Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony MDX-M690 RDS-EON/MiniDisc Tuner

I'm no stranger to the world of in car entertainment, headunit's in particular. I've had headunits from most of the major companies including Alpine, Pioneer and one other previous Sony headunit which I replaced with the MDX-M690. So i know what i'm looking for and i'm very particular in what i buy.

I decided to purchase the MDX-M690 as i have just bought a sony minidisc deck for my hifi to back up my old tapes. And as i had a CD headunit decided to change to minidisc so i could listen to my recently converted tape collection in my car. I had listened to other Sony minidisc headunit's and i wasn't impressed with the sound quality or the look of the headunit's.

I stumbled across the MDX-M690 by accident whilst browsing for somthing else. The smooth lines and looks of the dual motorised front face drew me to it so i decided to take a gamble and jump in at the deep end and buy it. And it was easily the best decision i had made in a long time.

The sound quality is amazing listening to a minidisc. This is where i found the newer sony minidisc headunit's fell down despite infinate tinkering with demo models to make them sound anything like decent! the radio and my CD's through my CD changer also sound good with a clear crisp soud. The DSO function which i also had on my previous headunit really makes a difference to the overall sound. If your car is like mine with your front speakers positioned really low down in the front doors, this emulates your front speakers being higher than they actually are which gives a much clearer sound particually with vocal and dance tracks.

The EQ7 feature on this unit is also excellent. This function gives you a 7 band equaliser to tune the MDX-M690's sound to your own tastes. This customisation coupled with the ease of setting both of these features up means that you very quickly get a nice balanced setup. This was the main problem with the Pioneer headunit i had. It was to complicated to setup and consequently never sounded as good as this. The MDX-M690 also has a 4x52w amplifier which provides a good powerful sound but if like me your running amplifiers then it comes with three 4.5 volt pre-outs. One being a dedicated sub-woofer channel and front and rear channels. The sub channel has three low pass filters and the front and rear channels have two high pass filters.

All the usual features are hear such as RDS and EON. Additional features include minidisc and CD text if your CD or MD contain it, the motorised dot matrix display which looks brilliant at night, EQ7 and DSO. The MDX-M690 also supports standard, LP2 and LP4 play formats. This unit comes with two remote controls, one wired and one wirless credit card sized remote. These are very useful as you don't have to reach down while driving to perform any operations. Volume, fast forward and rewind, disc changing and alternating between radio, minidisc and CD changer can all be performed with the remote controls.

The summary is if your looking for a high qualtity minidisc headunit then buy this. It is without doubt the best MD headunit on the market. Although it has been on the market for a while it easily out classes the newer models that sony have produced and the offerings i have heard that kenwood have produced. At this price the features and sound this unit produces make it brilliant value for money and an absoloute steal for the price. Buy one while you still can!!!