Review: Factory Toyota XM Unit

So, I received a Factory Toyota XM unit as an early Christmas present yesterday, and completed the install in an hour. I'm going to give a short review of my experience with it for anyone considering this item.

Equipment:
First off, here is a breakdown of the audio equipment I already had installed in my truck:

-Factory Headunit
-Audiocontrol LC6i Interface Unit
-Pioneer Premier PRS 720 component speakers
-Soundstream Tarantula 110x4 watts amplifier (for door speakers)
-Memphis PR 75.2 amplifier (for sub)
-Memphis 10 inch subwoofer

Install

The install was pretty straightforward. It basically involved removing the factory toolboxes under the rear seats (double cab), applying sticky tape to the tuner and mounting it underneath where the toolboxes mount, then running a wire harness, ground cable, and antenna cable out of this area and up to the kick panel in the front driver side footwell, then making the proper connections at that point. Took me about 1 hour, although I was already pretty familiar with the panel removal from doing my audio installs before.

Performance

The tuner works great. After reassembling my truck, I fired it up and hit the "AM/SAT" button, and displayed showed "SAT: Loading", then about 5 seconds later, I started hearing the preview channel. Went to channel 0 and got the Radio ID code. Went inside and go on the XM radio site and activated my radio. About 3 minutes later, my XM was showing all the channels!

You can use the TEXT key to display Artist, Song, and Channel info, although it does not scroll as far as I can tell. You can use the knob on the right side of the radio to quickly scroll through many stations, and of course you get all the presets like you would with standard radio. Sound quality was very good through my upgraded system, in fact it actually seemed almost better than my IPOD which I have hooked into the AUX jack through a Belkin Tunedock. I had heard others say the factory XM unit had tinny sound, but I did not find this to be the case with the factory head hooked into good amplification and speakers. Antenna performance was excellent, as I experienced no dropouts in signal in the 30 mile test drive I took after installed the XM.

Conclusions

I'm very satisfied with the build quality and performance of the XM unit, and I think this would be a great way to go for those of you that have kept your factory headunit.

 

So do you believe that its worth the money? Cause the dealership here wants $300 for the factory unit and if that mounting kit is nothing but double sided tape then I feel like I'm being taken for a ride. I was hoping to find the Pioneer part they use at a cheaper price.

 

The XM unit itself is totally worth the money, but don't get it from the dealer. I purchased both the mounting kit and tuner unit from ebay for about 150 combined. The mounting kit does consist of more than double sided tape. It includes the wiring harness you need, as well as the tape to secure it to achieve a factory quality install. You can do it yourself pretty easily though, you just remove the rear toolboxes under the seats, mount the unit, then carefully snake the wiring harness up the front driver kickpanel, and hook it all up.

 

The XM unit itself is totally worth the money, but don't get it from the dealer. I purchased both the mounting kit and tuner unit from ebay for about 150 combined. The mounting kit does consist of more than double sided tape. It includes the wiring harness you need, as well as the tape to secure it to achieve a factory quality install. You can do it yourself pretty easily though, you just remove the rear toolboxes under the seats, mount the unit, then carefully snake the wiring harness up the front driver kickpanel, and hook it all up.

 

Has anyone found a way to scroll through the additional text when listing to xm? Hitting the text button does nothing.

 

you cant.