Car stereo reviews: the best double-DIN head units 2021

I’ve been running a pretty custom PT Cruiser for several years now with a cheap Android Double DIN unit, and the touch display was truly atrocious. In a fit of rage with ghost touches I slapped the screen too hard and shattered it, so had to buy a new unit. Did a little looking, and the pumpkin android 10 head unit seemed to fit the bill perfectly so I went ahead and ordered it around 1:30am. Arrived at 3pm NEXT DAY.

Took out the old unit, removed the old wiring harness and wired this one in. Install took approx 90mins as I am pretty thorough, I soldered all the connections to the Metra harness for my car. I also took the time to cable manage a little, and do a new run for the WiFi antenna under my dash. I have this unit outputting to 2 amps. I have an amp in the trunk powering 2×12″ Kicker CompR’s, and I have a 4 channel amp under the passenger seat for the 6×9’s in the doors and rear deck. Hooked up my existing backup cam with no issue. They provide a lot of additional connectors, screws and mounts.

Once it was all installed, I threw the SD card in from my old unit and did some BASIC setup of a few apps. I was absolutely blown away by the touch screen and the system. My experience of Android units over the last 4-5 years or so is always the touch screen is bad. This one is not. This is like a mid-premium tablet, it’s very snappy and responsive. No lag. I wish I had upgraded sooner. The WiFi and GPS is significantly stronger than the old unit too. I cannot speak to the audio quality via speakers since my amplifiers do the heavy lifting here, but the audio sent to the amps is crystal clear and sounds great. I no longer have bluetooth streaming issues when using BT Audio. It’s a strong and capable unit.

I was hesitant about purchasing due to 0 reviews, but the specs looked good and I checked out other Pumpkin unit reviews to get an idea of brand quality, and thought I’d take the plunge knowing I could return it. Good news is, I won’t be unless something catastrophic happens. If you’re on the fence, you really should give this unit a chance. It’s solid. Build quality is good, device specs are good, responsive, and very capable. Has 2 SD slots too, so you can load up on music/movies/media.




Install the Pumpkin Radio AA0452H on my Opel Vectra C GTS 05

AA0452H

After a long time, I finally decided to buy the radio.
I drive an Opel Vectra C GTS 05.
The old standard radio did its job, but the radio reception was sometimes really bad, even using a Bluetooth transmitter to listen to music via Spotify was a real pain after some time, depending on the region where you were traveling, the reception was So bad that I just turned the radio off because a constant noise is just a pain.
The radio came pretty quickly. Then I went straight to expanding the old radio. First remove the 4 Torx screws with a T8 screwdriver so that I could remove the radio from the radio slot using the supplied pull-out brackets, then carefully removed all cables and loosely screwed the frame from the old radio using a T20 screwdriver to remove it.
Then I plugged the specially ordered antenna adapter into the radio, screwed the wifi antenna and glued it inside the car and then the same thing again with the GPS antenna. Then I connected all the other cables and inserted the radio.
Then I pushed a 32GB SD card into the slot for the GPS card and pushed a 128GB SD card into the SD slot.
Then I started the engine and the radio went on.
The first start took a little time because everything had to be loaded first. The two memory cards were recognized directly and I still had to assign which card should do what.
After setting up, I switched off the engine and the radio went off on its own. After restarting the engine, it started again and was ready to start very quickly.
I park about 10m away from my house, nevertheless I have a very good WiFi signal to my home network. The connection via Bluetooth with my Galaxy Note 10 works very well and by itself.
The radio quality is a difference like a day and night, so highly recommended.
The quality of Bluetooth tested with me with Spotify, again a whole lot better.
Navigation via the Google Maps app on the radio works super well and without any problems.
I had to relearn the steering wheel buttons but it was half as wild and you have a lot of different options that you can put on the buttons, which I really like.
On the whole, I am very happy to have chosen the radio. So now I have a super car radio with a lot of functions that really work.
I highly recommend it.




Greatest receiver by far

Replacing my old receiver with this Pumpkin 7 inch 2 Din Octa-Core Android Car Radio. Wiring was a breeze as I only had a few wires to solder. At first glance it is very well made and solid. Came with all the connectors as specified. After the install, it turned on immediately with no delay. The screen was clear and responsive, it has multiple different menu options and it functions much like a tablet. The settings are similar to any Android phone setup. The wifi antenna picks up all nearby signals. GPS on/offline is great, but you need to install the initial maps. Sound clarity is great, having an EQ is a plus. The external mic is a bit awkward to mount anywhere so I left my old one on. This receiver is far superior than my previous in all aspects. One bummer was that there is an IR sensor but no remote was provided, kind of weird as there was no offer of remote online either. Check out pics.

pumpkin radio pic1 pumpkin radio pic2 pumpkin radio pic3 pumpkin radio pic4

Install Note: If your car had a 6.2″ DVD player previously, the dimensions on this receiver will be much larger. As the console bezel on my 06 WRX fit a 6.2 screen perfectly. I had to trim down the bezel to fit this receiver.