Boss BV9155B InDash DoubleDIN 4.5 DVD/MP3/CD Touchpanel Widescreen

Lots of things to like, with some compromises
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
This had all the features we were looking for — Bluetooth connectivity without a separate microphone to install, detachable faceplate, DVD support, SD support, USB and external audio input on the faceplate. I also appreciate the dial volume knob, and that many of the controls have hard buttons as well as touchscreen equivalents.

The sound is much better than our factory-installed stereo (in a Kia Sedona) — richer sound, deeper bass, but not distracting or distorting (all with the factory-installed speakers). The tuner has slightly more static than our old stereo off the same antenna, but the difference isn’t great.

The touchscreen excels on the tuner setting — a nice display that shows time, radio station, and your current preset settings (each preset shows the frequency associated with it). While it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles that some high-end stereos have (it doesn’t detect and display the station call letters), it does fine.

Where things break down a little is when you put in an MP3 source (CD/DVD or SD card — I haven’t tried USB yet but I assume it’s the same). The screen is split into three sections. One tiny line across the top shows what’s currently playing, on a slowly scrolling display. This display is way too small to be particularly useful — you won’t be glancing at the dash to see the name of the current song when you’re playing MP3s. The left half of the screen shows the directory listing, and the right half shows the filenames for the current directory. The MP3 metadata only displays for what’s playing, not for the file listings. Because the screen is broken up left-and-right, the width of each section is less than half the total width of the display — which means if your MP3 files are named something like “01-First Song on the CD.MP3″, then you’ll probably see something like this in the directory listing: “01-01-F” — the first 1 is the system telling you it’s the first song on the list, and then you get about 4-6 characters of the filename itself. That makes finding the right song on a directory listing pretty difficult. While you play an MP3 source, you see this menu display — and that’s it. Blech. Sounds great, looks awful. They’d have been better off showing fewer directories and files on the screen at once, and letting them take the full width to show more of the names. Oh well, it works.

The bluetooth connection works well for handsfree phone calls, and the audio on it is surprisingly good for a condenser mike built into a faceplate — not awesome, but for talking while driving it’s pretty great. Road noise isn’t bad, and the driver is quite understandable. I didn’t hear any echo when I talked to my wife, and my voice was coming out the car speakers and hers was coming through the mike on the faceplate.

I haven’t watched any video on the screen, as I didn’t want to tear everything apart to figure out how to hook it up to the parking brake. This does point out one other annoying feature if you don’t hook up the park brake (or use it with the park brake disengaged) — changing to anything other than tuner pops up an ugly blue screen with a message warning about watching video while you drive, which stays up for several seconds. Even if you put in an audio CD, you’ll see the warning before you get to a menu screen. It’s obnoxious, but it’s not a big deal. If you do put in a DVD, you can still listen to it even though the video won’t show if you haven’t hooked it up to the park brake or if you have and the brake isn’t set — if you have a music video DVD, this might be useful, though the sound is only stereo and not 5.1 Dolby or DTS or anything fancy.

The detachable faceplate comes with a little fabric pouch with a drawstring — don’t expect it to offer much protection beyond avoiding minor scratches.

All in all, pretty solid. Good sound and an awesome set of features makes the flaws sufferable, and it looks great in the dash (maybe I’ll add pictures later — comment if you want some). I’d consider buying another, if my other van’s dash had a double-DIN slot (at 1.5-DIN, this just isn’t an option).