Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony CDX-GT420U In Car Headunit with MP3 playback and front USB

I'm generally very please with the GT420U.

Pros:

- Plays common music formats (MP3/AAC/WMA) and works well irrespective of folder layout.
- Reads ID tags and displays well.
- Good sound quality.
- Great radio.
- Easy to install.

The single flaw that stops a 5-star review is that it comes with a remote control and this is needed to change the clock and take the display out of demo mode. The remote is small and no doubt easy to misplace, and then it's going to be seriously annoying.

This CD player is easy enough to figure out without too much need for instructions, and it has USB in and AUX in which were the reasons i bought it.

The sound quality sounds much better than my old Kenwood CD player even though its the same speakers, and its easier to adjust the balance, Fade and EQ etc.

one of the major design flaws however is that in most UK cars that are right hand drive, if you have a USB device plugged in, it can get in the way when you move your hand from the gear stick to the steering wheel / indicator, it would be much better on the other side of the unit. Having said this, after a couple of days i got used to the USB stick being there and haven't caught it since.

Another thing i find not so good is when song titles are scrolling across the screen they are very difficult to read.

the Shuffle function allows you to skip within an album on a USB device, or shuffle the whole device which is very handy.

Overal this is a fantastic value unit, and i haven't detected any problems that i haven't stated above, i would recommend it to anyone who doesn't find these things to be a problem

Jonah, you don't need the remote to change the clock - you can simply press and hold down the scrollbar and then you can change the clock from there. Amongst other things.
I've just installed this and it is a great piece of kit - but you may want to roll some high end frequencies off as the default flat EQ setting is SERIOUSLY bright - at least in an Audi. I heard that Sony had been working on a way to compensate for some of the frequency losses inherent in MP3 encoding. I have a similar unit in my other car (a 2006 model without USB) and it is much less bright so maybe this could be a result of this development.
Another thing I've discovered with the USB functionality - the machine will read folders (and even tracks within them) in the order you created them onto the USB drive, regardless of the way you label them. Unless the "order of creation" is the same order that you want them read you may have to copy them back to your computer and then back onto the drive in your preferred (usually alphabetical) order. Hope that's clear!

I own a Peugeot 307, and after I installed the product, the sound quality is much much better. It reads the USBs quickly, plays the CDs with no problems and supports so man different kinds of audio files.

just note: If you decide to use the product with a Peugeot or Citroen, you are going to have to have it as a secondary radio installed on your front console but the stock one will still not work as a radio.This is because these cars' trip computers are controlled by their stock radio headunits, thus to be able to use the trip computer, u mustn't remove the stock headunit + install the sony right under it and use the sony as your radio while u use the first one as the trip computer controller.
ok, i guess i messed up with the review :D

Does exactly what I wanted of it.

Easy to install, good crisp sound, and reads flash drives quickly. I like the way you can shuffle between either folders or whole device too.

Once unit is set up as you want, there doesn't really seem to be much need for the remote controller.

9/10