Alpine INE-W940 6.1" Bluetooth USB MP3 Multimedia DVD/GPS Receiver

I've had this for about a month now, and I don't have any complaints with it so far. I had it installed by Best Buy, along with a backup camera and a SiriusXM tuner. It didn't take them long to do it, and it looks very professional. And since I don't have steering wheel controls, I got a remote and it works great. There are some things I don't like about it but for the most part it's been great.NavigationNavigation is really easy to use, and quite accurate. We took a long trip recently and it worked great. You can change various aspects of it, such as viewpoint (2D, 2D North, 3D and manual). I like the 3D view point, because I think it gives the best picture. You can also change the voices, and it gives you various languages also. And one thing I like is she'll tell you exactly when to turn. It will also tell you which lane to be in when you're coming up on an exit, as well as showing the life-like road sign of the exit you need to take. Another cool feature is that if you're navigating somewhere, you can hold the map button down and it will split the screen between navigation and whatever audio mode you're in.The only couple of drawbacks, in my opinion, are minor. One is that the estimated arrival time fluctuates greatly and doesn't really give you a good idea of when you'll get there. Also, it'll tell you there is a turn coming up in 1 minute. But that turn is 3 miles down the road. I don't know many people that can go 3 miles in 1 minute. The other drawback is that if you're on the phone it keeps wanting to go back to the phone screen when in navigation. But those are the only drawbacks I found so far with the navigation, and they're very minor.BluetoothBluetooth was easy to set up. I've got a Galaxy S3 and it took no time to sync it. I like that you can sync multiple phones on there also. One thing I don't like is that the name of the caller won't always come up on the screen when they call. Not sure why that is, but it's not that big a deal to me. Another thing I don't like is when I go into bluetooth music mode, music will automatically start playing. And when I hit pause it will pause for a second and then start back up. But those are minor issues.SiriusXMThis is probably my favorite part of it, along with the navigation. You can store up to 18 stations (3 separate SiriusXM "bands", 6 stations per). You can store up to 50 song and game alerts, and it didn't take long for me to fill those up. I get 1 MLB game alert, and the rest are song alerts. The SiriusXM screen will tell you song category, song artist and song title. I've read where some people don't get that with this unit, but I do.PandoraI run Pandora sometimes via bluetooth. It will sync with your phone and play on the screen. You even get the thumbs up or down option on the screen. The only thing I don't like about it is I can't really change stations unless I'm parked. But it's a neat feature.If I did it again, I would try to have the parking brake bypass done. You're only able to get access to a portion of your menus when in drive, and you get full access when in park. Also, you can't watch a DVD in drive, only in park. After researching, I think most people who have these put in already know that. But I wasn't aware. So if you want to watch DVDs and get full access of your menus, do the parking brake bypass. Also, there is something that needs to be done when it is installed in order to sync the unit to your headlights so that whenever your headlights come on the unit will dim. Obviously I don't know what it is or I'd put it on here. But if you're smart enough to put this thing in yourself or know about car audio you probably already know what I'm talking about. If you're not (like me), you need to ask your installer because that screen is bright at night if it doesn't dim.Overall, I researched for about a year before settling on this one and I'm glad I did. It does what I want it to do, even though there are a couple of small things that I don't like. I'd buy it again in a heartbeat, only next time I would do the parking brake bypass.

I had the INE-W940 installed professionally at a car audio shop 10 days ago. I also had a SiriusXM SXV300V1 tuner, rear view camera, steering wheel control interface and emergency brake bypass. My vehicle is a 2013 Toyota 4Runner. This is my first time owning anything made by Alpine. Some of my review will be comparing my new Alpine head unit with my previous system in a 2008 Toyota Tundra which was a non-navigation Pioneer AVH-P4300DVD and Garmin nüvi 1450LMT GPS. I love the performance as far as playing music. It sounds much better than the stock head unit. I like that you can see the album cover of the artist playing on some sources. I love Pandora. I have a Galaxy S4 with unlimited data so I play Pandora all the time via Bluetooth. The screen on the Alpine with Pandora is similar to the screen on your phone and functions the same with thumbs up and down, etc. SiriusXM is fine but like with all SiriusXM tuners you lose the signal when the satellite is blocked by buildings and trees which happen often where I live. That's no reflection on the Alpine though. FM radio is OK but I've had stronger FM tuners and I rarely listen to FM anyway. I have a 16gb USB flash drive connected to the USB port through the supplied USB cable extended into the glove box. MP3's on the USB drive sound very good. I haven't tried MP3's in the DVD drive yet. I tested two video DVD's. One DVD was a backup copy I made of a movie on a double layer DVD. That homemade copy kept freezing on the screen. It plays fine in all of my home DVD and Blu-ray players but not for some reason on the Alpine. The second DVD was a original copy DVD move. That one played fine. I do not plan to watch videos. I just tested it to make sure videos played. Music CD's also sound good. The Bluetooth works reasonably well with phone calls using my Samsung Galaxy S4. The Bluetooth phone function on my stock stereo sounded better though. Streaming music from my phone works and sounds pretty good with Pandora and other services.I give the Alpine 3 stars even though musically it performed pretty good. I'm mostly happy with the sound but I have a few issues. Some are somewhat minor and may not matter to others. But some are bigger concerns with the biggest regarding the navigation. When I have the map screen on while driving, the names of many of the cross streets do not show until I am past them and the names of many of the smaller streets do not show at all. On my Garmin GPS all the names are shown and before you get to them. If I'm looking for a particular street on the NAV I may be past it when it shows. So it's like not having a NAV at all. I haven't used it for travel yet but I did a couple of local test. I could be at an intersection where my turn is and the NAV indicates my turn is 50ft away. I set it to direct me to my programmed-in home address and it takes me through a slightly out of the way route. It uses the same route whether I set it for shortest or fastest. Also it ask if you are at your destination. Really, why are you asking me? You get 1 free map update in the first 30 days of ownership. After that there is a 60.00 charge for map updates and 10.00 for POI updates. With my Garmin the updates are free. Updating the firmware and maps is cumbersome running back and forth from your car to you home PC with the USB flash drive. In my opinion the Garmin works and looks much better than the Alpine's NAV.The folder tree system for MP3 files is confusing when it comes to playing music. Maybe I need to play around with it more. I have all of my MP3's divided in folders by genre and within those folders divided by artist and in those folders divided by albums if there more than one album of the artist. But I can't figure out how to play for example all the music in a particular genre either in order or random. Seems like it want to play only single selections or single albums.The smaller issues are, the prior model of this system had HD radio. Why did they drop it. Like I said earlier I do not listen to FM much so this is not a big deal I'm just wondering. You cannot really customize the screen like on my old Pioneer touch screen. Just to mention a couple, on the Pioneer you can change the color of the backlights of the physical buttons and even add your own boot screen picture. I have this really great Toyota screen I wanted to use for boot screen. Lastly, apparently there is no Alpine online community. They do have this thing called the Garage but It looks like a dozen people use it and it hasn't seen much traffic since 2011. It seems more geared to people showing off their systems in their vehicles. Most big companies that sell electronics have official and/or unofficial online communities where people can share information and get advice. I have learned a lot about items I have owned over the years on forums. So where are Alpine's forums? Does anyone know of any?I may consider returning the Alpine. I have a few days to decide. But I may just keep it because I do not install these systems myself. I pay professionals and having the Alpine removed and replace is another expense and there is no guarantee another system will be without issues. In the reviews of every system there are people with issues.****EDIT 12-23-14Well another problem I've experienced is that even though I have Bluetooth set to automatically connect to my smartphone, sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't. I never had that problem with the same smartphone on my stock system. I gave up on the W940 and Alpine and purchased a Kenwood DNX891HD. The Kenwood is a bit more expensive but I should have taken that route in the first place. I wasted a lot of money on installation from switching head units but I have one that's much better. I don't want my experience to discourage anyone from getting the W940 because I may just have purchased a defective unit. But some of my concerns are just way it works.****EDIT 1-10-15After replacing this Alpine with a Kenwood a couple of weeks ago I noticed a couple of more issues are resolved. I mentioned in my original review that the Alpine would not play a backup DVD copy that played on every other player I had. Well that DVD plays flawlessly on my Kenwood. Lastly the Bluetooth phone calls were not that great with the Alpine. The calls had echoes or something. The calls on the Kenwood are just as good as the factory system I replaced, which is very clear

Purchased in late 2013, still going strong !! Easy to install. Picky on the brake bypass to be careful. Easy to update GPS. Powered USB charges my iPhone very slowly so don't depend on it. Should the Bluetooth die out on you just reset the whole dang unit. Stinks to have to go they that 30 min process but has only happened to me twice. I wish it had a faster processor. Powerful GPS database, wish I could update it because businesses open and close all the time. Overall I love this head unit and I am very happy with it. The touch screen is perfectly sensitive.