AVH-W4500NEX 7" Capacitive Touchscreen, Double Din – Wireless & Wired Apple CarPlay & Android Auto, Bluetooth, CD/DVD, SD Card, USB, Backup Camera, HD Radio, SiriusXM, FLAC, Hi-Volt RCA

This thing is awesome with all its features and options plus "Apple Car Play" is amazing! First and foremost, on my Chevy Cobalt the wire harness is the (GMCOL11 Peripheral GMLAN Warning Chime and Radio Interface) it's old, from 2009. They have similar ones with newer tech to assist with Onstar and such, so make sure you get the correct harness to support Onstar. Also do your due diligence when it comes to research on car system functions to work on your unit. Look up "Maestro" for your specific unit and or Vehicle. (My review is specific to Chevy Cobalt) My first experience wiring the unit is to remove the wire harness from the car and wire everything together in the house. Then come to the car with the wire harness first and make room in the dash area where the radio goes by removing the three screws, cutting the plastic directly in the center and pushing on and bending back the metal brace (Do all this Inside the dash area where the radio goes) After you've done this attach the wire harness making sure you can tuck everything in there towards the bottom half of the dash area as to leave room for the radio. If for some reason your radio stops working, (No power) it just might be the red "ACC Power" wire this happened to me so all I did was remove that wire from its wire harness connection and added a 12" piece of wire and ran it thru the dash area does to the fuse box located on the passenger side foot board and with a fusible link attached it to the "Power windows 2A fuse connection. No issue since. UPDATE! (Also, updated the name for the wire harness, look above) I have marked the areas that need cutting with asterisks, and the three screws that need removing with three stars, also that metal you see is what you should push with something like a pipe or hammer and bend it as to make room for the back of the radio. (Also pay close attention to the fuse box picture.)

AWESOME head unit!!! No regrets buying this Pioneer AVH-W4500NEX. I have an Apple phone and it pairs wirelessly as soon as I turn on the truck. This replaced an older Pioneer so installation was basically unplug and re-plug the connectors. Maybe a 10 minute job. The customizable splash screen is great, my wife loves that it shows our favorite wedding picture when it boots up. HD radio and DVD player are fantastic. Dual cameras just like my older unit. Once you have had a front camera it is like a necessity. Customizable display light intensity is very nice. Sound quality is great even with the 14 year old speakers. I have nothing bad to say about this head unit other than high price. Get what you pay for! And here on Amazon this was $150 less than Cru+chf!eld. Update 11/25/2019: I took a four trip and at 3 hours playing a CD while using the navigation the screen darkened slightly and would not respond to any touch or button press. I disconnected the iPhone from the USB and the unit returned to normal except it would not show the Bluetooth as available but all other functions besides the map worked correctly. I had to use my phone standalone to get to my destination. On the way back it worked the entire 4+ hours tethered to the phone and without the CD playing. I now believe it just overheated. The ejected CD was very hot to the touch. During the trip it was really nice to press the mic button and say find so and so. It would find the requested person's address from my phone which amazed my passenger who owned a new Lexus which didn't do this.

Great device. I enjoy all of the features. However, just before the four year mark the internal SD card crapped out causing the screen to error (flicker white and stay stuck on the startup screen). I had to remove the internal SD card and install a new one with the proper OEM files. The factory installed SD card is cheap. While researching the issue I found this is a common problem for this model. This is ridiculous because it is an expensive device. Update-- Unit works again after installing a new SD card programmed with the software. The fix was not difficult, but for the price you should not have to be technician for the day. I would not buy this item again or recommend. Update-- Even after the new SD card and a high-end usb-c cable the connectivity of this device with Android Auto is still glitchy. I have to power down and power back up often for Android Auto to properly connect to my phone. Do not buy.

I have now spent a few days enjoying this significant upgrade in my 2017 Highlander and love it. I got this specifically for the Wireless CarPlay and it has functioned flawlessly. I was also concerned that I might lose my backup camera lines but this Pioneer model has the option to add its own lines if you add a backup camera, or keep the factory moving lines (which I did). I installed this unit myself using the Maestro RR and honestly while there is some wire connecting that some may find challenging, the whole process in the Highlander is not difficult if you enjoy a good DIY project. Lots of wires, lots of parts to buy in addition to the head unit (budget about $200 extra between the dash kit, maestro, and adapters). But the headunit itself is solid, the screen is not capacitive but from what I've heard those are more glare prone and fingerprint prone and this one is really quite good. Better than I expected actually. If you are on the fence between the 8500 and the 4500...get this one.

It's a decent unit value for money is alright feels a bit on the expensive side for what you have after installing and deal with the interface and setup. It works there is a lot of remarks how after a year or two it destroys itself I read them bought it anyway because I have always had good luck with pioneer. Now it's only been a few months still works well but will re evalute in a year or so to tell if it's still running. As for setup......jeezus what a pain the interface as easy as they tried to make it was a nightmare for Android I can't tell you how many times I had to re install android auto on the phone or restart the phone or restart the deck unit, shutting it off and then on changing settings. That truly was a horrible experience but I pushed through and it was done. I've never had a issue like that before with any of my phones or any of my other pioneer head units before truly horrible. But the install hardware and wire wise went fine and smooth so I took it as is what it is. Now one thing I need to mention is I only bought this unit for wireless android auto. And well that doesn't work and after many hours of dealing with just that what they don't tell you is if your phone doesn't support Android version 11 or better it won't work wirelessly. So now if I want to use that I need a new phone... Figures. The wired android auto does work and as mentioned before after a horrible time with install and just absurd amount of time it does work and works great. Now I'm not a apple person but your can definitely feel the deck unit feels more engineered towards apple and Android feels like a after thought. My friends I phone works perfect interface is smooth and took maybe five minutes. Android auto is glitching and took a miserable amount of time to just get working. Now as for additional information it does make stock speakers sound better the options for music is fantastic the back up camera interface is great video quality is smooth. Unfortunately I will say this unit gets the job done by no means do I feel I got a fair value of item to how much I paid. There is a lot of room for improvement on this unit. Very disappointed with all the small not mentioned catches to wireless android auto not working because of this and only works with these phone models or the mirroring option not working for this ect ect. What really ticks me off the most to avoid all these problems it should say you should either have a new apple phone or a new Google Nexus or other phone like a new galaxy and you wouldn't have the interface issues I had to endure. If that information was presented to me prior to purchase I would of gone with a different model and possibly a different manufacturer. Now in the end it does everything I want it to, it does work and sound amazing, but not gonna lie I do feel a little cheated in the end with how much of my time was wasted and how information specific about this unit should of been advertised how you would say more specific and truthful opposed to a very general oh it works with Android phones and gives you Android wireless and that's it opposed to what I ran into and hours of reading and looking up things led me to find out infact this head unit isn't the best choice for me and what I currently had at the time of ordering. Just my experience with this unit hope it helps people avoid the same issues.

Came to this after trying out the JVC KW-M845BW that was available at a significant discount. The JVC interface is a bit more intuitive than the Pioneer one esp. switching between Android Auto and Weblink. In the JVC, they appear as separate apps that you can switch between in a app drawer along with others like Tuner, Pandora, and Spotify, while on the Pioneer it is a switch in the setup of the smartphone and so you have to keep going back to the setup screens (they do have favorites to make it a tad easier). Pioneer doesn't seem to have the concept of apps, just sources. The HD tuner on the Pioneer makes a huge difference (Seattle area) and I would definitely recommend folks living in urban areas to not compromise on this as you cannot get the additional HD channels using a regular radio. The sound quality is a notch above what the JVC was. There is no dedicated Spotify control mode, through Android Auto provides access through it if you launch it from the phone first. Screen quality is about the same in this price range - considerable glare and fingerprint magnet, but otherwise functional. Wireless android auto still does not work with non-google phones, but this is somewhat moot if you plan to use Weblink which only works through the wired connection. From what I can gather the W4500NEX improves on the W4400NEX in the following ways: * Standard Weblink vs. Pioneers AppRadio * Better FM reception (Supertuner® IIID) *Rear camera parking assistance grid lines are back The specs for 4500 list Miracast as a new feature, but both 4400 and 4500 seem to support both Miracast (wireless projection only) and MirrorLink (older tech in older phones, but lets you both wirelessly project to you deck screen and use its touchscreen to control the phone). When installing double check that you are able to remove and put back the detachable interface. Parking brake bypass works OK by connecting the light green parking brake wire to ground and doing an additional step on the screen (check out youtube videos). On the whole the upgrade is marginal even when compared to the older W4200NEX which you can get at a significant discount. Update 12/9/2019: I updated my Huawei Mate 20 Pro to Android 10 and wireless android auto works out of the box. Unfortunately, this disables internet for apps on the phone itself as the wifi connection to the unit doesn't have internet and android apps do not appear to automatically switch to mobile data if wifi remains connected. Apps connecting through android auto do have access to internet.

I love this. It have a bunch of options. I'm not able to use all features on my car because it's old. I decided to buy it because you can connect the phone wirelessly and use android auto. The sound is just amazing. Now I have a great bass and I don't really need a sub. At the beginning I didn't like the screen, but now I like it because you can ajust the angle and avoid the glare so you'll able to see the screen perfectly. It's a little bit a expensive. When you compare with others you can get better prices over ther but, I bought it because I can connect my phone wirelessly and I like that. It came with a GPS antenna but, that's only to let the system know the veh is moving. You're not able to use the map if the location on your phone is off. I'm very happy with my purchase.

I've owned this product for 2 1/2 years, so far is has worked well and sounded great, but I highly recommend that you don't buy this and I will spend the rest of my time explaining why. This product has essentially been abandoned by Pioneer with no firmware updates available. The firmware available on the Pioneer website ends with the 4400NEX which is not compatible since that has a different touchscreen. This unit was not made to update through iOS or Android apps. Pioneer support offers no options to upgrade the firmware and will not confirm if a version even exist past V1.01. This is sad since the OS for this device is stored on a low quality SD card, if you take off the face of the unit you will find it right next to where you can normally stick an SD card with music ect. But anyone intimate with running a raspberry pi off an SD card will tell you that is not a great option for longevity. Eventually the card will wear out and corrupt and there goes your OS. So it does not take much searching on the web to find a number of examples of this happening, with the only option being to buy a new SD card with the OS pre-loaded on it from a guy in Russia (maybe the US now) and using that until the next time it goes out. Which will also break your idatalink stuff, probably permanently. A lot of people have been saying they have gotten 9 months to a year out of the unit before this happens, so I have been lucky but this vehicle is also not my daily driver. The bluetooth module in this device is also not compatible with the iPhone 14. So you can't connect a iPhone 14 to the unit to set up wireless CarPlay. I don't know if the 15 is any different, and it may have been possible to restore the functionality with a firmware update... if Pioneer ever decided to do one, and make it available to you to do the update. Also the price has increased a large amount, I purchased this at $695 and it has now increased to $899. So while I am not going to offer a suggestion on what to get instead, I will just say to avoid this one. Get something that is currently supported and receiving updates. Now that these head units are smart devices of their own receiving manufacturer updates to keep features up to date and compatible with new phones coming out will be an issue us older stereo guys never thought would really be an issue. *Waves cane*

Everything about the product is working as advertised. If it fits your automobile, I recommend it.

Great item but I notice it started acting up after a year. It would randomly reboot. Somtimes freeze.

Good product