My experiences with the Dynavin 99+ and Enco 146

Now that I have both the Enco 146 (WinCE) and the new Dynavin 99+ I thought that it might help to do a quick comparison... I have the Enco in my 330i and the Dynavin in the M3.

Enco unit...
Although the initial cost is cheap, the TCO may not be worth it for some. If you have a problem with the unit you will have to deal with the manufacturer in China. And in a majority of the documented encounters haven't inspired any real confidence in getting problems resolved in a timely or satisfactory manner. Knock on wood that my unit just exhibits the "normal" Enco "features" .
Now for the Enco features.

The radio side's volume is completely out of sync with the GPS side. GPS, discs, bluetooth all require normal volume settings (around 20), but swith to the radio and watch out... A setting of anything more than 3 will burst your eardrums. The "fix" is to set the equalizer to Jazz and then it comes closer to the norm.

Every time you start the car (and the HU) the HU randomly picks a different source. So just listening to the radio is not a set it and forget it feature... I found hitting the mode button will set the source to radio (most of the time).

The unit occasionally rewrites startup files on the GPS SD card and changes the look of how the GPS starts and runs... And don't hit the red power button on the screen. You'll have to remove power from the unit to get the GPS back.

The WinCE version is Chinese... Do NOT hit Yes to "Do you want to revert back to system defaults" unless you're up on you Chinese...

And my unit has reverted back to the (what I call) the single source mode. The unit now starts up to the radio, but to change sources, one must go back to the main menu and select the GPS or other source. And it will not respond to any attempt to turn the unit off. It eventually goes back to the normal random mode... When you get tired of this it's hard reset time again...

So it's a cheap HU that will do most of what's expected of it, but too many issues for me to consider ever purchasing another... The unit does work, but the nits really detract from the user's enjoyment...

Hence the Dynavin in the M3... I was pleasantly surprised to find tha the WinCE version of the D99+ was less expensive than the original. Still more than the Enco, but one has to consider what their time and aggravation is worth. I ordered it from J&T (Jeff)... The unit got here before the car did!!!

The look is the same and the installation is the same, but the Dynavin is leaps and bounds ahead of the Enco. I had an "issue" with the radio side... I emailed Jeff and he had me disable a setting that I shouldn't have enabled and Badda-boom bada-bing tit was working as advertised...

Speed in getting the unit... J&T win...

Customer support... Goes to the J&T win column.

Volume... No matter what the source... The volume is NORMAL! Whoo hoo... I'm almost giddy with joy... Dynavin...

The interface is better IMHO... And access to system setting are easier and far more complete.

The GPS s/w the same (iGo Primo) so that's a wash (kinda) assuming that you've downloaded it to you Enco. Which happened to be a royal PITA. It's a licensed version with the Dynavin and you get the added benefits that you won't get with an unlicensed version.

So, the win goes to the Dynavin. Yeah it costs a bit more, but it works like it's supposed to. I don't have to constantly punch buttons just to get the radio... And I'm betting that if I have a problem with the Dynavin, it will be a lot easier to get resolved with Jeff than with our friends in the Far East... And cost less too.

It's all in what you want. If you want an transparent install and usage, get the Dynavin... If you like to constantly fiddle around with setting and trying guess what the unit will do next and love challenges, then get the Enco.

If I sound like a Dynavin fanboy, so be it... I think that the Dynavin is a better value even if the Enco is cheaper...

YMMV

Cool story.

I see that Parrot does the BT on the 99 and 99+. Is this solely for the adress book or does the Dynavin use the dual (noice cancelling) microphone and software as found in the Parrot MKI series. I really like my Parrot MKI9000 and people I am speaking to do not even know I am driving most of the time. The Parrot also has very good voice recognition and voice calling and answering which is very important to me since I do not have steering wheel controls on my ZCP.

thanks for posing this, unfortunately there are too many people who are under the impression that the knock off units are "clones" and think they are saving money by going the China Direct route.....as you found, they are NOT the same.....and you get what you pay for. I think the threads on this forum speak for themselves but its good to have some 'side by side' comparisons.