Android
Pioneer NEX CarPlay & Android Auto Receivers Upgrade Your Ride
The new second generation Pioneer NEX in dash receivers bring Apple CarPlay and Android Auto to any car that you can replace a head unit in.
The exciting part of this is that for about $700 you can upgrade the stereo in most cars to a touch screen stereo that transforms into the connected car experience that new cars are adding to their in dash entertainment systems.
Pioneer offers five new NEX receivers that slide into the Double DIN stereo opening available in most cars with 6.2-inch and 7-inch screen options and a variety of features. All of these new second generation Pioneer NEX systems run CarPlay and three of these run Android Auto.
Apple CarPlay takes over the head unit to deliver an iPhone-like experience on your dash with a focus on reducing driver distraction. CarPlay uses Siri for many of the tasks, which include dictation and the system reading back results or what you want to type. The new CarPlay feature is available for the iPhone 5 and up, including the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus on iOS 8 and higher.
Android Auto is only available on three of the models, AVIC-8100NEX, AVIC-7100NEX, and AVH-4100NEX. All of these models feature a bigger 7-inch screen that Pioneer tells us works better with the Android Auto interface. Android Auto is Google’s answer to CarPlay. When you plug-in an Android smartphone running Android 5.0 or higher, it will offer an Android-like experience on your car head unit. This looks a lot like Google Now on your Android phone with notifications, alerts and other info easily accessible on-screen.
All of these Pioneer NEX second generation receivers are optimized for touch and ready for SiriusXM. They include Advanced Bluetooth for better sound and to discover your media library over Bluetooth. Four of the five units include HD Radio and all support FLAC playback.
The Pioneer AVH-4100NEX retails for $700 with support for CarPlay and Android Auto and arrives in March. The other units are priced at $750 (AVIC-5100NEX), $900 (AVIC-6100NEX), $1,200 (AVIC -7100NEX) and $1,400 (AVIC-8110NEX) and arrive at the same time.
Check out the rest of our CES 2015 coverage to see the latest gadgets, accessories, smartphones and other cool tech for 2015.
J White
01/08/2015 at 6:05 pm
Umm, any indication as to whether they will update the firmware on their first-gen NEX models to accommodate Android Auto? They updated it to support Car Play.
As far as I understand it, it is just a software overlay (as all the processing is done on the phone), so there shouldn’t be a hardware limitation. Compared to a $200 tablet, these things are woefully under-specced and under-powered anyway; it’s pretty disgraceful that they charge $800 or more from them.
That said, I am going to be really frustrated if rather than offer a software update for my six-month-old, $700 stereo, they think I should run out and buy a new model — particularly when I would bet that the internal components are essentially identical.