Mazda 3 head unit…yawn.

I spend most of my days in my Mazda 3 driving between appointments and I no longer kept my library of CD’s stored in my Mazda as it was inconvenient, took too much space and eventually the CD’s would end up scratched and unreadable.

Instead I was listening to my music, podcasts, audiobooks from my iPhone.  Not to mention that I have a Sirius XM satellite radio subscription [insert the Babba-Booey Bomb here: “Babba-Booey!  Babba-Booey!  Howard Sterns penis!”].  All these new options led to my interior filled with cradles, windshield mounts, cigarette lighter outlet multiplier, FM transmitters and countless cords to make it all work.

So a couple of years ago I swapped out the factory head unit on my 2005 Mazda 3 with an Alpine iDA-x305 to eliminate all the clutter.  But thanks to Apple and Andriod, who have spurred innovations on how we consume media, we have a new problem.

Thanks to tablets and mobile OS’s new sources of media seem to pop up almost daily in the form of apps.  Not even the most hightech and expensive of these aftermarket headunits can keep up with all these new options. My opinion is that there isn’t a single head unit that actually lives up to my expectations (which aren’t that high) of how reliably it should operate.

The Solution:

Why have a head unit, that truthfully, tend to be buggy, expensive, sluggish and unimpressive after a short period of time.  Why not just install an iPad Mini in the dash of your Mazda3 and let it be your removable head unit?

The first video actually shows YouTube user DavePioneer, giving a tour of his Ipad Mini install on his 2010 Mazda 3.

The second video from Youtube user Soundmancaraudio, shows how they actually built-in an Ipad Mini into a Chrysler 300.

What are you waiting for?  Run out to Best Buy and get yourself an iPad Mini with 4g already!

httpvh://youtu.be/4blK8Vj_N1w

httpvh://youtu.be/j7oFwrERQCM