Vigo said:I enjoy this guy's testing and review of car audio. He's pretty impressed with the value of this unit:
I have a decent receiver in my garage, but I'm pondering grabbing one of these to put on top of it to handle digital media. Its no more expensive than a bluetooth- adapter so I can connect my phone. What's the cheapest 12v power supply I can find I wonder?
I put one of these in my Saab project (along with new cheap speakers, also from Walmart). No complaints, though in fairness I've only listened to it for about 10 minutes.
ProDarwin said: What's the cheapest 12v power supply I can find I wonder?
A re-purposed spare / old PC power supply would be a good bet.
I bought one but have not yet installed to anything.
Is blue the only display color?
Is it an obnoxiously bright blue? I much prefer green or orange/red.
rslifkin said:ProDarwin said: What's the cheapest 12v power supply I can find I wonder?A re-purposed spare / old PC power supply would be a good bet.
maybe, but probably big time overkill. Hoping to find something smaller... if I'm not using the built in amp, the wattage draw should be extremely low.
I bought two. The first one came as expected. Tracking showed two were ordered and two delivered even though I only received one of them.
Walmart's customer service website was useless. It just kept cycling me around to the same welcome page.
Fortunately, it was easy to get someone on the phone and she very quickly set me up for a second delivery. I got email notification of it arriving, even though it hadn't.
When I tracked it, tracking showed that it had actually been shipped on the day that they gave me the email notification of delivery.
It finally did arrive, so now I have both of them.
I'm not sure Walmart is going to be much of a threat to Amazon if this keeps up!
I haven't installed either one yet, hope to get to it next week.
What's the cheapest 12v power supply I can find I wonder?
Probably a wall wart for a laptop or something in the eletronics bin at goodwill or whatever. It'll probably accept something from 9-17v. But, my shop stereo setup is the original 2007 AGM 12v battery from my old Prius hooked up to a car amp fed audio by my shop laptop. I use a battery charger i picked up literally out of the trash and charge it at ~2a a few hours a day while im there. Probably pretty inefficient but cost me basically nothing.
In reply to Floating Doc :
Funny, I ordered two and received one also. And same, impossible web process but easy to get another one shipped via phone.
Cleaning up my shop last night, straightening up my "collection" and thought of this forum thread...
...and there's a whole other crate full of them besides. 
Added in a charging cable from the rear.
The screen on mine died this afternoon. Right hand side and the bottom quit working. Just ordered a no name $17 one with a clock.... Round 2.
I guess I never posted this but i put one in my 82 Lebaron convertible in March. Still working.
Mine haven't been any trouble. They're still in the box...
In reply to Floating Doc :
Same thing happened when I ordered 2 recently.
Amazon's greatest threat is either their employees or vendors they allow to sell through Amazon. Ordered water filters & got freeze dried bloodworms. But somebody did put a barcode label for the water filters over the barcode for the bloodworms...can't wait to see what shows up as the replacement...
Can anyone comment on the audio quality? I don't remember seeing how much power this unit has. I'm just wondering how it compares to a standard 4x45w or 4x100w CD player. I'm debating either getting a new head unit or adding an amp. I'm not an audiophile, but the sound quality of the old $20 (used) 4x45w sony head unit I currently have fitted is disappointing.
Considering the price, I'd assume this thing sounds pretty weak w/out an additional amplifier?
Its a 4x20W
I am meh on it. Its not bad in the truck with windows up. In my RT it its sorta loud and with the windows down you cant hear anything.
The youtube link i posted earlier included an amp dyno on this thing. It does 10 'actual watts' per channel, which is actually about as good or better than those crappy 'micro amps' you can buy. He did test it at 12.0 v when he usually tests at 14.4 so I'd expect slightly better in an actual car. It does seem to produce a lower max volume in my Lebaron than 'full size' headunits I've had but i don't have a large data set of 'mechless' units with 2" mounting depths to compare to.
Amp dyno footage. It's really a good video that anyone interested in this thing should watch. It covers everything. He hooks a $10 stereo up to thousands of dollars worth of test equipment. You will never get a better review of a $10 stereo than this video.
In reply to Vigo :
Thats a way cool video. I love expensive equipment on cheap products.
Does anyone know what’s involved with using this with a 1999 Sierra (or most GM vehicles of that era) Do I just wire in the stereo harness into the stock GM harness or is there an adapter to plug-n-play?
I will obviously buy the installation kit to fit it in the dash.
ebonyandivory said:Does anyone know what’s involved with using this with a 1999 Sierra (or most GM vehicles of that era) Do I just wire in the stereo harness into the stock GM harness or is there an adapter to plug-n-play?
I will obviously buy the installation kit to fit it in the dash.
I just did this on a 99 Sierra. I used a wire harness adapter to keep the wiring intact, antenna adapter and DIN adapter. All easy to find at Crutchfield or Amazon. Shifter in low pull the dash surround plastic, squeeze the tabs on both sides of the oem radio and it slides out.
Edit: didn’t see your pics when I posted, so you figured out the removal part. All the colors matched to the harness adapter. I think it was a Scosche.
In reply to glueguy :
Wow thanks! Any idea what I should be searching for precisely? It’s the specific wiring harness adapter that I haven’t been able to find just yet.
Is there really an adapter that that’ll connect the two harnesses pictured above?
Is there really an adapter that that’ll connect the two harnesses pictured above?
Not exactly. There's a female equivalent of the male connector your trucks stock radio harness has, and you have to hook the wires up between that and the white connector you have for the back of your stereo. Most stereos require you to make connections on about 12 wires.
They do sell this stuff at Walmart, so you can pick it up there if you don't want to wait for amazon.
I reused the existing adapter plate and harness when i installed my $10 stereo and was thinking how ironic it was that if i didn't already have those pieces it would double, almost triple the price of the project. 
In reply to Vigo :
Ok, makes sense. We (my sons truck) have that female plug from another aftermarket stereo that was there.
I had just finished a lecture about soldering and heat-shrinking any connections we do because electrical tape is a complete hack-o-rama and that’s NOT happening, when we pulled out the old aftermarket stereo. Lo and behold, every connection was a sticky mess of electrical tape. No wonder the sound buzzed, was muffled and generally sucked!
In reply to ebonyandivory :
Here is what I used. Metra not Scosche.
Radio dash adapter Metra 99-3002
Antenna adapter Metra 40-GM10
Radio harness adapter Metra 70-1858
As mentioned above, the harness adapter gets soldered to the Blaupunkt harness on the benchtop, and is then connected to the wiring in the dash (the adapter is opposite-mated to fit the truckside connector). This prevents you from cutting the truckside connector to splice wires. It's much nicer to make the truck-radio connections on the workbench rather then sitting in the truck doing them one by one. All of the wire colors were a direct match.
My truck was previously owned by a "kid" and I knew it had an aftermarket system in it at one time. I dreaded pulling the radio, and was immensely relived to find the wiring totally intact behind the crappy OEM radio. Luckily he too must have used a harness adapter for whatever was in there. Made my life so much easier.
I wasn't thrilled with this dash adapter. It centers the radio in a with plain plastic on both sides. I would rather it have the radio high with a storage bin underneath to at least be good for sunglasses and a pen. I didn't pay attention when I got this one but I'll bet there are others that would have the storage if that matters to you.
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