Installation and Good Review of Android car dvd player GA5166

Today I’d like to share a customer’s good review of Android car dvd player GA5166 for BMW E53. He bought black US imported 2002 3.0I BMW and installed Android car dvd player GA5166.

In his car there was a stock Business CD + standard MID (radio + BC and no working pixels in the MID) installed with no DSP amp , no navigation unit and CD changer in the rear boot. The only thing located in the rear is the standard BMW / Alpine AMP, which works fine.

After quite some extensive research the last month, he decided that the needs minimum requirement would be something like this:

 

- A head unit with large touch screen

- support for reverse (backup) camera

- bluetooth support ( music, phone etc )

- navigation

- Not to expensive

 

After some research and learning all about head units possibilities and the fuzz with having DSP amp's and navigation unit's in back.

 

The list extended to these requirements as well:

- can bus support (ie. support for the steering wheel buttons)

- OEM likeness and fit nicely in the E53 interior/dash.

- And finally: support to add more software later as I wish.

 

In the end I was looking at these units:

- Avin Avant-2

- Dynavin E39 D99 Android unit

- Eonon GA5166

 

As he is on tight budget and is not "afraid" of taking a chance, he went ahead and ordered the cheaper Eonon GA5166 unit with required harness and license plate reverse cam directly from Eonon. Despite the bad reputation the Eonon company have and all the complaints I found about their head units and their support on different online forums.

However experience with communication with Eonon before ordered the unit, was flawless. Eonon always answered e-mails fast and relevant to his questions. The personal experience with Eonon is good, the unit however will need to be tested over time before I conclude anything.

 

So couple days ago the the unit arrived with Fedex from Hong Kong (shipment took 5 days from HK to Norway).

The unit was well wrapped with a waterproof seal and bubble plastic. Everything was supplied as described on the Eonon site, except for one important thing NO INSTALLATION GUIDE at all. Not a single piece of paper in the box, what a bummer I tought "there goes Plug and Play install". However as I'm a geek and like to fiddle with things, I decided to give it a try. I looked into bookmarks about installing a head unit in E53. And I made a "installation guide" of installing the unit.Its a lot of info about installing head units to BMW online, however it does take time gather all the bits and pieces. Then to test out and validate the info.

However I have admit that this is the first time I've done something like this on a car, but I have been building computers, messing with electronics in his boat and home. So he have some very basic understanding of eletronics and signal wires.

So this is what he did:

 

Note: These steps worked for me, they might not work for you, he did a lot of fiddling/research/testing/learning to get to these steps.

 

1. Remove the old head unit + cd player (lots of good info here on xoutpost about this task).

2. Installation of the Eonon unit:

- wire up the GPS box. He pulled from drivers side window in between the dash and the door. In the room underneath the  steering wheel Up in the dash into head unit.

- connect the large harness to the bmw harness (the white plug from the mid is not used at all, some have reallocated the MID to glove department.)

- connect blue AMP-CON to BLUE AMP-CON otherwise you will not get sound in the speakers.

- connect orange REVERSE to orange REVERSE to activate support for reverse cam.

- connect the radio antenna

He assumed one should connect blue ANT to blue ANT as well to feed a "turn on" and power to antenna. However this doesn't work for me and

he still have poor radio reception. Its working ok, but not perfect.
- connect the USB cabel ,he pulled this cable down to astray.

- connect the CAM in for backup cam ( its two cables labeled with this, the backup cam is the one with 1 RCA plug)

(- connect the CAM IN, AUD L + AUD R if you plan to have a dash cam as well)

(- connect the ipod cable if you plan to use ipod)

Good things:

 

- Uses CoPilot as navigation, works great and is currently fav nav app (google maps and other android navigation apps probably works good as well).

- Radio is OK, just bad reception.

- Internet works great tethering via iphon

- Bluetooth calling works great, including searching in address book.

He just need to install a better microphone. The one on the unit, is not good enough.

- Playing music from phone to unit with bluetooth works great.

- The unit looks OEM and fits quite well in the design of the interio

- He tested a few apps from play market, they all works fine. The unit works good as an Android tablet as well.

I test "Ok google", that worked fine and is pretty nice while driving.

- CD/DVD plays fine, however I use the Spotify App for music.

- Steering wheel buttons works good.

 

Summary:

If the Eonon had arrived with installation instructions, the installation part would have been a more fun task. The unit performs quite well and works as expected. I have not played to much yet with the software and the android apps on it. The backup cam works good, is not exactly HDTV picture but good enough. The GPS get a fix quite fast (almost instant), so GPS / Navigation works very good. Sound is clear and similar to the standard head unit.

 

Do you also take interest in Android car dvd player? Eonon provides steady high-quality car DVD GPS and Android Car DVD Player with competitive price. With 13 year history, Eonon is very popular around the world with great fame in both amazing products and good customer service.