I bought and returned this unit. The main reason is because the screen is too bright, and the brightness cannot be adjusted. That means it cannot be adjusted in the menu and there's no illumination wire on the connector that can be controlled by the headlight setting.
The screen is very bright. Excellent on a sunny day but glaringly bright and distracting at night. The black background of the display is even washed out by the brightness to the point where it's not quite black when the unit is on.
Also this unit is lacking a High Pass Filter. My speakers were getting distorted at moderate to high volume levels. A HPF would solve this. This feature existed on its predecessor, the 3200.
Also lacking is the EQ. The 5-band graphic EQ from previous models has been replaced with a 3-band bass/mid/high.
On the plus side the mechanics on the 3300 are excellent. The buttons have a great tactile feel and there is plenty of grip length on the control knob. I tried out the 3200 in the store and the 3300 by comparison has better buttons.
But the brightness of the screen and lack of HPF were the real deal-breakers for me. I returned it and bought one of last year's models, the DEH-5200HD.
As for the DEH-5200HD it is an excellent unit. It has a HPF, which stops the speaker distortion and helps the overall sound quality. Plus the 5-band EQ allows for better fine tuning, and the brightness is adjustable. Finally, I found I really like the HD radio feature as it opened up additional FM channels that I didn't have access to before.
Overall I'd recommend buying a 2010 Pioneer model instead of their 2011 models. The 4300 also lacks a HPF, but at least the brightness can be tuned to 1 custom setting. It wasn't immediately clear though from my reading if the 4300 allows for a preset low/high setting. That could make switching brightness tedious.
Pioneer should always have a HPF and low/high brightness setting at the very least. In addition they should have an illumination wire on all their radios so brightness is set to low/high automatically when the headlights are turned on/off.
The DEH-5200HD is a better unit in my own experience, and based on looking at the specs their other 2010 models are a better choice than the 2011 models since they have removed the HPF and brightness settings. Pioneer DEH-3300UB CD Receiver with iPod Direct Control and USB Input
In general this is a decent entry-level car CD/USB/iPod receiver. One of the most important improvements in this model from the previous year's version was reworking the main function knob to a rotary encoder and push button only, with direction-pad functions moved to separate buttons. On the earlier unit, it would have been a frustrating game attempting to turn up the volume, for instance, without accidentally pushing the "joystick" and changing a track or station.
At this point in my ownership, the biggest drawback is the lack of AAC file support. If you're like me, you might be browsing several models that support MP3 and AAC (not to mention WMA) directly from a USB thumb drive, but fail to spot those that do *not* include AAC. Does this make (the DEH-3300UB) a bad product? No. But it feels a little bit like a fine-print gotcha.
This is a great radio. The availability of USB and AUX is a great feature. The only complaint I have is the equalizer is a bit limited in the number of selections. Other than that, the radio is definitely worth purchasing.
We love everything about this stereo...works perfectly with mp3 player, has great sound output. (We paired this stereo with Boss 200 watt marine speakers and installed them in our airboat-we put the stereo in a marine stereo housing unit), and we're very pleased with the sound...had to raise the treble level a little, but it sounds great to us! Great stereo for a great price!
I bought this CD player bc I can plug my HTC Evo in it, charge my phone and listen to the music on it. And it has an AUX jack so I can plug my phone up from the headphone jack and listen to Pandora Radio. It also comes with a handy remote control which I really liked bc I dont have to fool with trying to find the little buttons on the CD player while I am driving. The installation was pretty easy since I had an older pioneer CD player in it so I just had to connect the colored wires together. I really enjoy having this CD player. It's an awesome player for the price!
The radio plays, and the CD player works (I think), but it doesn't always hold radio stations in memory and the iPod part stopped working altogether withing a couple of weeks.
If that's important to you, I'd recommend saving up and getting a higher quality product.'
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