For me, the season of giving came early. This summer I was contacted by two PR firms who wanted me to test out some new Bluetooth, phone enabled in-dash car stereo systems. Both requests for review were unsolicited and completely independent of each other. And since they both offered me the units for free including the installation, that was something I just couldn’t turn down. I did warn both of them that I would be doing not only a head-to-head comparison, but that it would be a balanced review, highlighting positives AND negatives.
So let’s set the framework here. We have two very different companies within the same space producing similar products. One company, Sony, has been doing Consumer Electronics and specifically car stereos for many many years, in fact, my first car stereo was a Sony. The other company, Parrot, is French with a US presence and not as well known in the US as the Sony brand. Sony manufactures "all things electronic" it seems (I’m currently doing a big project with them called the DigiDads project – this Sony review has absolutely NOTHING to do with that project and is completely coincidental), and Parrot is much more of a niche market player, focusing mainly on auto stereo components. I believe that Parrot is much larger in Europe than it is here.
The car stereos that I tested were the Parrot RKi8400 and the Sony Xplod MEX-BT5700U.
The stereos were installed in two different autos. I realize to really make an apples to apples comparison that they would have needed to have been installed and tested in the same cars in the same environmental conditions. Unfortunately, I don’t have the luxury of that type of setup and the two decks are actually quite different in many ways that I’m not sure that it would have mattered that much. Regardless, I will point out differences, positives, negatives and any environmental issues that may affect my opinions.
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