Dynavin N7 Pro

Decided to finally upgrade my 15 year old E46 M3 and bring it into the 20th century. There are a variety of options, including Chinese Android boxes (some of which have more capability), hacks that put a double-DIN into the sculpted dash (which looks about like what you’d expect), and, for my money, the gold standard, the Dynavin N7 Pro. (I briefly had installed an older N7 with the iLink module, which I got before the N7 Pro was available.) It required relocating the environmental controls using a kit they sell (and giving up the little sunglass compartment, c’est la vie), but was otherwise plug-and-play. Seriously, I’ve done probably a dozen stereo installs into the vehicles I’ve had over the years, and this was by far the easiest. Pictures to come, but, trust me when I say it really looks OEM, and no crimping or soldering required for the install. The wiring harness, etc., just clips in, and you’re up and running.

The only hiccup I had: The steering wheel controls didn’t work initially. Going into the Info screen showed the unit was set for “VW” not “BMW1.” Jeff at J&T is incredibly responsive and helpful, and walked me through going into the factory settings page (from the phone screen, “dial” *123456# and hit the green call button), to change the car type, and I was up and running with full functionality.

There’s still a lot I want to do - change the front speakers for Focal, put in a beefier Class D amp, put in a decent subwoofer that will leave most of my trunk usable (need to be able to load in the occasional full-sized suitcase)... But for now, this thing works amazingly well, integrated perfectly with the factory Harman Kardon amplifier/speaker setup, is crystal clear displaying CarPlay screens using the iLink Pro.

One cool thing it does, that I stumbled across by accident: You can put in thumbnail images for the preset FM radio stations.

Caveats:

• I’m trying to figure out if there’s a better way to name radio stations. When I store a station in a preset, it seems to capture whatever the RDS info is displaying at the moment, so, because I programmed 98.7 during a Honda commercial, it says “Honda” for that station.
• Update: Per Jeff at J&T: “Whatever text is on the screen will be saved so you can try to time it, OR just switch off the channel, then select the preset and immediately hold it down...in other words set the preset immediately after changing to the station....and it will save the frequency number instead of the RDS data.” So that’s what I’ve done.

• The media player seems to only look at ID3v1 tags in MP3 files, and iTunes and other tools seem to populate only the v2 information. So a lot of my ripped music has title information but nothing else.

• CarPlay requires a wired (USB) connection. Newer units are wireless. Dynavin seems to be a bit behind the curve here (until a few months ago, their (pre-“Pro”) CarPlay solution required a separate box that integrated with the N6/N7 units via a composite video feed, which was less than ideal. Still, I’d rather have the flawless OEM looks and integration, and build quality, over a wireless connection - especially since the phone will need to be charging when using most CarPlay functionality (especially GPS) anyway...