Tag Archives: head unit with carplay

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10Sep/21

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

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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.

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