impressions of the VR3 itself are that it looks OK but neither great nor bad. The Sony unit I took back did look nicer. The VR3 does look much better than some of the name-brand units I saw at BestBuy though. Some of those units might as well have been from Playskool with their huge, tacky knobs and buttons. I give the VR3 OK on looks. The display should have smaller characters to allow for more information without it having to scroll to see the entire artist name and song. That is my biggest beef with the display. The unit appears to be of good build quality externally. I did not open it up to see the inards and likely that would not have revealed much anyway. I used to be an electronics tech and I doubt even I could “see” if the circuit board and components were well done or not (unless of course there is some extremely obvious manufacturing deficiency but that is pretty rare anymore) as manufacturing materials vary greatly and ultimately the only way to really know quality is to test over time. Once installed, which went as well as any of the many other stereos I have installed over the years, the VR3 is working flawlessly. The am/fm tuner is actually a damnshot better than the factory stereo was in my 2005 vehicle with much better reception using the same antenna. Two months, 3,000 miles, and every function works and has worked flawlessly and I almost always have it on when I am driving. I tested to make sure the USB thumbdrive reader worked and it did but I never use it now as I do not like the drive sticking out like that to get bumped. I worry I would hit it and break either the thumbdrive or the VR3 USB input. I especially like that the VR3 reads my SD cards really fast and it only takes about 5 seconds from insertion and I am good to go. My portable MP3 player also has an SD expansion slot so I can pop the card between the two. I will likely just buy another SD card though in the near future as cheap as they have gotten. There is no indication as to if there is a maximum size for SD card though. I am hoping I can get and use like an 8 GB SD card at some point. Right now I have a 4 GB and it works fine. I also tried the input for an MP3 player/walkman type device and it works fine but again I was just testing to see if it worked and I don’t use that function. I like being able to jump around the MP3’s quickly with the +/-10 selection and think that is a nice feature. The detachable face is also nice and easy to take off and put on, and goes on securely. I had grown partial to flip-down faces because I find them easier to put on and off but with the VR3 this is not an issue as the detachable face works great. It reads CD-ROM disks fine and DATA CDROM’s with MP3’s on them. It reads everything very fast and switches between modes quickly.
On the negative side – I really would like a better display as previously mentioned and the clock function is just messed up with it displaying the time as “12 ’ 35” instead of “12:35”. I have a dash clock anyway but this would really annoy me if I was actually using this clock as my main time-keeping piece. Scanning radio stations is a pain with this stereo. I still haven’t figured out how to get it to just go to the next station without automatically adding the next station to my presets. This is annoying to say the least. Maybe I should read the manual I suppose but usually that is a pretty straight-forward process. I also learned that the volume knob should always be on the left-hand side and on my model it is on the right-hand side. I never knew this would matter much until I got this stereo as it is the first one I have had with it on the right side. It is just that little extra bit of reach to adjust the volume that I find to be a real pain sometimes, especially with almost a thousand MP3 files and many at different volume levels. Though the VR3 will do it I find scrolling through and “exploring” your files by artist and/or song names is a bit tedious to realistically do safely while driving. I have this same issue with my portable MP3 player and satellite radio though as it is just so much information to have to read and is very distracting to safe driving so I guess this is not a fault of this particular stereo. Overall I do like it and would make the purchase again given all the circumstances, especially since they are the only game in town using 2002 era and beyond technology.
Lastly on the negatives, would someone please start criminally prosecuting these companies that LIE about how much power their units really put out (and being “satellite ready” too while you are at it). On the box the VR3 states 180 Watts power. In the literature inside the box it states 16 Watts per channel. What they apparently did was take the Peak-to-Peak voltage, something that actually is not a real thing by the way as it never occurs at the same moment in time and is only a measurement used on occasion to calibrate equipment; they multiplied that by the maximum current to get the 180 Watt figure. Right off the bat since we know there really is no such thing as Peak-to-Peak because only one Peak ever occurs at a time we have to divide the Wattage figure by half so we get a maximum true peak power level of 90 Watts. If we then use the industry standard RMS power rating we have to multiply 90 Watts by .7 which gives a much more accurate power level of around 63 Watts (on all four channels combined). No big coincidence then that 63 divided by four (four channels) is 15.75 or the 16 Watt power per channel level they finally admit to once you have made the purchase and opened the box. Now here is the funny thing – I am perfectly happy with 16 Watts per channel. It is far more than I need. So there was never any reason to try and defraud me by misrepresenting your product in the first place! I have half a mind to return it now for their blatant misrepresentation but then I would have to pay a lot more money for something that doesn’t even read flashcards like most every other consumer music device made in the last five years does. Overall, I am happy with it despite their fraudulent marketing claims about the max power output. The VR3 works as it should and does what I want it to do. It has gone through its burn-in phase and still works like new so I suspect it will work well for quite some time. If not, I will use the no-lemon warranty I paid $15 for and get my money back. I will probably then put the factory cassette player back until the big companies want to offer acceptable features instead of their grossly overpriced and under-featured stereos.