Alpine ine vw z928e

[Brew]

Anyone here installed one of these:
Alpine Electronics of Australia

They are expensive but offer a huge screen.

Any thoughts?

[The_Hawk]

That's about the price that Pioneer charge for their AVIC or VW charge for their RNS510. Screen size is nice and all but hardly a factor in what it costs them make these things (screens are cheap).

Reading up on the unit itself, it integrates with the MFD for radio/multimedia and it has built in bluetooth which is a great thing for older vehicles that didn't get it as standard (which also integrates into the MFD).

My big question is about the quality of the mapping software and the maps.
How often are the maps updated??
Does it have spoken street names?
But more importantly to me, Does it support school zones, red light camera's etc? (edit: apparently yes to red light and speed at least)

You know... basic stuff that a $100 portable unit does (hell half the portable units on the market come with free maps for multiple years or even life these days!)

[Gumpf]

I have the older Alpine unit and it supports red-light and fixed speed cameras. If you are one 1km over the speed limit approaching a camera it kills the music and gives an audible alarm till you equal or drop under the posted speed. Mine doesn't do spoken streets and you can tell it to notify you of school zones if you want it to.

Map updates are the negative. You can update them but on mine you need to pay for the updates. They may be offering lifetime updates these days however.

[The_Hawk]

I saw something about three years free updates but I don't know if it was in Australia or not as I looked at a bunch of things.