Double DIN Review – Pioneer AVH-P3100DVD

I bought the Pioneer AVH-P3100DVD to get rid of my old Jensen VM8023HD which I was very dissatisfied with. Let me first tell you about the Jensen VM8023HD. Their GUI is very bad, slow, buggy and always fails. It also doesn’t make sense when it comes to which button to press on all the provided features. Occasionally it’s the volume knob, and sometimes it’s the up and down knob, and other times it’s another button. It totally violates the principle of least surprise. It looks like it was created and applied by a poor intern in two weeks. Nice set of features, but totally ruined by its user interface. Due to that scenario, I immediately bought the Pioneer to replace the Jensen.

Overall, the Pioneer AVH-P3100DVD is extremely good.

• It is orders of magnitude better than my old Jensen when it comes to UI and stability.
• The sound quality is much better (in my own point of view).
• The menus are extremely user friendly and easy to manipulate.
• It works fine with MP3 files on a USB drive. Selection between folders, including nested folders, is easy. You can touch and drag to quickly navigate through a long list or even move the current playback located in a song. You will see four track titles per screen, that’s enough.
• Playing a song starts playing but doesn’t exit the menu so you can play other songs in case you change your mind. This is really good if you are looking for a particular track whose title you can’t remember.

The entire experience beats Jensen’s on all counts. On the other hand, there are some things that could be improved:

• The buttons require a lot of pressure to press. I would prefer a softer touch. You really need to push the button like you mean it. I would also choose a rotary knob for volume control instead of tapping.
• The position of the USB and Aux ports is very bad because the USB coming out of the slot is easily hit by my arms while driving. This would be better in the lower right corner rather than the lower left corner. Regarding the setup inside your car, that might not be a problem for you.
• It shows you an alert screen that you should recognize once you switch to a video source, even if you’re already parked with the parking brake on. I find this action extremely irritating. If it’s already parked, it shouldn’t show the warning.
• I have a SWI-PS steering wheel interface and setting the interface to “mute” will cause Pioneer to initiate the “Dim” function where it lowers the volume but does not completely mute it. I would like mute. I think it’s a Pioneer issue, not really a SWI-PS one because the SWI-PS correctly silenced the Jensen. I need to get in touch with the PAC people and find out if there are measures made in the SWI-PS for this problem.