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12 of 12 found the following review helpful:
Nice Receiver with Bluetooth and USB for the price May 28, 2009
By W. Robertson
"Rob Robertson"
Somehow I became a JVC man. I started off in 2002 following a recommendation from a friend to get a deck that could read MP3s. Since then I've bought three more decks and always came back to JVC. They tend to have innovative features, such as initially the ability to read MP3s on CDs, and then a front panel USB ports. I really looked at the specs for Sony, Pioneer, Eclipse, and Kenwood, but they never compared feature wise.
So the RD-900 looks good and does a lot: Bluetooth, a USB port and a 3.5mm audio in on the front panel. With the RD-900 I bought the optional HD Radio adapter the KT-HD300. It works great. JVC paired down a lot of gimmicky cruft they had an previous models. You get the choose the color of the display, so you can match you cars lighting and gauges.
There is a front and rear USB port. One has to pick one for use with the tiny BT adapter. If you use USB sticks like me, it make sense to use the BT adapter on the rear. If you prefer to use a small USB hard drive or IPOD in your glove box or console, you might want to route the rear port there and put the BT adapter in the front port.
The HD Radio is cool. I live in a big city so I get good reception. Finding a place to put the HD Radio adapter is a pain. I would rather have bought a unit without a CD player and HD Radio built in.
There are a few nits. No hard radio presets: one has the scroll through a menu. The bluetooth could interact with my Nokia better --- it turns on BT music streaming, but does not turn it off; placing calls should be easier; and when getting an SMS message, displaying it would be nicer than just alerting you that you have one. The fonts could be thicker. A previous JVC I had had that option. The front USB port comes off with the faceplate, which is annoying, cuz now you have to take out the USB stick and put that away when stowing the faceplate.
I can't speak to the iPod or iPhone compatibility.
Oh I just noticed that the LEDs are polarized horizontally, making the display unreadable with polarized sunglasses unless one tilts their head.
A Recommendation:
If you are like me and have all your music on a USB thumbdrive, it becomes quite a pain to remove the thumbdrive when stowing the faceplate. My solution is to find a thumbdrive that minimally extends from the faceplate, and keep it on semi permanently. There are drives and microSDHC to USB adaptors that extend only 5mm or so. Brands to google for are "Eagletec Nano" and "Buffalo 5mm". They come in up to 16GB in size.
UPDATE: JVC has come out with a firmware update for this unit. It supposedly addresses "hands free call quality". It is nice to know that JVC is fixing issues with this device.
I've traded up my Nokia for a Samsung Galaxy S variant running Android. It works flawlessly with the KD-R900.
And one final nit: It would be nice if the unit could pair with two phones simultaneously, so that it would automagically pair with my wife's or my phone when we get in the car.
10 of 11 found the following review helpful:
 Flawed but powerful unit Feb 10, 2010
By Paul Grant
The Good
Bluetooth comes with
dual Usb and JVC link
great microphone
24bit processing
HQ amplifier
strong radio reception
easy iPod/iPhone chrging
switches over your iPhone-iTunes to Bluetooth seamlessly when calling or a call comes in
rotary knob can pause/play
nice phone button easy to locate and use
The Bad
forward/backward key far too small
up/down keys have no functionality on iPhone
scrolling through playlists is painfully slow... Up/down keys should have been used to skip A / B / C and so on
scrolling phone lists is equally painful
faceplate is not motorized
The Ugly
engineers kept the same small sloppy 3 line interface from the 800 model
some info is duplicated unessisarily, like showing 'FM' twice along with a junky radio tower image
too little contrast on-screen by not mixing in any white text with the colour text
font for titles too thin... causes a kind of ghost fade as name streams across
auto setting for brightness level does not apparently work well
they put pink/red buttons at top left which can clash with your main colour
illumination at night can make the Menu and back keys hard to read
useless visual EQ
Recommendtion
flawed unit has Bluetooth and kick-butt sound for under 200 that not even Alpine can touch
due to the poor iPhone/iPod list scolling, you may opt to use your handheld controls for some functions
recommend you mount iPhone/iPod next to unit
if you can wait a year to buy, hopefully JVC will rip off Pioneer and Alpine interfaces on the update
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Can't beat the price May 12, 2011
By Jon
I've had this unit installed in my vehicle for almost a week now. I did a lot of research before purchasing. I'm very satisfied w/ it, and it certainly is the best deck you can find for the price.
Pros: Bluetooth, remote, great sound quality, 30 different display colors to choose from, features for the price.
Cons: Noise quality for bluetooth calls is not very clear for the person on the other end, screen is small and dull, faceplate is a little awkward to attach, overall build quality is OK.
I previously owned a JVC kd-sh55 that I had for over 5 years. It had a brushed aluminum motorized faceplate and a nicer display, but was also $100 more w/ no bluetooth, HD radio capabilities, and the sound quality on the r900 is superior. I use my Android phone to play music through the bluetooth and the sound quality is excellent. I'm going to try to move the mic for the bluetooth away from the door more to see if call quality improves. I would definitley recommend purchasing this unit. If you want a better deck w/ similar features, you will pay $100 more.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 Great unit and works very well Feb 20, 2011
By The Goat
I have owned a number different headunits from Kenwood, Pioneer, Alpine, and Nakamichi-- so I am not naive to what is a great headunit is or can be. This JVC unit sounds very good, has lots of features, and I love the simple integration of my iPod and Bluetooth cell phone. Overall phone calls come in clear and there is no feedback for the caller and it beats the pants off of having to always use my ear piece in the car. The iPod and Bluetooth works directly and seamlessly, just as they should. So far I have yet to find any real downfalls except three. My car has a red/ red-orange gauges and when I use a red color on the display it is just a tad dark during the day, but is perfect at night. The resolution is that during the day you can have a separate color for the day and I use a bright light blue/ white that solves that problem. The next two are not really problems, but more preference. First the front USB should be eliminated and installed as a second rear USB. Next the headphone jack should also be eliminated from the front and installed as a cable from the rear. With those features missing from the front a series of buttons for direct radio station control could be added. BUT... for the price, I cannot complain at all.
I have done everything from streaming Pandora through Bluetooth to playing CD's and listening to the radio. If you are looking for a good radio that has nice features and sounds really good.... go for it. I will be trying to use a USB hub and see if I can use the Bluetooth adapter and iPod on the same rear USB cable at the same time. If it works I will update this review. If not, it really doesn't matter as for less than $200 you can't go wrong.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
great mp3 solution w/o ipod May 23, 2010
By nomotion
this unit has plenty of reviews already so i will be brief. the only reason i bought it was because it was the only one i could find after extensive research that can read 2000 folders and a total of 20000 files. from a usb stick that is, as i refuse to have an ipod, especially if it's just living in my glove compartment. by no means do i have a huge music collection but i want have everything with me. i considered that a pretty basic requirement until i started to look.
so i use a 64Gb stick that is about half full. a typical car stereo would only read 256 folders, only 1 level of sub dirs, max 10000 files, have a strange sorting algorithm, a combination of the above or other limitations. only because it is easier to put an ipod cable in the box then putting some "brain" into the unit.
So as the mp3 part works just fine (as in "as one would expect"- with a 30s loading time) i'm happy to accept some drawbacks that are mentioned in other reviews. Some of them I don't agree with though; the display for example. There are more modern ones out there - but do I need a pic of the cover art? And if you can't read this display - you should probably not be driving a car to begin with...
minus
no easy access to sound settings and only one user setting can be saved
no startup volume setting
putting the panel back on is a little awkward
"front and back usb + built in bluetooth" is not entirely true - one usb port is taken up by the bluetooth adapter. at least it is reasonably small and doesn't stand out too much from the front panel
plus
good sound
BT works well (mic mounted over the door)
easy to use (and reactive) dial
and of course the mp3 capability
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