I realise I'm reviving an old(ish) thread here but having read it, I though I'd throw my tuppence in.
new member, just bought my first merc, which is an R170 SLK320. it's got the audio 10 cd system in which works but ain't great. I want to do something about nav but I'm not currently sure what. The following options seem to occur.
a) do nothing and stick your tomtom to the window when you need it
as others on this thread have said, tomtom's and similar uinits are fantastic navigation units. very highly featured, very fast, text to speech good gui etc. but as others have said, I don't like to have wires trailing across my dashboard and I hate having to put it up and take it down when required. also it's not there if I find I need it whilst already driving, ie maybe a motorway junction I know is closed so I need nav to get me to my destination but I'd have to stop to pull it out of the boot etc. cheap though as I already own a tomtom 910.
b) get shude to sort me out with a comand system
well this involves hacking up the centre console and making ti look neat and like it's supposed to be there. also, the thing is, I'm just not wildly keen on the comand system (unless they have markedly improved since the last one I saw. they seem quite old fashioned by current standards (am I wrong?), possibly expensive but nothing to remove from the car when I park up.
c) get a dual din third party unit, pioneer, alpine, kenwood etc
still have to hackup the console and make it look neat, but at least the unit itself is a modern design, nice gui, ought to be quick to process, also bluetooth, tv and dvd etc. again, possibly expensive but nothing to remove from the car when I park up.
d) get a single din third party nav, pioneer x1bt or similar
no hacking up, looks like a normalish head unit but should have modern gui, fast processing, bluetooth, tv, dvd etc. possibly expensive but easy to put back to normal for resale, no hacking away at anything, nothing to remove from car, except a little faceplate I suppose. but it does block the aircon controls when the screen is out, I could live with this.
any other major options come to anyone's mind?
the only other thing that occured to me was if I could install the tomtom permanently in the car somehow, so it looked like it was supposed to be there and not easy to steal yet always available for me to use, perhaps that little cubby hole in front of the gearstick could be repurposed? not sure how one would do this, anyone any ideas, or better yet, anyone done something like this?
I don't want to have to spend 3 mins tidying up when I leave the car if I've needed nav.
on a different note, anyone with something like the pioneer x1bt, is the 1din unit everything or is there a seperate box, if the latter does the sep box have the nav dvd or do I need to leave that in the headunit when required?
cheers
dave
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including the new pio double din d3BTi which seems to be their new "cheap" nav with bluetooth and ipod control, seems an good choice actually...