I've had one of these $90 eBay alternatives in my '04 Accord Euro for a couple of weeks now (eg this one from sonia831109). I'm very happy with it, the audio is excellent quality. No hissing, good bass, etc -but I'm no audiophile.Originally Posted by Speed_Rac3r
When plugged in it simulates being a CD changer so you can control it from the head unit by selecting CDC. Playing from an SD card, CD1 is the root directory & CD2/3/4/etc are the first 8 subdirectories it finds. I think you can have 99 songs in each directory. The 9 CD, 99 song per CD limitation is on the part of the head unit's display capabilities. The most I've had is maybe 60 songs in one directory which worked OK. Swapping from song to song, cd to cd is near instantaneous, certainly faster than a regular CD, so I don't see that delay issue someone reported earlier. It has memory, so next time you start it up it carries on from where it left off.
Plugging my phone in to the line in jack (and pressing "RPT" on the head unit so I can hear it) also gave excellent quality. It's great to be able to listen to podcasts & internet radio while driving.
My main purpose of getting it was to use it to connect up my Tomtom. I have the audio connected and also the USB just to power the Tomtom. Unfortunately the 5v coming out of the units USB socket isn't clean as it could be so when I do use it to power the Tomtom while listening to audio there is a noticeable whine (which I don't get if I unplug the 5v). I am going to try building some sort of filter (I'm an electronics engineer), make a separate clean 5v feed or as a last resort go back to using the cigarette lighter.
Lastly the quality of the build is fine, pretty good for something from China bought on eBay. Fitting it was easy as any other. I notice Honda haven't left much clearance around the connector on their head unit, so you have to make sure the cable is folded out the way pretty tightly. I put the unit in the glove box as I didn't want to drill any holes anywhere, and this works well for me.
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