Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony CDX-GT630UI MP3/WMA/AAC Compliant CD Receiver with iPod Direct Control via USB

I purchased this radio and installed it myself about a week ago. I love it. It looks great and it is so simple and easy to use!

I have no idea why people are saying the interface is bad and it takes a ton of clicks to get anywhere. Maybe they are taking the long way? It takes me no more than 5-10 seconds to make any adjustments. I also find the volume very easy to control. You don't accidentally enter any menus by adjusting the volume. You would definitely have to try to get into the menus.

The flip down to access the CD drive is great - it keeps it clean and lasts longer. The colors are great and the removable faceplate keeps the radio from being stolen.

The sound clarity is amazing as well. The USB port is great. I just plug in my iPod with the cable that came with it (same one you use to hook it up to your computer). It charges it and I can control the songs right from my radio! No sense in paying for the auxiliary cable PLUS cable to charge it because you can do it all through the USB that came with the iPod.

I'm beyond happy with my choice! I would highly recommend this radio and would definitely buy it again.

I purchased this and installed it at a local big box electronics store. I felt it was in the right range for simplicity. Some radios like the Duals might have onboard bluetooth and HD radio included. This one doesn't. But the front plate USB port is simplicity and useful to me right now. i can load up flash drives and take music with me quickly. I havent' tested my creative player yet, but I hope that works too.

The look of it is a little less elegant than some of the pioneers and alpines look. The knob feels ok, don't get me wrong, but when you turn it, it's not like it feels expensive. You know how some knobs are just bang on perfect and tight and feel expensive. I like how mine has both blue and green lighting. I'm using green, as I'm tired of blue right now.

the buttons are straight forward, the LCD screen is not full pixel LCD, you can kind of see the limits of it, whereas some radios you can play full motion video because it's not locked in to certain lettering.

the USB detection has been superfast. that's awesome. Sound is clear. Radio is good. I figured if I want to update it later, by then, HD add-ons will be cheaper in a couple years and i can always get bluetooth added on, or get it through a garmin navi or something. There aren't that many front USB head units. This one, the previous sony (610) and a kenwood were the few. the kenwood's usb has a plastic cap that looks really cheap. This one is nicer. The rest have rear USB piped in from the back into your ashtray or glove box. I dont' like that, I wanted it easy. And I think this newer model navigates songs much better.

OK, I don't listen to music. I listen to books on disk/tape. I bought this radio so I could copy the book onto a USB drive and listen to it on the road. Of course, it's VERY important that the order of the tracks stay the same on the USB drive as they were on the disk. Well, they don't. I kept copying it and trying it and copying it and trying it and the tracts always seemed to be in a random order. No, I didn't have it on Shuffle. I'm kind of a computer geek, so this just drove me crazy. I finally Googled the problem. No matter what order you copy the tracts (files) onto the USB drive, they ACTUALLY are in some internal order based on the FAT table. When you look at the tracts (files) on the USB drive while the USB drive is still hooked up to your PC, you can sort the order you SEE them, but you really are not sorting the order of the tracts (files) on the USB drive; just the way they are presented to you for viewing. I also discovered that "most cheap mp3 players" don't have enough intelligence built into them to interpret the sort order of the FAT table on the USB drive. So even though the tracts LOOKED like they were in alphabetical order when they were on my PC, this Sony radio (along with LOTS of other mp3 players) will always play them in the order they were placed on the USB's FAT table. Bummer. Solution? I found and downloaded several freeware programs that claimed to actually sort the FAT table on a USB drive into alphabetical order. The sixth one I tried finally worked. It's called Mp3DirSorter and there are several others I didn't get around to trying. I'm not claiming this is the best solution. It's just a solution that seems to work.

The Sony radio is great and plays my books wonderfully. I just wish I didn't have to go through an extra step when copying the book onto the USB drive.

This is the only iPhone 3G compatible car stereo to date. I purchased one in Circuit City for a good bargain price because I purchased the GT820IP prior to this to find out that it doesn't charge my iphone (and also the latest ipods from what I heard). So I rushed back to Circuit City to ask why it doesn't charge. Then they recommended this one which is the only one that is compatible to my iPhone 3G.

They installed it and all and it doesn't come with a Sony Ipod Adapter. It's ok since it has the USB slot in front. You can plug your iphone data cable (that comes included with your iphone) and it works flawlessly. It charges and plays music.

The accessory mode is ON when you plug it but if you want to control the music using your iphone, it has this Passenger Mode feature that lets you control your iphone to play music. That means you can also watch movies and videos from your ipod. If you have a movie in your iphone, you can play it and hear the sounds in your car stereo. It's an awesome deal! You get an ipod and a video player all in one when you get to do long drives and watch movies for hours. The iphone maps feature assists you in driving as well (hope they'll be releasing their GPS software soon).

Basically it makes my iphone the ultimate car travel companion. I would prefer this to everyone. Only minor issue is sometimes my iPhone doesn't load when plugged. It happened to me twice but not a major drawback.

I purchased this stereo specifically to use with my iPhone via the USB connector. Overall I'm happy with sound quality and the interface is easy to use, with the exception of the next/previous track buttons which are small, hard to find, and too close to other buttons.

The iPod/iPhone integration is great. You can browse through your playlists, podcasts, artists, etc. all from the console. One important note though - if you want to play audio from other apps (like Pandora) you need to put the stereo into "Passenger" mode first. To do this just hold down the "mode" button for a few seconds when your iPod/iPhone is connected. I recommend just leaving the system in Passenger mode all the time since the default mode locks your phone and prevents you from doing anything else while connected.

If you plan on playing music from a USB thumb drive, be aware that this unit will not play back songs in alphabetical order. Instead the playback order depends on how the songs are physically arranged in the file system. Its a pain, but if you really want to control the play back order there are free tools that allow you to view and edit the ordering (you cannot do this from Windows directly.) This problem only applies to USB drives - iPods/iPhones will play back songs in playlist order like you would expect.

One last nuisance - everytime you turn off your car, the unit will beep (quite loudly) three times. I believe this is a reminder for you to remove the faceplate (no thanks) and as far as I can tell, there is no way to disable this.