What's the best 2-DIN Nav HU?

C

CalPolyRock

New member
I was looking at the avn5435 but my buddy at a car audio store said that eclipse is coming out with a second model for this year, i think a 5495. From what I remember, it has a hard drive instead of just the two drives. What this means is that you don't have to have the navigation DVD in all the time... it can be stored on the HD freeing up the DVD slot. Also, you can store your audio on the HD. It's freaken expensive though. My friend said the buddy price installed & out the door was $2750. The 5435 is probably $500 less. Now I'm trying to decided if I want to spend that much or go with the stock toyota nav from oemvalue.com for $1700 w/o install.

Can anybody tell me which way to go. Is it worth $1000??? I can probably install it myself if I have to or take the toyota nav to my buddy's place to get installed for cheap. Is the stock toyota nav that good or comparible to the eclipse? ...which i hear is the best double-din nav on the market right now. Someone said that the toyota nav hu is way underpowered.

Also, maybe I'm confused, but I thought I'd just be able to steal the brackets of my stock HU and use them to ISO mount onto the eclipse 2-din HU. Is a custom kit really necessary?

Anybody played with different 2 DIN Nav HUs and have some opinions?
 
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I just received my Eclipse AVN 5435 today (bought it off ebay for $1700). I'm going to try and install it tonight after work. So far, I've taken the stock brackets off my old JBL 6 disc in-dash player and put them onto the Eclipse unit. They fit perfectly! The dimensions are almost identical to the stock head unit, except it looks like there will about a half inch gap on either side. I'll find some way to fill that in later. Anyway, I'll let you know how it goes after I get it installed...
 
That would be great davisc23..!! Good Luck with it. I'm in Orange county too so if ya need any help let me know.
 
davisc...please take some pics if you can...i'm planning on buying that same headunit..or let us know how it goes, thanks...
 
The best DD decks on the market are made by Eclipse. When it comes to SQ, Eclipse is the only way to go.. I'm getting the AVN5495 so please take pictures of the 5435 so I can see the fit..


thanks
 
Ok, I finished (almost) installing the Eclipse tonight. I didn't have to time to hookup the reverse sensor wire, so I left that to do another day. Everything seems to work fine without that hooked up. The good news is that the stock steering wheel controls work with no modifications! The Eclipse comes with a connector that plugs directly into the stock connector for the steering wheel controls. The bad news is that I couldn't find anywhere to hookup the illumination wire. You need to hook that up because without it, the lights on the buttons do not light up at night and are unreadable. I just searched the forum and found someone else that tapped into the lights on the cup holders. I think I'll try that the next time I take everything apart. By the way, I used petegaz's guide on installing a nav unit (link) to find the speed sensor wire.

Here are some quick pictures I took of the install. You can see that the face plate does not fill the sides of the dash opening. I'll have to figure out how to fill those in with some trim pieces later.


nav-front.jpg


I chose to "tilt" the faceplate so it matches the slope of the stock dash
nav-side.jpg
 
Did you have the JBL? I heard its wider then the base stereo I got in mine so hopefully the AVN5495 will fit better...
 
It took me about 3 hours from start to finish. Taking apart the dash isn't really that hard (it takes about 20-30 minutes). I had an alpine head unit in there previously so all the necessary wires were all ready to go. I just had to splice into them. I also had all 3 sets of RCAs (front/rear/sub) already hooked up with the alpine and all 4 doors had been completely rewired from the previous install. If I had to start from the beginning, it would have easily taken all day or longer.
 
I ordered those trim pieces from that auction a couple days ago, so when I get them, I'll let you know how they fit. I may end up just cutting up my old dash kit that I had with my alpine and try and fit it in there.
 
Does it give you audio commands without the use of another speaker? I am very interested in this unit as the Toyota Navs are out of stock at oemvalue.com. Let me know....
 
doctob said:
Does it give you audio commands without the use of another speaker? I am very interested in this unit as the Toyota Navs are out of stock at oemvalue.com. Let me know....
Click to expand...

Yeah, it does. It mutes the left front speaker and speaks the voice commands out of that speaker. The volume for the voice is adjustable.
 
Hey davisc2, did you ever get the reverse Sensor wire hooked up..? You mentioned you used that guide to get the speed sensor hooked up was there a reason that the hook-up for the reverse sensor in that guide wouldn
 
AVN5435

With the Eclipse navigation system is it possible to still have the center center working? As the sound is noticablely better when I use the center speaker on my current factory JBL system. I'm a newbie and read through several post and realized that it's a pain to upgrade the system, but the system looks worth the hassle. Also, do you recommend adding an amp to the system? Currently, I have a JL Audio sub hooked up to the factory unit as the factory unit was lacking bass.


Thanks!
 
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