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 :Well executed design with some unfortunate shortcomings
I can't figure the aftermarket receiver shopper out at all. Where do the market forces come from that dictate people want nothing but silver faceplates with multicolour, animated, flashing neon displays? The only company that even makes a matte black finish unit with plain buttons is Blaupunkt, and they didn't work for other reasons, so I bought this Sony. (Incidentally, style matching was not the most important thing to me, but I'm surprised at how hard it was to even come close to achieving it in my '85 535i with black interior. The L600X does match perfectly, though.)
The button/key setup is very good, with the main use buttons being tightly clustered around the volume knob. For some reason, though, only half of them are illuminated, not including the often used |<< and >>| buttons. Also, the process for cycling through and choosing menu items is rather cumbersome, involving pushing as many as four different buttons multiple times to get what you want. For example, you have to hit Menu, and then cycle through the options, then press another button to enable or disable it, just to toggle LOUD on or off. Not rocket science, but not as easy or intuitive as it should be. As for the display, it's a nice, somewhere-between-simple-and-gaudy two-tone job. The white part is easy to read at all times during the day, but the red clock - forget it!! Even the dimmest amount of sunlight makes the small red display impossible to read. CD-text reading is a nice extra I'm discovering for the first time, and the readout for balance, fader, etc. is large and easy to read. One minor gripe is that they clearly use the same face for the tape-version of this player - the unused MTL, Dolby, and other tape-related symbols are easy to read in any light, which I find tacky.
Regarding sound, I'm not even close to driving the amp as far as it will go, and it's plenty strong - at least for extended casual listening. That's fortunate, because the L600X only has one set of RCA outputs (rear). For ($$$) I think 2 sets should be a given. And why do they always make single outputs for the rear?? Other stuff: It loads and spits out discs really fast, and starts playing quickly, too. It skips on discs that don't usually skip on me, but not often enough to be a real bother. Radio reception is exceptional, pulling in stations I have never before heard in the area on any system. The one button for flip down is clever - better than other decks with one for flip down to eject and another to detach the face. The remote is nice and small, and has the attenuate button that is sorely lacking on the faceplate. Who uses these things in everyday driving, I don't know, but it works well if you want to use it.
All in all I'm pretty happy with this Sony. It looks good in my dash, it sounds good to my ears, and I can adjust most of it on the fly without crashing my car. A few minor design fixes and I would give it that last star.
 
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