K**R
good idea done poorly for the RX330
Otto Navi buys car radio/navigation systems from a company in Shenzen China and pairs them with after market installation kits and sells them as a complete solution. And they sell the whole thing for more than you would pay if you bought the items separately.I like the idea of one stop shopping, but they didn't do a complete job for the RX330 radio.You have a luxury car (or even a standard car) and your radio breaks. You want to replace it with the newest technology that is blue tooth enabled instead of paying $700 for a rebuilt replacement that just plays CDs....but you can't just go out and buy a new radio to put in your car, because your factory radio has a special front plate....and you can't use your premium amplifier and speakers with a standard radio harness.So, there are companies that make retrofit kits. You can buy a special faceplate that will fit standard radios. You can buy wiring harnesses that will connect to your car's electronics. Then, you need to go out and buy the new radio. It is hassle to go out and buy these things and then figure out how to connect them all together.Otto Navi came up with the solution: sell the radio with all the retrofit pieces and have it all connected up so all you have to do is plug it into your car. Unfortunately, they did not come up with the complete solution for the RX330. They went cheap on the wiring harness, so it will not work seamlessly with the cars existing systems.This is not a good deal:They use Chinese no name radio systems from a factory in Shenzen China that cranks these things out for many different brands. You can buy a comparable system for under $300, and maybe much less.They get the retrofit kits from other suppliers.The faceplate is METRA 99-8159S which you can buy on Amazon for $26.I don't know whose wiring harness they use, but you can buy ones that do the same thing for under $80. And this is where the problem is...they went cheap on the wiring harness so it does not work with all the electronics on the car. In order to work with all the electronics, the wiring harness would cost you about $250.Many of the Otto Navi radio kits will work with the controls on the steering wheel. I don't know if this kit will....they do not tell you one way or the other. If you were to get a harness that works with the steering wheel controls, that will cost about an extra $60.
Trustpilot
1 week ago
2 months ago
