Home > Consumer Reviews > VR3 AM/FM Stereo CD & MP3 In-Dash Player w/ SD & USB

My bf recently installed this player in my car. Apparently, it was too long for my car, and stuck out quite a bit, so he did some modifications to the part that holds the player up. Unfortunately, I think his fix to this problem is what causes the music to stop each time I hit a minor bump in the road. I don't *really* know if this is the fault of the player or the installation job, but it irritates the heck out of me.

The other thing it does: I might have it tuned into a station that is considered "public radio." Pretty much at random it will decide to start sorting thorough ALL the local radio stations before it lands on another station that is called "public radio." It is just the weirdest thing.

And also the clock display (or lack there of) bugs me, especially at this point where it is not even playing music reliably.

I would give it 1 star only, but there is a possibility that it's not the players fault (just the installation job). ALTHOUGH... if the darn player wasn't so long, it would have been a lot easier to install. Whatever, 2 stars are good enough for this pos.

-Jennifer

7/21/09

I take it all back! After my bf had a chance to see what it was doing, he took everything apart again and found out that there was a disconnected wire that was hitting something and shorting out (and even burned out the fuse for the dashboard lights). After going over the wiring a second time and securing it better, it works just the way you'd expect it to.

The clock still is irritating though, but it hardly matters now that the music is playing.

If I could adjust the stars, I would now call it a 5 star stero.

I`ve bought two of these units one in my truck and one on my motorcycle. The CD player is very good it doesn`t skip when riding over bumps. But the best feature for me is the SD player, I can play downloaded music from my computer to SD cards and play them 2gb`s worth. You can also plug in your external device {I_POD, GPS etc}
Thanks Steve

Just purchased this VRCD400-SDU for $100 @ Target, and I am thoroughly amazed at the useful features it has. Gotta thumb drive with your brand new mp3s you just downloaded? Just plug that baby in, and in a few seconds, they're playing. SD card? sure! Ok, so what about my (P.O.S.) iPod? Yep, can even hook that up to the aux input (Although I'm unsure why you'd want to, throw that proprietary crap in the trash, IT SUX!!) :o) Anyway, unit sounds great, even on my little old stock paper cone speakers in my '88 Cadillac DeVille. If you want to get some quality and features you'll actually use for $100, go get this unit right now; you will NOT be disappointed. Ok, I'm going to play with it some more now!

REVIEW UPDATE:
It is now Monday, August 31st, 2009, which means I've had this head unit over a year now. I have since sold the Cadillac it was in, but I kept the head unit, and installed it in my '88 Cheep Cherokee Limited. In the year I have owned this unit, I have had only one issue with it, and it seems to be pretty rare... Sometimes the MP3 decoder seems to glitch while playing from my USB thumb drive or my SD card, and all I hear is static. Unplugging & re-plugging the thumb drive/SD card in resets the decoder, and all is well. It's only happened about 3 times in the year I've owned it, and it could be due to the fact that I use a thumb drive & SD card that's larger than it's specified maximum. The manual says you can use up to 1GB device, and my thumb drive & SD card are 4GB. However, other than that, I haven't had ANY issues with it at all, and have been extremely pleased with it's operation.

I purchased this stereo at Wal-Mart for $80. I really liked it at first, but then I began to notice some problems. Maybe others didn't have these issues, but this is my experience with the unit.

Pros:
- Great (almost) for the price.

- Loaded with great features.

Cons:
- When playing from an SD card the stereo would skip the 1st second or so of the song, and sometimes skip the last second as well. I tried different bit rates and even inserted silence at the beginning of the songs...didn't help.

- The clock kept resetting itself. Display was overall buggy...spelled song names wrong sometimes(?) - weird.

- Couldn't get enough high (treble) out of it.

- If you like a lot of bass you need to use the "loudness" feature, but then you lose some highs.

- VR3 website claims it has a graphic EQ. What graphic EQ? Bass and treble, baby, that's it.

- song titles and other texts scroll very s-l-o-w...

- Tech support is poor. Never got through to a tech, NEVER returned my calls, NEVER answered my emails...after 4 days!

Perhaps I got a buggy unit, but it felt cheap and unfinished.

Recommendations:
Pay an extra $30 or so and get the VR500CD-BT - returned my 400 and got the 500 instead. I LOVE it! Even if you don't need the bluetooth, it is a far superior model. Sounds a LOT better, doesn't skip beginning of songs, weird to navigate through the menus to get to some controls, but once you get used to it, it rocks! Better bass and treble. Text scrolls faster.

Perhaps others didn't have the same problems that I did, but the 400 let me down. I stuck with VR3 though and I love the 500CS-BT!

Hi! Normally some people buy things because some brands are famous, Sony, LG, Pioneer, but this radio is amazing and in a very good price, I save all my favorite music in my USB Memory and I enjoy it too much. I love this radio and I recommend it 100% percent.