Head Unit Upgrade

Hey all, Just wondering what your thoughts are on upgrading the 3rd Gen’s head unit. I’ve been looking at a few options like the Alpine Halo 11”/9”, Sony, and Stinger. Do you guys feel like it’s worth the money? Especially since the newest stock head unit has wired Apple CarPlay and Android Auto? Obviously aftermarket units have more options, power, etc.. With the older stock head units it’s a no brainer if you desire CarPlay or Android Auto. I’m not so sure now

Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

 

I have seen both the stinger and the sony from trail grid pro. Although the trail grid pro one sticks out, it looks and seems to perform much better. I would reach out to trail grid pro. They have two options. Pioneer also makes a head unit that is fairly popular.

 

i prefer and chose the much cheaper dasaita android radio over the brand name units. being android based it has way more features. you lose the volume knob which is a big deal for some but i never used the ridiculously small knob on stock radio anyways and just use steering wheel buttons. ive never used the built in speaker outputs so cant comment on sound quality. i run everything off a 5 channel amp.

 

for me, the biggest 2 changes have been an aftermarket stereo to get rid of the horrid oem eq-ing, and replacement speakers with better acoustical properties.

after that, it's really just semantics on individual preference.

 

I like that stinger looks integrated but if trailgrid pro made a bezel that looked factory, I would jump on that. The only head units I don’t like are the floating ones. I think any aftermarket unit is an upgrade though.

 

I have mixed feeling about floating head units. They aren’t that much different than any other tablet style infotainment unit. The Halo 9” doesn’t look too bad for be a floating style. But that’s because it’s only 1” larger than stock. To me that’s a reason not to upgrade. The 11” is nice but also leaves behind any attempt at appearing integrated.. lol. I’ve read that the Stinger has a bit of a delay while using CarPlay.

 

Yeah stinger has had some issues and they are in need of an update in terms of tech and design.

 

Trail Grid Pro... Alpine iLX F509, I wish I had done it sooner, I have a JBL stock system and the sound is 1000 times better now with the Alpine. The floating screen is not issue to me.

 

There's an AV forum that has much better takes than the 3rd gen forum.

I went with the WC6600NEX. Fits perfect in the stock bezel and looks completely stock but is substantially faster and has wireless CarPlay.

 

Do you ever wish you had gone with the Alpine Halo11 iLX-F51?

 

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Thanks! I’ll check it out

 

I just installed the Sony XAV-9000ES from Trail Grid Pro. This is the small screen version of the 9500 big brother. ES line is Sony’s ‘Elevated Standard’ and will have a high resolution 24bit DAC, which is what I was after. It has enough power that I’m questioning whether or not I need an amp for the door speakers. I will however be adding a subwoofer.

I have lots of nice things to say about this HU. With the built in crossovers, I have the ability to set the front and rear speakers with a 50hz high pass signal. I can use various crossover points and slopes as well. I can set an EQ setting for each individual speaker and have the ability to isolate them as I do so. My feeling is that that by limiting the door speakers with the high pass contours, I can add a mono amp for subwoofer duty and take pressure off the HU amplifier section.

There are other great audio settings that I can mess with too. It’s fun but I prefer to keep all the EQs flat and mess with the crossovers and slopes.

I have all the same steering wheel functions as I had before. I’m still in the process of planning my build. So many details to consider but I feel that the Sony HU will not hold me back in any way.

 

Anyway you can take pictures from the side of the unit? I want to see what it looks like behind the unit.

 

I read others on here had to enlarge holes/bend tabs to make it fit. What was your experience?

 

Don’t buy the stinger. It’s a compromise setup which is overpriced for what it is, all based on the premise of being plug and play. For a small amount of additional work you can have a much better setup via a Maestro RR2 and whatever head unit you like - I prefer and run the Kenwood DMX958XR.

The factory CarPlay unit for me was horrible. I was so pumped to buy a vehicle that I didn’t need to touch the head unit on, and then I actually used it and man it sucked.

 

I did drill holes in the stock mounting brackets rather than using the included mounting brackets. The included mounting brackets come close to flush but I wanted it completely perfectly flush and putting two new holes in the stock mounting bracket achieves that. It's very quick and easy if you want to do it. The brackets are removed while you're removing the stock head unit and the two new holes you drill don't prevent it from going back onto the stock unit so it's no risk.

 

And there are no gaps around the unit?

 

Not to my eyes at least, perhaps a little but that's because it's the screen that goes to the edge whereas on the oem head unit, it's wasted space in the form of physical buttons but those buttons are able to be perfectly flush whereas a rounded screen can't be. The Pioneer WC6600NEX looks and feels very OEM to me, though.

 

Yeah that looks perfect. So where do you drill the new holes? And how large should they be?

 

This thread has a focus on flush mounting it: https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/new-pioneer-dmh-wc6600nex-flush-mount-install.668580/

Post #951 (lol) in that thread has an example of a drilled bracket: https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads...sh-mount-install.668580/page-48#post-23989231 but there's a couple more buried in there