Alpine CDA 9853R Review

Overall Rating

Sound quality
Connections
Sub Woofer Controls

User interface
Reliability

I previously had a Kenwood CD/MP3 player in my old car but when I got a new car I decided to upgrade to this relatively high level CD/Receiver.

The sound quality is great and the Alpine CDA 9853R has plenty of connections for amps and inputs which is why I bought it. The problem is that compared to the Kenwood I found the controls very difficult to learn and not at all intuitive. There is not an obvious way to any particular function, you need the book in one hand for even quite simple tasks.

The 'Glidetouch' feature works reasonably well but it is too easy to select a menu item when you are actually trying to 'glide' along it.

More moaning I'm afraid but the radio reception is poor compared to the Kenwood too. I've got a crappy internal aerial in my (superb) Volvo and the Kenwood works well with it but the Alpine keeps losing reception. Admittedly I live in the wilds of Wales and I haven't read the manual properly regarding reception so I may be able to improve it later.

The final insult is that two weeks after installing it the display started failing and would only come on once the thing was warmed up. It's gone back and I am currently waiting to hear from Car Audio Direct (who collected the broken one very quickly) what they are going to do about it. In the mean time I'm back on the Kenwood and it's working fine.

Members' Comments onDr Crinkle's Review

• bmw e30 on 9th Mar 2008

  I found this review helpful because i too had a Kenwood minidisc player,amp and 12inch sub in my old car, and my new car came with the alpine unit and amp and 12inch sub, and i just cant seem to get it to sound as good, you can easily get lost in the process of trying to alter something, and something simple like altering the bass-on the kenwood you press the audio button and its there, just press up or down to alter. The alpine you have to press the menu button for 2seconds, select the eq setting and alter each frequency(either set in 5 or 7band graphic equiliser mode) from -6 to +6 to get the required bass setting, then press function to bring up the choice of where to save, 1-6 and then hold down the selected button, eg 3 for 2seconds till it says its saved it in that preset. then hold menu 2seconds to come out of it. All the time you cannot alter the volume until you have held that menu button down, so if theres a quiet or loud part of the song your stuck with it!
  I would say its a good stereo but with so much adjustment and menus in menus its just pointless. and detracts from the user friendlyness big time. Nice looking, sounds ok, has lots of features but is a victim of its own success. im going back to kenwood.