BOSS Audio Systems 616UAB Car Stereo With Bluetooth - Single DIN, MP3, USB, Aux-in, AM/FM, No CD DVD Player

I very rarely write reviews but this deserves one. I wasn't expecting much when I purchased this but, what a great stereo for the price. I have been into car audio for over 20 years and have installed countless stereo's. I upgrade from an older Pioneer head unit that did not have Bluetooth connectivity, only aux in. This Boss stereo blows the Pioneer away in sound quality and power. Bluetooth connectivity works great and connects to my phone automatically every time with no issues. Has bass/trebble balance/fade controls, along with a couple preset eq curves. People that are complaining about screen brightness in other reviews just need to turn up the brightness in the settings menu. I have no problem seeing the screen in full sun. Stereo looks and feels of much better quality than the price suggests. I love how shallow it is as well. It makes installation a breeze. My only complaint would be the sound quality doesn't seem quite as good when just listening to FM radio. However I only listen to talk shows in the morning on FM. All of my music I listen through Bluetooth on my phone and it works great for that. I have only used the stereo's built in microphone a couple times to call my wife's phone and she can hear me just fine. However she says there is a slight echoing on her side of the call like she can hear everything she is saying to me. This could be because I have had the stereo up pretty loud in the calls and is maybe getting feedback into the mic? Not really a problem for me because I didn't buy it for hands free callling. I have it installed in a 2003 Chevy S10 on stock speakers and it sounds great. So much better than the stock stereo and the old Pioneer I replaced it with. If you are looking for a budget stereo with reliable Bluetooth, buy this stereo. You will not find a better one in this price range.

I bought a dash-mounted CarPlay screen but the headphone jack on the aftermarket radio in my truck didn't work. I got this budget stereo so I could use that functionality, and it works perfectly. It's a budget, no-frills model, which is reflected in the price. I can't speak to the longevity, but I definitely recommend this if you need a cheap stereo.

I've been using this for just under a month now, and I love this radio. For the price I paid I'm really pleased, read down below for my reasons not to give it 5 stars. Here's some notes on it for anyone that's curious: Bluetooth connects fairly easily with all my devices: Apple iPhone 5s, 5c, Android Galaxy S4, Nexus 7 (2013). For the most part it will connect when turning the radio on, every once in a while I need to go to phone settings and connect (which it will then do instantly). It takes a good 10 seconds for music to start just about every time either way, sometimes I'm ok with waiting, other times I open up the phone/tablet/device and push play to make it go faster. I use PowerAmp on my Android devices and it will play on BT connection, about 8/10 times this works and I don't have to hit play, but if it connects OK and doesn't play the play button on the radio typically suffices to turn on music to whatever was playing last. Note that if you have more than one music app one might catch the BT command over the other. I was testing out Apollo player (CyanogenMOD app) on my Nexus 7 and sometimes it would start playing, and other times PowerAMP would start playing. Now on to it's other features: I have yet to test either the auxiliary plug with anything or the USB with anything, but I have filled up an old 16gb microSD card (and then put it in a microSD to SD adapter), and with the adapter it works great. Music plays instantly and I've taken to using this feature a bit. The player reads ID3 tags from the SD card OK, but not all the time. This is slightly disappointing as everything I have is tagged really well. I am still experimenting with the tags to see which version of ID3 tags works best. I may have to retag everything to get it to read properly, we'll see. SD Card takes quite some time to switch directories, a good 5 seconds or so between directories. The main problem with the SD card is that I originally had about 40 albums in their own folders, and wanted to shuffle the whole card; this did not work. It will only shuffle one directory at a time, which means I can only shuffle one album at a time, blech. I just transferred all the music to the root directory and now it will shuffle OK. The display of tags it does read from the SD card were OK, but when it didn't find Artist / Album / Track Title, it cycles through "Artist:" [then is blank], "Album" [blank again], etc. Then it will display the file name, slowly. Since the screen is pretty small it leaves a lot to be desired. TL;DR: My reasons for 4 not 5 and not 3: Negative: 1) Screen Displays Information Slowly 2) ID3 Tags are hit and miss (for SD) 3) Sometimes takes 5-10 seconds to play music after automatically connecting to bluetooth 4) Won't shuffle entire SD card, only one directory at a time Positive: 1) Hasn't failed to connect to any devices yet 2) Super easy to install 3) Bluetooth play/pause buttons work perfectly 4) Sound is great 5) Who needs a CD player? You still have CDs? Not me.

sounds good works great perfect option for the price!

I don't usually write reviews, however, my experience with this product was so piss-poor that I was compelled to do so. First thing I noticed immediately is that the Bluetooth function is a gimmick. The sound quality is very VERY poor. This was one of the reasons that I purchased it. I had this mad idea in my head that I could stream music from my iPhone while in my car so I can work with playlists depending on my mood. Note that the quality is poor regardless of the actual bitrate of the song. Moving to the SD card slot, the device is extremely particular about how files are arranged and more importantly, named on the card. If the file name is too long or contains characters it doesn't like (but which are legal for the FAT32 naming system) the song won't play. It will just get stuck at that track and do absolutely nothing. I will say that songs that do play via the SD card are of decent quality. The USB slot is a joke. This product is supposed to be compatible with Apple playback devices, including the iPhone, but I have never been able to successfully make a connection. It will charge a device in a pinch, that's all it is good for. The phono port, well it operates as expected, though I think a digital vs analogue connection would provide better sound quality. With all the other various features available, I shouldn't need to resort to the phono port. Now, move to about a week ago, the device began acting erratically. The audio would spontaneously blast to MAX, scaring the &$@! out of me while I am driving. I turn it down back to a decent level when it is safe to do so, and it does it again, except this time, it decided to dial down to ZERO before returning to MAX. It does this every day now. I thought the faceplate contacts were corroded or dusty, so I inspected it, and they were shiny like new. Well they should be since I haven't removed the face since it was installed. I don't listen to the radio so I can't comment on that feature. I don't accept calls while I'm driving, even in hands free mode (neither should you), so I cannot comment on that feature or the quality of the built in microphone. Long story short. Don't buy this unless you want to risk running into the problems that I've faced. Don't buy this if being able to stream via Bluetooth with HIGH quality is important to you. Don't buy this if you want to be able to connect your Apple device via USB. Don't buy this if you want your investment to last longer that two short years. Heck, there are stereo decks made in the 70s and 80s that I've seen that still work and play cassette tapes, for goodness sake! Save your money, spend a little more for something higher quality. Don't do what I did and cheap out to buy this. In this case, price vs quality DOES matter. I'm very disappointed in this product, now I need to buy another deck. (Sigh)

Works good for me have had it in for a couple of months. Sounds good as could stock in my 11 Silverado

Bluetooth connectivity to my iPhone XS Max works fine - no problems pairing and the link appears solid after several hours of testing. I can press the 'volume' knob which gives me immediate access to Siri on my phone. The sound quality is what you'd expect for the price with two caveats. The first is that I haven't found a way to equalize the volume from the various sources. Perhaps this capability exists but I couldn't find it in the instruction pamphlets included in the box. What does this mean? Well, let's say I have the volume adjusted for my iPhone. Now I switch to the radio. Instantly I am deafened by excruciatingly loud music! In more expensive units you can usually adjust the relative volume from each source - radio/usb/aux/bluetooth however this capability appears not to present on the Boss. The display on my unit (and most I've seen reviewed) is annoying and wonky. Annoying because the display features a 'dancing equalizer' graphic which cannot be turned off. It's distracting, adds no value to the auditory experience and the vertical bars often have gaps in them; altogether I would describe this portion of the display as 'a mess'. I may put some back tape over this area of the display. However, what really disturbed me is the heat generated when the unit is actively playing rock music at moderate levels. I am running four, 4-ohm speakers and the sound volume, bass and clarity are very acceptable. However, even at moderate volume (I am old and my ears can't handle loud music) the heat sink on the back of the unit gets too hot to touch. I used an IR thermometer and it indicates the heat-sink is operating at around 75 deg C after 15 minutes of continuous play. During that 15 minute period the current drawn by the player averaged 1.1 Amps meaning the total power consumption was around 14W. To my mind, that's uncomfortably hot and as I mentioned, I didn't have the volume cranked up. The spec sheet indicates 20W RMS x 4CH however I wouldn't dare run it close to this power - my unit was struggling at just 14W combined! A large part of the problem is the heat-sink itself. The heat is concentrated at the center of the unit (behind the amp) and falls off rapidly as you move off-center with the IR thermometer. This suggests conductivity across the heat-sink is poor. Which in turn explains the temperature build up! At this price-point you can't expect too much. The USB port does provide 1A of charging power (USB2.0) and the basic formats (MP3/WMA) seem to work well. The internal microphone is very basic - I would recommend finding a unit with an external, high quality microphone if you want to use hands-free calling over the head unit. I bought this head unit as a stop-gap solution until I could find a better single-DIN media player (at the time of review many of the more desirable units are unavailable here in the USA). Hopefully it will bridge the gap until I can find a quality replacement unit that ticks all the boxes. It isn't dreadful but I recommend you ensure plenty of ventilation around this head unit.

BOSS Audio Car Receiver (No CD/DVD) Model 616UAB | Single Din, Bluetooth, MP3/USB/SD AM/FM, Wireless Remote I have been wanting a Bluetooth enable/compatible car audio head unit for the past several months. Like most everyone else that has a smartphone, I keep my favorite music on a memory card or on the internal storage disk of my phone. The factory installed stereo on my van that I drive for work is AM/FM radio with a standard CD player only. No AUX input and of course no Bluetooth. I finally decided to search Amazon for a new car stereo with at least Bluetooth that wasn't too pricey. I was expecting to have to spend around $100 or so, and maybe if I was lucky I could find something worth having for as little as $75. Low and behold the first item listed in my search results was this little gem: The BOSS Audio systems, 616UAB Bluetooth, MP3 compatible Digital Media, AM/FM stereo receiver. With on-board USB, AUX-in. and SD card reader all integrated with a remote control to go along. Everything I was looking for and then some. All for UNDER $40!!!!! I couldn't believe it when I saw it. I immediately placed the order. Within a week the package arrived and I was ready to bring the work van up to date with the latest technology. Installation was super simple with the assistance of how-to videos posted on other websites. I had the unit installed and working in less than half an hour. I could not believe how loud and clear the music coming from the factory speakers was. The Bluetooth paired with my phone and the controls were as simple as could be. Now I have the capability to make and receive phone calls without having to turn the radio volume down or off completely because now the 616UAB stereo automatically pauses whatever song is playing or switches from the radio station when a phone call is comming through or if you are dialing out. Even if the unit is powered down, when a call is placed or is coming in, the Bluetooth comes to life and the conversation colmes through the stereo speakers. I LOVE THIS PRODUCT!!! I would recommend this to anyone and eveyone. Great quality for such a low price. I decided to upgrade the front door speakers as well since the cost of the head unit was so low. With the BOSS stereo unit, the wire harness purchased seperately to accomodate the after-market stereo, and the upgraded speakers in the front doors I still have less than $70 total invested in my new car audio system. It is as loud as I want and then some and has all the "bells and whistles" I wanted when I decided to make the investment in a new car audio entertainment system.