Alpine Cde 9850RI

a brilliant and high quality headunit, great sound and relitivly easy to use. The only let down is there is only 1 RCA output. Overal though, it is a brilliant car headunit

Looking for the right solution to use my iPod in the car I was puzzled by all the available options. Finally I settled for the Alpine CDE-9850Ri as it provides full access to the iPod menu and it charges the iPod whilst in use. I'm not expert, but boy was I in for a treat! The quality blows the socks off my previous Blaupunkt unit. I always blamed the design of my car, a BMW convertible, for the poor sound quality. Wrong! The initial disappointment with the looks, as the display didn't match the red tone in the car's dashboard illumination, turned into surprise when I found out you can change the display colour to red! So, how is it to use with the iPod? Well, not the most intuitive of systems but give after 15 minutes with the instructions I'm now an expert. All things considered a pretty good buy if you don’t pay over the £190 mark (August'06). Problem is, I don’t want to get out of the car!