Alpine UTE-93DAB Car Stereo (Bluetooth, iPod Control:iPod Plug-In only,)

Replaced the standard Alpine radio in my Land Rover. Fits perfectly and functions brilliantly, easy interface and feels a quality item. Good value too.

Alpine reviewFundamentally great, with Usage issues.For reference, this was purchased with the Alpine KAE-232DA DAB adapter, DAB performance may vary with other adapters. Both were brought from Amazon for about £200 combined.Background for this purchase was that my 10 year old top of the range Alpine head unit was annoying me with its lack of DAB and Telephone support, and I didn’t fancy purchasing the bits to resolve the issue, second hand from ebay.Installation:Installation of the headunit was as simple as it could get. The Alpine wiring loom even comes with the ability to configure for the non-standard power wiring on a Volkswagen group car.Installing the microphone and DAB was a bit more challenging, but the issues would happen with any car, and any mic/DAB aerial, where you want to hide wires behind trim neatly.Sounds:Sounds are pretty subjective. I’ve always found Alpine to sound better than other aftermarket manufacturers. It suits my ears, and musical taste (very urban and bass heavy). Can’t say I’ve noticed a real difference between my 10 year old headunit, and this. That’s not a massive issue for me, as the previous one was really good (and sounds far better than my other, far more modern car & OEM stereo).4x50w is pretty good for a headunit.Bluetooth/phone:Connecting to my phone was trivial. Takes a second or two from starting the headunit to connect. That’s not much different to my Bluetooth equipped car. Bluetooth 2.1+EDR is a bit outdated, but I havn’t noticed any audio issues. Phone works just fine, and with the mic above my rear view mirror, I can be heard pretty clearly on the phone, there is a little background noise, but my car is quite noisy.While receiving a call is just a matter of pressing the phone button, dialing a number is pretty cumbersome. The screen is quite small and it takes a couple of key presses just to get to the first number in the couple of lists (received, called, etc). Not sure I want to go doing that whilst on the move!I can play music on my phone, or stream via amazon, and get song titles, and FF/RW through tracks. That seems to be the norm on Bluetooth headunits. Nothing extra ordinary.DAB:Make sure once you’ve installed an aerial, you turn on the aerial amp in the menu. I sat swearing at my car for 10 minutes, trying to work out what I’d done wrong I’m very impressed at the abilities of the aerial, it seems to find more stations than my other car. Seems quite a strong signal, although I’ve not tested it extensively yet.The real downside of DAB, is finding stations. DAB seems to be separated into groups (ensembles), with each group having a number of stations in them. I’ve never noticed this on any other DAB equipment. You can’t search every single station, you search groups, then look in each group for the station. Wouldn’t be so bad, but a 10 minute internet search didn’t tell me where to find a list of what services are in which group. As such it took a frustrating 10 minutes to find the couple of stations I listen to. Now they are in the favourites, I can switch between the stations easily, but getting them there was annoying.CD:There isn’t one. If you need one, this isn’t the headunit for you. All my music is digital, so I’m happy.USB:Plays everything I throw at it. All my music is AAC either purchased from iTunes, or encoded from CD with iTunes. I can’t comment on other formats, but numerous are supported.I would recommend buying the smallest USB stick you can find, as a big USB stick can obscure the screen.Wrap up:I think this is a really good piece of kit. For £200 you get something that sounds better than most standard stereos on brand new cars. I’ve heard worse sounding OEM stereo upgrades in new cars. It has all the right functionality, just some usability issues.Someone designed a very pretty headunit, but didn’t actually use it in a car while driving. The screen should be bigger/clearer. Things like the source button and bass button should be much smaller, yet the phone button should be bigger. I’d move the USB port to the other side, so a USB stick didn’t obscure the screen.