topbanner_forum
  *

avatar image

Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
Did you miss your activation email?

Login with username, password and session length
  • Tuesday April 16, 2024, 6:36 pm
  • Proudly celebrating 15+ years online.
  • Donate now to become a lifetime supporting member of the site and get a non-expiring license key for all of our programs.
  • donate

Author Topic: Looking for good cheap car stereo with bluetooth  (Read 2149 times)

nite_monkey

  • Member
  • Joined in 2006
  • **
  • Posts: 753
    • View Profile
    • Just Plain Super
    • Read more about this member.
    • Donate to Member
Looking for good cheap car stereo with bluetooth
« on: March 18, 2015, 01:14 AM »
I'm looking to replace my current car stereo with a slightly better one. My current one has bluetooth built in, so that I can have my android phone (note 4) in my pocket, and stream google play music to my car stereo. The problem is, it takes about half a minute to connect to my phone (is that normal for car stereos? this is my first bluetooth equipped one.) Also, half the time, when my phone does finally connect, music won't start playing, and I have to turn the stereo off and back on again to get it to work. (its not my phone, because it also did this with my nexus 5.) (I have an app on my phone that opens play music whenever it connects to my car.) Then I also have a problem where it will sometimes pause after each song, so I have to hit the pause button on the stereo after each song to get it to play again. This isn't a bug, but something that I don't really like, but the display is rather tiny, so it only shows a tiny bit of the title of the current song playing, and then slowly scrolls the title across the screen.

I have a 2005 Pontiac Grand Am 3.4L V6 4 door sedan car.

So what I am looking for, is:
1. Built in Bluetooth audio streaming (don't care if it does bluetooth calls or not. I almost never make or receive calls anyway.)
2. Preferably a screen that shows the artist and title of the current song being played.
3. Not too expensive. (I paid $99 for my current one. I only have a part time job that pays $7.50/hr.)
  3a. Preferably about $150 or less. (yeah, I know this kind of limits it a lot.)

I could settle for one that streams Google Play Music from my phone via usb only if it has requirement 2.
The more I think about it, I suppose I don't have to have bluetooth, I just like not having to pull my phone out of my pocket, and plugging it into my car every time I get in.

I've been looking on crutchfield.com, and can't really find a whole lot. Not really sure where else online to look. (is amazon a good place to buy car stereos?)
[Insert really cool signature here]

Deozaan

  • Charter Member
  • Joined in 2006
  • ***
  • Points: 1
  • Posts: 9,748
    • View Profile
    • Read more about this member.
    • Donate to Member
Re: Looking for good cheap car stereo with bluetooth
« Reply #1 on: March 18, 2015, 01:55 AM »
I got two of these JAM Plus Portable Speakers which can connect to each other for stereo sound and play music via bluetooth.

Not quite the same thing, but they work just fine with my BT devices and sound pretty good, IMO. But I'm no audiophile and I never listen to the radio, so I'm not sure my car even has working speakers.