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For the past 4 years I’ve been using a Pioneer DEH-P6700MP car stereo which is almost identical to the Pioneer DEH-P670MP. I really liked the Pioneer as it seemed to really be able to liven up my 1998 Toyota Corolla factory speakers and had several feature I regularly used and loved. I decided it was time to upgrade recently as my old Pioneer was having difficulty playing CDs while the AC was on, and it was making ticking sounds with many of my CDs. I decided right off the bat I was going to stick with Pioneer.

I spent a few days researching units and the main thing I kept noticing with many of the new 2010 Pioneer CD Players was the choice of going with one that had HD Radio or going with one that had Bluetooth functionality. It doesn’t appear you can get a Pioneer with both. I decided to go with the HD Radio functionality due in part to the talk about how FM broadcast quality was greatly improved. (I’ll post a small rant on this at the end of my review.)

It seems like all Pioneers have the ability to read MP3 CDs still which is great, but one of the nicer additions is the USB port on the front. You can plug in your iPod, Zune, or USB thumb drive and play music off it instead of burning a CD or MP3 CD. It also works for charging USB devices. I tried plugging my Black Berry 8350i into the USB slot, but it would not recognize it as media and would only charge the phone. Another input on this Pioneer head unit is the aux audio input jack on the front of the face that you can plug into with a male to male stereo audio cable. An unannounced features this unit has that will be useful for many is RDS support. The unit will display the song/artist when listening to the radio.

Installation: I thought going from one Pioneer to another would be a breeze and that the stereo wire harness would be the same as my old Pioneer. Just to be sure I contacted Crutchfield whom said many stereo manufacturers use the same harness for several years. Unfortunately I want to confirm in my review that the one from my DEH-P6700MP and the one in this new DEH-P5200HD are not the same. They look similar, but they are wired like a mirror image of each other and will not fit each other. *A note to the beginners, if you’ve still got a factory stereo in your vehicle, do yourself a favor and buy a harness adapter so you do not have to cut the factory wiring in the dash.

I’ve been using the Pioneer DEH-P5200HD for a few weeks now and I like the unit a lot. Many of the various equalizer settings are the same as what was available on my old unit, and MP3 CD playback is about the same as well. Having the USB slot on the front is extremely convenient and I use it frequently to plug in a 8gb USB thumb drive full of songs. When you pull out the drive and plug it back in, the unit remembers where you were at in the last song and picks right back up. One major thing that takes some time getting used to is the control knob on the radio. It seems to control everything in that one knob and it really takes some time to get used to. The remote control will help ease you into things as all the buttons are easily spelled out on it. It’s also worth noting the remote is identical to my previous Pioneer remote and both were even cross-compatible.

Pros:

-Same fantastic EQ options Pioneer is known for.

-USB & Aux input on the face

-USB input plays immediately when you plug in a USB drive, it also remembers what file and where it was at when the device was last plugged into it.

-iPod control from the face or remote

-RDS support for showing titles of songs from broadcast radio

Cons:

-Face detaches to the side instead of flipping down which may be harder to remove depending on your dash

-HD Radio is not much of an improvement in quality of FM radio.

-USB input when reading from a USB thumb drive appears to read the folder order from last to first. (Song order is unaffected.)

Do you remember upgrading from a tube TV to a flat screen? Do you remember the difference in picture quality? HD Radio is NOT that same upgrade. The HD FM radio broadcast quality is almost the same as what you’ve heard for years except now you don’t get static, instead you get fading in and out when the signal starts getting weaker. Sometimes you hear the radio DJs talking about how much better their station sounds in HD, but the truth is there isn’t much of a difference. With HD you will pick up some extra sub-stations, but they’re practically the same as the regular broadcast versions. I’ve read AM broadcast is hugely improved, but I have no interest in most talk radio programming so I have not tuned into any of it.

I’ll try to come back and update this review once I’ve had some more hands on time.
Rating: 4 / 5