clarion NX500

Does anybody had this HU from Clarion (NX500) installed. I am close to buy one of this but would like to have some info first.

 

I have the NX700. I imagine they are similar. What did you want to know?

 

Well, Did you have any trouble in the installation, is it a nice to have unit, general performance, ease of making it work, just about anything that you may want to tell me.
BTW, thanks for your reply, this is my first post and you were my first reply.

 

My last three head units have been Clarion. Installation for all of them was straight forward. This most recent one was the most involved because I was installing the accessories like the bluetooth microphone, the NAV antenna, satellite radio, and SWI-Jack steering wheel control adaptor.

The NX-700 is a tight fit in my Tacoma depth wise but I did not need to modify anything to get it to mount properly. I have yet to add the external amplifier and connect the subwoofer and upgrade the door speakers and the sound quality was immediately and significantly improved over the factory head unit using the stock speakers. Music on the USB input works flawlessly. I do not have an iPod so I cannot say how that works but my neighbor just installed a Clarion in his Tahoe and his iPod controls work perfect and it sounds good.

All of the functions of the unit work intuitively. The NAV takes getting used to as it is not like a Garmin at all, which is what I was using. It has a lot of extra features that my Garmin does not have though, so it is a trade off of features vs. simplicity. You can save trip logs on an SD memory card, which is also the method you need to use for software upgrades. My favorite thing is when my stereo yells at me for speeding. You can set the language so I have some Japanese girl yelling at me when I go over the speed limit. You can turn this feature off, but I like having a girl yell at me in Japanese. It has German and French and other languages too.

After I fully upgrade the rest of the stereo equipment I am confident that my Tacoma will have an excellent sounding sound system. I've never had an issue with Clarion reliability either. I bought a Clarion DVD unit in 2002 and it is still running strong in a friend's truck, and another Clarion CD player from 2000 is currently running like a champ in another friend's Tacoma.

Let me know if you need more info on something.

 

Thanks for all this info, it had made me take my final decision on buying this unit. I would expect to order it real soon and perform the installation myself and maybe post some comments on how everything goes. Again thanks.

 

Hello Forum, just wondering if anyone out there is having issues with the Clarion NX500 or 700? I have one installed (in a Volvo), but there are no Clarion forums I can find, and Clarion's support is non-existent. My question is mainly around Bluetooth compatibility. Using the NX with a BB Torch and it works 50% of the time, the other 50% it locks up the head unit w/ a Buffer Overrun error. Same issue with an iPhone 3Gs. Clarion's got a firmware update for the NX700, but nothing for the 500. Just curious about everyones experience, info is scarce on this HU.

thanks.

 

I'm having that issue! Since the first day I got it installed. I looked up support on Clarion's site, and they referred me to a local dealer. I called him and he said to bring it in and he'll take a look at it. Once I do that, I'll post on here what they did to fix it. I should have saved up a little more and gone with the NX700. It looks way better.