I didn't exactly do a full test run of the entertainment system when I bought it. I was happy that it had an in-glovebox iPod/USB connection and that was good enough for me. Now that I've had time to use it, I have a few comments to make.
Here's a shot of the console. Overall, the controls are easy to access and big enough that I only have to glance over briefly when I reach up to change a song or station.
One thing I didn't notice at all but I think should have stood out to me was that there is no Pause/Stop (or even Mute) button. I have to hit the tiny power button up the upper left hand side of the console in order to turn the music off. There have been several times when I've wanted to silence the radio quickly but had to fumble around, 1) to remember that there's no Pause and 2) to look for the tiny button. It's been a bit frustrating.
You'll notice that this is not only a radio, and as I have told you, a USB music player, it's also a CD player, so many of the controls are overloaded to support all three of these modes. It's done pretty cleanly, I feel, other than that nagging problem with the lack of a Pause button, which is standard with CD and digital music players.
There's a little bit of dissonance with the iconic representation of the controls on the center volume wheel. Left and right Seek are obvious and traditional, but the Play button is on the bottom, and then there's a down facing triangle:
Which, as it turns out, is a down arrow that matches the up arrow next to a return/back icon:
As silly as this sounds, when I first saw the down triangle, I thought it was a misprint of the the normal right pointing arrow that usually represents play, and I had no idea what the up facing triangle and arrow u-turn icon meant.
So, other than the lack of Pause/Stop/Mute, I'm pretty happy with the radio interface. It's the USB interface, specifically as it applies to the iPod that I have a few extra issues with.
In this day and age, iPod owners almost inevitably have a large collection of music on their devices (I have a mere 1700+ songs on mine). I have about a dozen play lists on this particular device and I like to bounce around between playlists, artists and songs.
The Fit's console doesn't make this easy; the iPod features are accessed through the center Vol/Push/Select button:
A ring around the button serves as both the volume control and the scroll wheel. Pushing the button brings up a series of options that you normally see on the iPod (Playlist/Songs/Artists) and then pushing again on the selection delves deeper into the menu structure.
The big problem comes when there is a very large list to run through (say 1700+ songs):
Problems:
1) The enumeration is only two digits long. It goes from 00 to 99, then resets every hundred items. So, other than when the order happens to be alphabetical (and it isn't always), the user can't be sure of where he is in the song list. Halfway? Near the end?
2) One of my favorite bands is '30 Seconds to Mars'. The '30' means the band is alphabetized all the way at the bottom. In a short-ish list of 150 bands, I have to scroll nearly to the bottom to get to them. This is a huge problem when I'm driving, as you might imagine, and I don't like doing it -- even parked, it's a big pain. The scroll wheel is easy to use, but it's not fast and it doesn't have a fast forward mode on it. I have to continually roll it 360 degrees in short bursts to go down.
And there's no way to go from the top of the list to to bottom. That is, if my first band is say, Ah-Ha, I can't "scroll backwards" and get to 30 Seconds to Mars instantly (not that helps in anyway with the bands who are half way down the list from other direction).
On the iPod itself, Apple overcomes this problem in one of two ways: 1) allow for rapid flick scrolling (where the user perpetuates the scroll by continuing to flick the screen in single direction); it's still slow for long lists, but because it works by paging, the user can still find an artist fairly rapidly. 2) Selection by alphabetic hash: By popping up the alphabetic scroll bar, the user can get very close to anywhere in the list by going to the first letter of the band that is of interest. Even in a 26,000+ long list, it's easy to get to at least within a 1000 artists almost instantly.
3) When I have the system set to Random playback and then search through a Playlist, my only option is to play the first song in the list, then hit the right seek button to actually engage the random mode. That is, simply selecting a Playlist isn't good enough; I have to select the starting song as well, which isn't very random (and per point 2, even if I knew what song I wanted, it may take a bit of effort to get to).
There are a few other little hassles that get to me on occasion, but not so badly that I can remember them right now, so I guess they're all right.
I'll be trying to review more radio consoles as I get access to them. I already know that the Honda Pilot (with the navigation system) really is a pain to use, so that may be next.
One of my major beefs is the fact that the car manufacturers are making these custom consoles, so that even if you wanted to overcome their bad usability by getting your own system, you'd be pretty hard-pressed to find one that fits.
ReplyDeleteOver the past few years I've wondered why there isn't an iPhone Radio, where you just dock your iPhone sideways and use it as a radio, GPS, etc. right in your dash.