Blaupunkt Melbourne 120 - In-Dash, AM/FM/MW/RDS/MP3 Mechless Digital Receiver

I have been a digital music only listener for about 15 years now. I have about 35 GB of high quality music in my collection, ripped from CDs that I own and purchased from sites like Amazon MP3 and iTunes.After my Mazda was totalled last year, I picked up an older Subaru station wagon for a daily driver. Compared to the mid-range Alpine stereo and amp I had in my Mazda, the stock stereo in the Subaru was a bit disappointing in audio quality, but what really bothered me about it was it's inability to play MP3 CDs, and it's lack of an aux-in jack. I was reduced to burning my MP3s onto audio CDs in order to listen on the road. Ultimately the CD drive died altogether and I was forced to look for a replacement.In the past, I have been disappointed with many entry-level car stereos due to poor build quality and cheap, gaudy appearance. I came across this unit (the Melbourne 120) while browsing Amazon.com, and I was unable to find much information on it online. Mostly Russian language sites, and my Russian is poor. I liked the understated appearance of the unit though, and I really liked the idea of an SD card slot instead of a CD drive, so I went ahead and ordered it.Installation was pretty straightforward. I used a  Subaru Wire Harness , so I was able to solder everything together ahead of time. The overall length of the Melbourne 120 is significantly shorter than the factory stereo. Because of this and the fact that the antenna jack on the Blaupunkt is on the opposite side of the head unit compared to the stock stereo (factory jack is on the driver's side, Blaupunkt jack is on the passenger's side), I found that the antenna wire wouldn't quite reach and I needed an  18-Inch Antenna Extension Cable  to connect the antenna.The appearance of the unit is quite nice, and it lacks the cheesy gaudiness of many entry-level car stereos. The Melbourne 120 does *not* have a removable faceplate, but it's appearance is (in my opinion) not likely to attract undesirable attention, so I will not ding it's score for this omission. The volume knob is a rotary encoder which feels very firm and not at all sloppy, especially compared to entry-level stereos from other manufacturers. None of the face buttons are loose or sloppy, and they all give a satisfying audible and tactile "click" when pressed. The display is not a dot-matrix display, but a standard segmented display that has a dot-matrix effect applied to it. I find that this effect does improve the legibility of the onscreen text. Overall, the "user interface" portion of the receiver is very good, much better than I expected from something at this price point.The SD card reader works well. The SD card slot is well designed, such that an SD card can be fully inserted into the stereo and the cover replaced, leaving no visual evidence that the card is there. When powering on the stereo with an SD card inserted, the stereo will first scan the SD card, a process that can take anywhere from 2 - 20 seconds depending on the speed of your SD card. I found that the  Samsung Pro Class 10  cards are *much* faster than my cheaper Transcend cards, consistently coming in at the 2-5 second mark regardless of how full the card is. Powering the stereo off, it will remember which MP3 file was playing and what position, so when you turn it back on, it will resume playing from where it left off. When playing MP3 files, the "d pad" on the right of the unit makes it straightforward to find the songs you are looking for. Up/down moves through the folders on the card, left/right moves through files in the current folder.The only real downside to the SD card playback is that the files in a folder are played back in the order that they were copied to the card, rather than track order or alphabetical filename order. The Windows file copy process seems to sometimes randomize the order in which files are copied, which can lead to some frustration. My current solution is to copy the files via the command line with the robocopy command, but I realize that this might be unacceptable to some users. I have elected not to deduct a star for this though, as this limitation seems to be par for the course in car stereos (the USB port on the Alpine stereo in my old Mazda behaved the same way).Audio quality is good. Even without an amplifier, I can turn the music up louder than is comfortable. I have not tried maxxing out the volume, but at 32 out of 50 it is definitely uncomfortably loud. I am using a  Polk Audio DB651s Slim-Mount 6.5-Inch Speaker  in each of the four doors. My biggest complaint is that to change the bass or treble level, you have to go into the audio menu, but since in most cases once these levels are set you won't need to mess with them again, I am again not docking points for this.A couple of additional points. The Melbourne 120 can only play from SD cards and USB sticks that are formatted FAT32. I had a USB stick with some music on it that wouldn't play back, and it turned out the stick was formatted exFAT. Once reformatted FAT32, the stick worked fine. The unit does come with a little remote control, although I cannot fathom why this would be useful. An interesting feature of this stereo is that it can be turned on with the car's ignition turned off, so you can let someone listen to the stereo without leaving the keys in the car. In this mode, the stereo will turn itself off after one hour to prevent draining the battery. Of course, the stereo also turns itself on and off with the ignition key as a normal stereo would.All in all I am very pleased with the Blaupunkt Melbourne 120, and would not hesitate to recommend it to someone with similar needs to myself, especially at it's price point.

First up, this is for the Melbourne 120 head unit. This is a Mechless head unit, as I haven't used a CD in YEARS now. So this was a logical choice. It carries the Blaupunkt name and supposed quality, more on that later.First off, I had to custom make brackets to fit in my little 2001 Corolla. Apparently the holes in the side of this head unit aren't ISO, or the Toyota brackets weren't ISO. I don't know. Either way, it was a major point of frustration.Once in and running, she works fine. The 22 Watts RMS x4 is actually along the higher end of head unit power output anymore. Most of what I was finding was in the 16-18 range which is just too little IMO. Good sound output, so so control capability with the treble and bass settings.FM Reception is quite good though a little sketchy at times.The SD card function. This works wonderfully. I'm using a simple class 4 8GB SDHC card and it read it VERY quickly and I was up playing. TAKE NOTE. Files are played in order from oldest to newest by time stamp when copied to the SD card. Not a big deal. You can create a separate playlist folder and then simply reload playlist material in your specified order as you wish.Aesthetically, this is a VERY pleasing little head unit. Very very clean design, my only gripe would be the cheap rubber hinged doors for the SD card and the USB. The SD card it doesn't matter so much, but for the USB, it would be a lot nicer if the hinged door opened into a recess so it's just not dangling there.Now the drawbacks.First, and foremost, this head unit, as other people have noted, does NOT work when it's cold. It's below 20* out right now and I just moved my car, and I got the power cycling. The first day I drove it the temp was about 0* and it took nearly 20 minutes for the stereo to quit power cycling and start functioning. I don't understand how Blaupunkt can put their name on something that can't handle cold temps. I've been to Germany, it gets DANG cold there. You'd think this wouldn't be an issue, but it's a very frustrating one for those of us taht live in colder climates.The screen is pretty much useless in daylight.All in all, I give it four stars because I only paid $65 for it, so I wasn't expecting the world. It does it's job (when it's not cold) and adequately at that. It's perfect for what I wanted, a non-cd player head unit with decent power output, and an SD card slot that plays music. Got what I wanted.

cd drive is not working...manufacturing date was 2012..learned the lesson better not to buy online...