Jensen Phase Linear BT1611I - radio / CD / MP3 player / digital player

9/10 Best solution I know of so far.

pfgpullman - 10/05/09

I just installed it yesterday, so I can't say anything about its durability, but so far this stereo exceeds my highest expectations. After CD players recently failed in both our cars, I was about to shop for new ones, and then thought "CDs in the car? That's so '90s. CDs get scratched, destroyed by heat, we have to juggle them while driving, and they don't play on rough roads. Why not something that takes memory media directly?" The Jensen/Phase Linear does just that. Using Windows Media Player, I dumped 100+ tracks, at full no-quality-loss resolution, onto an SD card and a USB stick, with plenty of room to spare. Both were recognized immediately by the stereo, and played at excellent quality and plenty of volume. The SD card goes in a slot behind the removable faceplate, which is okay, since it will be easy to put a huge library on 1 4GB card. The USB stick pokes out the front, where it could easily be damaged, so I'll probably avoid using that. The BT1611i comes with several speaker, amp, and iPod cables, which I don't need at this point, and a nice little remote control, which I didn't imagine would be useful in a car, but it has all the basic controls in a more usable form than the tiny faceplate buttons that are hard to read and use while driving. Controls and menus seem laid out well, with a volume control KNOB, way better than up/down switches! With all this, the CD player will probably be a useless appendage for us, but it does play CD-R/RW disks, and it will record tracks onto memory media - that might be handy sometimes. There's more! It took only a couple minutes for the stereo to get set up with my cellphone, and that feature seems to work really well. All you need to do is leave the phone powered up and Bluetooth-linked, and the stereo automatically picks up calls. It mutes the audio, displays the caller ID, and if you want to take the call, press the main (volume) button. To reject the call, press the bluetooth button. Then the incoming call plays on the car speakers (which you control with the volume knob), and a mike in the stereo hears your voice. Talk about hands-free! I called a friend, who said the sound quality was much better than from most headsets. The stereo also stores outgoing numbers, and it will probably be a handier way to make calls than the phone itself, but I haven't figured out how to make full use of that feature. I got 2 of these on ebay for $110 each including shipping, plus a small fee for insurance. They should pay for themselves in improved safety and saved CDs alone, not to mention the the other benefits noted above. I gave this unit a 9 instead of 10 only because I don't know how well it will hold up, and because the design has a somewhat gaudy, El Cheapo look that's not to my taste, and some of the plastic parts look a bit flimsy. Too bad they didn't put $5 more into that end of it. Otherwise, highly recommended.