Hi,

Right I am hoping my new FL OCT VRS will be built this week and soon in my hands, now i have been looking around at the possibility of replacing the standard Head unit and have come across these options now I hope you wont mind helping me out with some advice and experiences if you have any with the below units?

Option 1 : fit a Columbus from ebay with a fiscon kit for blue tooth, now this seems to be the most expensive option as I would still maybe have to add an MDI kit onto it too for my ipod at £299 but my questions on this option are:

1, the hard drive that is in built on the Columbus can you use that to store music on and how well does it work?

2, Will the parking sensor diagram and A/C picture still work?

Option2 : Zenec ze nc2010 at £899( I like this option as it adds my IPod and everything in one)

Now I have watched a youtube video on this in an OCT VRS and it seemed to look good displaying the parking sensor diagram and A/C picture but has anyone got one/seen or heard one for real and if so what are they like?

Option 3: Pioner Avic f9110bt again at £899

I like Pioneer the sound is usually good and again this one i can plug my ipod into but I had a simular one of these before and the interface was soooooo slow, so again does anyone have one of these and do they display the parking sensor and A/c pictures?

Many thanks for your help

Paul

I have bought a Columbus and Fiscon kit for my FL when it eventually arrives. £275 for Columbus and £300 for Fiscon kit (I got a bargain Columbus that wasn't working correctly but I have fixed it). Don't forget you can get £200-£300 on Ebay for your Bolero unit to recoup some cash if you wish to..

To answer your Q's, yes it will display parking and heater visuals (Your car will need coding with VCDS, very easy though) You can put tunes on the hard drive and it works great. Couple the hard drive with a 32GB SDHC card in the slot and you dont need MDI, My Ipod stays in the house and is redundant in the car.

I can't comment on the other 2 but hopefully someone else can to help you. I only ever considered the Columbus as I want the new car to stay, look and feel OEM. I've had one in another car and it does everything I need, and does it very well.

Edited 18 April, 201016 yr by Keith Lard

I can't provide a lot of help I'm afraid, but I'm in a similar position - thinking of a nav/ipod/bluetooth device and wondering what would be the best route to go. And like you, I was looking at the RNS510 with Fiscon and wondering if I could justify that amount of money, esp when it seems you can't do proper post-code searches on the RNS510 (i.e. 5 digits only). Seems the RNS510 is hellish expensive if you buy from VW/Skoda...but looks like you can pick up cheaper units on eBay etc.

I've not seen the Zenec in the flesh but have spent quite a while researching it and it does seem to be one of the best non-VAG ones available for integrating with the car (i.e. parking sensors, MFD, air con, etc). I emailed someone on a VW forum who'd posted that he'd got one and he was very pleased with it. They also do firmware upgrades via their website so you can keep it up to date.

There are cheaper options available from China (Witson, TimelessLong) that offer very similar functions for less than half the price of the Zenec, including Freeview/DVB-T....though there are those who say there's a good reason why they're cheaper! The interface on the Zenec is fairly slick, whereas the Chinese ones look more like Windows 3.11! Not sure if they fully integrate with the MFD either (some claim to) though they do look very similar to the RNS510 if you like the OEM look. They also run Windows CE so you can load up your choice of nav software which is quite useful, plus you can run other Windows CE stuff on them (if you have the inclination!)

Be v interested to know what you end up going for...

Having had both an RNS510 (now sold) and a Chinese unit (Timelesslong) I would say the OE Skoda units are very poor value for money.

To some extent it depends what you want to do with the unit. Sound quality on the RNS is nothing special, the Chinese unit is little worse, if at all. The build quality is also good, with very accurate moulding and a good standard of finish. The big downfall of the RNS units is their navigation facility. It feels very crude after using a TomTom or iGO8 (on a Chinese unit). It only does 5-digit postcode and map updates are slow to come through and very expensive. For comparison I already have Q4 2009 maps running on my Chinese unit's iGO8. Up to date maps are very important to me.

The Chinese units also play SD cars (with 16GB capability and 100% reliability and robustness who needs to use CD's or a hard drive for in-car music?).

The downfall of the Chinese unit is poorer FM reception (less sensitive than the RNS, which is excellent) and a clunky interface, which works OK but looks dated. I don't know of one as yet that inferfaces with the MFD, although they do apparently work with the steering controls.

Overall I would defintely buy another Chinese unit.