1) The unit syncs automatically with the phone for contacts when you get close to it, at the same time if its playing your ipod, it stops the music from the ipod, then syncs, and hangs (nevcer gets back to the ipod). I have to unplug the iphone and plug it back to resolve the issue.

2) The menu/user interface is not for the faint hearted

Overall I’m happy

This receiver beats the heck out my previous Sony unit. The x993′s 5-line display is ideal for scrolling through my 6000+ iPod library. I can search by letter and skip by percentages. Since there are 5 lines of display, I view all the information for the song at once. With my old Sony deck (and most commonly) it was only a 14-digit display, which meant one would have to wait for the entire song, artist, album name to scroll across the screen. Not any more. The display’s custom color ability easily permits it to match with you car’s dash. And one of the most welcomed features is the x993 resumes the last song that was playing when the car turned off. My Sony deck would begin playing the first of song of the first artist in my library every time I turned the car on. This became extremely irritating when I would have to re-select a playlist, album, etc every time I had to turn the car off for various reasons (getting gas, going into store, etc.).

The blue-tooth has performed great with my Samsung Access. It displays my battery and signal. And has stopped me from worrying about a headset while driving. No tickets for me.

The rear USB and 3.5 mm port are great because it leaves the deck looking clean. I can just route the cables into my glove box for easy access.

The sound settings are extensive, and if you take the time to fine-tune them for your car, it pays off. I have dual 12 kicker comp subs with four 5.25 Kicker speakers (with the entire car dampened with damplifier pro). It all comes together well for my kiddy-car Accent.

I’m one very unhappy camper!!!

This radio is close (the amber is a very near miss). The sound is excellent the audio streaming is excellent and people can hear me better than when I’m using ‘just the phone’ in the car.

BUTTONS & KNOBS: – shy, but livable.

2 Knobs.. 1 for volume, 1 for ‘everything-else’.. the ‘everything else’ knob, turns.. and also has up, down left, right and center. Tricky to press when moving. You also have ‘src’,'fn’,and a tiny little ‘disconnect’ button for cellphone bluetooth.

There are no ‘quick access’ keys for radio station presets. A major omission.

USING THE THING….

The interface is the WORST I’ve seen, even when considering that nasty stuff pioneer puts out.

There are too many damned submenus, and the way they implemented the ‘everything knob’ (EK) works poorly.

Swapping between submenus or modes takes forever. They have these animations that look like crap and take several seconds. The unit itself is pretty fast but waiting for the transitions makes performing any action painful and frustrating.

RADIO:

When listening to the radio, one might expect to use the EK right and left taps as paging through presets up/down as going from FM1/FM2/AM and rotating the knob to do fine tuning… YOU GET NO FINE TUNING.. and the other clicks are strange ‘random’ things that make little to no sense.

A2DP (listening to music from my phone):

Right and left take you to different songs, but there is no pause, no fast-forward or rewind.. for ‘difficult’ things like that you have to bust out the phone/device and mess with it.. dangerous.. but how often does one want to pull over on a busy freeway?

PHONE – BLUETOOTH:

Phonebook

Totally effing useless. WORSE. They might have used the Theverything knob to make this something we could use but.. nope. You get to try to spell things out the hard way.

Caller-ID

Nope.. you don’t get to see who’s calling you.

Voicedial

Most phones come with voicedial, and there is a bluetooth protocol for that. But THERE IS NO VOICE DIAL BUTTON on this head-unit.. again you have to go to the phone for that. LAME!!

OVERALL:

I’m giving this unit 3 out of five only because it sounds great and COULD do everything very well if the people who thought up the software interface would get their heads out of the sand.

Excellent sound and hardware, extremely poor interface.

As far as sound quality goes I’m not sure if KDC-X933 is any better than the EZ-500 but one thing is for sure the X933 is a lot easier to setup and fine tune when on the road.

The good: X’Over feature is amazing for optimizing speaker and amp frequency response. Built-in EQ offers good fine tuning for the last touches. Excellent expandability – I have both the mini-din Aux option, an iPod video hooked up and an iPhone 3GS able to stream Pandora via bluetooth. Coupled with CD and MP3 disc capability and your music options are endless. CD SNR reminded me why lossy/compression based files like mp3/wma can be such a disappointment sometimes.

The mixed: Bluetooth performance was great on a Blackberry Tour and Blackberry Curve. The stereo/A2DP performance of the iPhone 3GS can border “okay” to mediocre. There will be random skipping on the ipod function or Pandora. You can try placing the phone in various locations, it seems to affect reception quality. Again, this is a fault of the iPhone, not the receiver.

The bad: As you may have read, the UI of the receiver could have used a lot of help. The knob management is cumbersome at best. It takes some getting used to. There are some things that you won’t be able to do while driving. A thorough reading of the manual is also highly suggested as there are so many tweaks that can leave you amazed or disappointed with the head unit’s sound quality. They should have also added buttons for preset stations on the Radio function as well as an attenuate function on the head unit face. The remote is the only place there is an attenuate function.

Overall I was happy with the product. I haven’t had any glare issues other owners have talked about. Using the built-in amplifier, sound was superb. Using all external amps, it was awe-inspiring. I have the product paired with Polk Audio db6501 components and db651s coaxials (also purchased from amazon).