Can 2017 owners review new stereo/touchscreen
 

As I weigh the option of buying a used BRZ and updating the stereo with new Apple Carplay model and a backup camera vs. putting out a little extra cash for the improvements in the 2017 model, I’m wondering how the revised multimedia touch screen system is working.

I’ve read such bad reviews of the 2013-16 units, that I’m a bit skeptical about the 2017 version.

What I really want is a backup camera, to stream audio from my phone, and to be able to mirror my smartphone screen to the touchscreen so I can use Google Maps or whatever. I DO NOT want to subscribe to Subaru’s Starlink service and pay a continuing additional fee.

Can you do that without subscribing to Subaru’s service?

On Subaru’s 2017 BRZ website it says that with the MySubaru app you can access your car remotely, access lights, horn, locks etc. Does anyone know if this works without a subscription?

Can the lucky owners of the 2017s give us a review?

So not a full review, but a quick post on it:

It's OK. It does what I want it to do just fine. It connects to my Bluetooth automatically, plays music from my iPhone, and doesn't drop out on me or anything... But it also doesn't update the info of the currently playing song when I'm using Spotify. It just always shows me the name of the first song it played.

The interface isn't bad. It's not CarPlay, but it's not bad.
I haven't tried the old model to compare, but it does what it says on the tin.
I don't have the Starlink or anything, and the MySubaru app is rated awfully in the App Store (the app is pretty shitty), but I don't really care about it.

Overall, it's fine, but nothing to write home about.

Have you tried the pandora integration at all? Just wondering if it's fully functional or not.

It works perfectly fine if you use BT, but for whatever reason when I'm using the USB cord it doesn't connect the pandora app on my phone to the car. I tried it on my wife's car and it works flawlessly on her unit. I previously had a '13 BRZ & '15 STi so imo this unit is better. It seems fluid to me, and I haven't had much time to play with the unit for too long. But I don't think anyone would be disappointed cause it sure is better than that awful nav unit in the original BRZ.

I have not. I use Spotify, so I don't really have much need for Pandora personally.
Sorry :(

Fellow '17 owners: Are any of you doing what I'm doing to stream music on this unit? Which is just solely relying on BT for Spotify/Pandora? I tried using the USB port and it doesn't charge nor detect the phone. I find this odd and inconvenient. If it doesn't work at all then what good is the USB port for?

Sorry but what kind of phone do you have?

iPhone 6 Plus

It's weird I found that sometimes iPhones have issues with car USB it's weird for example I have a SE which is the same internal as a 6 but it won't charge in my friend's 2016 Civic. I found that this effects some iPhone and that an update of sort was needed, try it and see if it works.

I don't have a 2017 but I heard of this problem before

I think I may have just found the answer to why the USB port doesn't work.

http://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/2016...d6f4926a0a.jpg

Guess everyone will just have to use BT for audio streaming only. Oh well.

Wonder if this is a problem for the 86 version :(

Can anyone confirm which system is in the Canadian spec 2017's?

Subaru.ca and Subaru.com are showing two diff pics. Wonder if thats intentional or??
It would suck to have the 2017 with 2016 info system...

Canada gets a version with nav, don't know if it's last year's US one but it is different from the new US one which does not have nav. Pretty sure it's a carryover from last year's Canadian car.

EDIT: Checked the 2016 and 2017 Canadian brochure - it is a carryover unit.

Looks like i'll be swapping my headunit ASAP when i receive my 2017.
Sorry, didnt mean to hijack this thread.

Hmm.
I am also on an iPhone 6 Plus, and I'm almost certain I've streamed music over the USB. It definitely charges over the USB.

I'll try again and report back by tomorrow!

Will confirm. Was looking at one yesterday and it is indeed the 2016 HU.

Thanks for the responses so far. I'd officially thanks folks, but haven't found a button to do that. Maybe I don't have enough posts yet.

From the responses so far I continue to be amazed at how the car industry is so constantly behind in providing good stereo receivers. It's not rocket science and disappointing when you take a look at Crutchfield's offerings.

I'm also surprised to learn about the differences in the Canadian and U.S. versions. WTF?

Anyone try to use their smartphone's Google Maps nav on the 17 receiver yet?

The US unit model is CA645UL on the '17. I read some old thread that some people had success with.

http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=103425

It does not do Google Maps, unless you count audible directions through Bluetooth. Supposedly we are getting support to use Magellan soon since it's advertised on the site, but I don't have high hopes for that. My I Ly hope is that Subaru starts supporting Android Auto soon since they show up on Android auto's page as coming soon.

Pandora works well though, I use it all the time. I walk in, it connects and plays my last station. I can change stations or like/dislike songs in the dash. Occasionally I run into an issue and either restarting the app on my phone or turning the unit off and on causes it to reconnect.

All in all, not a great unit but it works alright.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk


Edit:

Also the Canada 2016 is like the old US one. It seems that the US 2017 is the same as the US 2016 one.

Any update on this?? It seems crazy that it wouldn't even charge through a USB port.

Are you using BT or USB? It's a major difference for me on my car. I have no issues charging through the charging port and playing through BT, but the moment I switch to USB it doesn't detect my phone and the Pandora app says connecting forever. I went ahead and booked an appointment for the service department to look at a potential faulty USB port next weekend so we'll see if they can troubleshoot the problem. Once this gets resolved I can say this is fully functional and acceptable as a stock unit.

I haven't tried USB yet. My phone is USB C and I don't have many extra cables at the moment since the standard is so new haha.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

Well, I guess that sort of confirms the USB port is useless for all those wondering. 😕

Sorry, I left my cable in the apartment so I didn't get to test it today, but I will find out and report back tomorrow!

I know it charges for certain though, I've done it. I'll test playing music tomorrow.

Hardly. USB-C is a relatively new type of connection that's not even the same size or shape as the old USB plugs we are used to.
He's saying he doesn't have the relevant adapter to go from USB-C to USB, that's all.

So I tested this morning and there were no problems playing Spotify or charging through the USB.

Works perfectly!

wow that's still not fixed? -_- i have that problem in my 16

Sadly, no.
It's really fucking annoying, too.

Do you think you can connect your phone via USB again and see if it'll load the pandora app from the unit? I'm trying to see if my unit is defective or the port, which can't even detect my iPhone.

I have a 2017 and my head unit doesn't have 2 knobs and Starlink, what's going on here?

Sent from my SM-G900W8 using Tapatalk

Canada.

So both Canada and the US are using the same unit that they used in the 2016. The downside here is in 2016 Canada used the one that they used in 2015 and the US got a new one.

I have a 2016 BRZ and the Pandora app in the head unit works great thru USB. It charges the phone and lets me keep the Waze GPS app open at the same time I'm listening to Pandora. However, since upgrading to iOS10 this week, the Pandora app at head unit no longer displays my Pandora stations in list view. Anyone else have this issue?

Update: well the Pandora playlist issue resolved itself. It's all working great now with iOS10.

Looks like I'm taking my unit in for service tomorrow then. Wish I could help since I just updated to iOS10 as well, but the USB port doesn't even charge nor detect at the moment. Only way to connect my phone to the unit is BT. I'd hate for them to say they have to take it apart and get a new one already, but this is a new car and I expect the most basic things to work out the gate. Hopefully I'm the only one with this issue on the '17. It'd be nice to finally enjoy what the rest of this unit offers from Starlink if it can detect my iPhone and actually use the pandora app straight from the unit itself.

So I tried today and I was able to charge my phone through the USB port. My phone wouldn't allow playing music that way though. It did load pandora, but I think it was still over bluetooth.

All right, so I think I can finally give a proper review of the '17 stock radio unit now that I brought it in today and got the USB port fixed. It turns out when they installed my illumination kit they forgot to connect the wiring from the USB port back. Simple fix.

Now as far as the unit itself, I can finally charge directly from there and also load up the Pandora app on the unit as well. The album covers along with the songs do actually update from one song to the next. Everything is instantaneous with my song transitions, there's no delay whatsoever.

As for the Starlink app, I do not see anything worth mentioning. In fact, I don't even see its purpose. The weather, news, calendar, etc can be viewed on any phone, why would anyone care to see it on the unit?

Anyways, for those on the fence about the stock unit being defective or useless, I can say that it is fluid and does what I think most people would want: charge & play music (with actual on screen album/artist/music updates immediately). Hope this helps clear some concerns. By the way, my unit is CA645UL.

Backup camera works fine, nice and clear, grid lines are on point, but it has that weird fish bowl effect. I had an aftermarket backup camera in my Elantra that looked better without the fish bowl effect.

There's no option to mirror your smartphone screen as far as I can tell. Although I haven't messed around with it much, I doubt there's a feature like this. Starlink is slow and laggy. There's only a few apps with the weather one being the only useful one. The news app is useless, the screen has a pop up that blocks you from reading anything and grays out everything so you can't select anything while driving. The music app can read from the music stored on your cell phone and displays track information and album art, but again, it's slow and skips sometimes if there's a bad wireless connection and very cumbersome to navigate your songs. I'd rather use the music app on my cell phone and stream it through bluetooth. Bluetooth streaming from my cell phone works great, it also reads the track information, but it doesn't display album art. Forget about watching videos on your cell phone through bluetooth, there's a noticeable audio lag which causes the video and audio to be out of synch by 1-2 seconds.

Overall, the 2017 US Head unit is terrible. I'm looking to switch it to an android based one, as soon as I find one that's compatible with the trim and can retain the steering wheel controls. On paper, the features sound great, but the way it's implemented, it's not worth it. It's too slow and laggy all around to be of any use and it's much faster just to use your cell phone. I have my android phone mounted using the CD slot and magnetic mount. It'll do for now until the HU is replaced.

They updated Starlink to include navigation, but it's a subscription. Complete horseshit.

The unit is very laggy, but I was impressed that they included as much as they did in the way of allowing you to adjust/save custom EQs and change the vocal imaging.

I'm not sure if it is just my HU is defective or if I have a bad speaker - but certain frequencies cause a faint bit of distortion to come through the speakers on the dash, regardless of volume or EQ settings. It sounds like brief intermittent static. Anyone else with a '17 BRZ notice this?

I thought I'd add some comments to this old thread in case people are still searching for info on the 2017 head unit and stereo. I've owned a new BRZ three weeks and I have to say, I am pleasantly surprised by the sound and HU. I'm not sure why they've garnered so much negativity.

In the 6 weeks between ordering and receiving my car, I had lots of time to read. With all the bad press on the forums about this HU, was certain I would hate it--so certain that I bought the Canadian one-piece dash before my car arrived, thinking I would be replacing the HU first thing. After a few weeks with this car system, and some careful changes to its EQ settings, I'm really not displeased with how it sounds. Bluetooth audio sucks--thin, edgy--but corded iPhone files sound pretty good. And I'm a home audio nut with high-end tubes and vinyl as my reference. Sound is extremely important to me--more important than cars, actually, if you compare the amounts I've spent on audio gear relative to cars.

The HU functionality has been flawless so far. My iPhone 6 connects and plays, via Bluetooth or USB, with no issues. In fact, Bluetooth connects with my phone in my pocket, and will start playing music from my phone automatically, picking up wherever it left off. But again, the sound is much better wired.

One thing I love is that I can put my phone's entire music catalog on shuffle (that's like 30 albums) and the system boots right up to it when I start the car, picking up where it left off. It's plug and play, and I effectively have a radio station that delivers nothing but what I like for many hours on end with no fuss. When I use Google maps, voice directions pipe right in through the speakers if I'm listening to the phone. I installed the BRZ ProClip mount for my phone, which is perfect for me. The phone sits right there next to the HU screen, should I ever want to look at it.

SiriusXM works just fine, though I don't especially like it, and it sounds quite a bit worse than my corded iPhone. I haven't tried Pandora or the other apps, but AM and FM are quite good. CDs sound OK, though oddly not as good as my phone, which is surprising because they are much higher resolution.

Now, I might still replace everything--get an Australian Kenwood 200 mm HU that mirrors my phone, and buy the OEM Audio-Plus package--because that's just how I am. But I don't feel much urgency to do so, at least not for now. I could live with this stereo, and that is a big surprise. All in all, not a bad little car system if you wire your phone and adjust the EQ (and especially the fader, sending the vocal image backward around a foot, which creates a much greater sense of space and depth to the instruments). The sound will harden at higher volumes, a mid-fi problem, but it's perfectly adequate at reasonable db levels.

Anyway, wanted to give some props to this beleaguered system. It's not the greatest but, to my ears, it certainly doesn't suck, either. Surprise, surprise.

Radio does a lot of stuff and is free. I like it a lot. My car was around $32k dollars with tax. I could give a crap about $30 dollars or whatever the cost is for subscriptions. I might have bought two subscriptions, or just one and the one you are talking about is free. Who knows, more importantly... who cares? Can't be ghetto after you buy a car for that much. whatever it costs it costs.

The Magellan app works fine. I know I paid for that one for three years. Pandora, I pay for a year for it normally (before I had a BRZ), so no ads and higher bitrate stream is a nice plus. it is quite clear and works perfectly. The voice commands are sluggish but accurate. Taking me a while to get used to them. Backup camera is very clear. I have no idea about my subaru app. Hm. I have the Aha, Pandora and Starlink apps working on my phone. Dont read bad reviews, it works exactly as they are supposed to. People are retarded. I use a iphone6 with an apple wire connected to it. I said yes to everything they had and downloaded everything and subscribed to everything. Why not? it is 1/1000th the price of the car.

Apple carplay of course would be a lot better. Personally, I keep head units OEM and then go and buy:

http://oemaudioplus.com/subaru/brz-2/

something like that. I think then the people won't break your window to steal your radio as it is stock and worthless.

I mean, the cool part of the is driving it. It is awesome to drive and has so much style when you see one in person.