***** D5166Z review

[BimmerNotBeemer]

I installed a new ***** D5166Z head unit in my 2003 E39. These seems to be of interest to many Bimmerheads who don't have OEM Nav/Bluetooth/aux/etc. Price was $400 with U.S. maps and shipping, but be aware that you'll get a bill for about $25 for customs after its shipped but before its delivered. There is fine print somewhere on their website that says this.



After using it for a couple weeks, I can offer this review for others who are looking for a less expensive solution than OEM / Dynavin / etc. I'm also preparing YouTube videos over the next couple weeks.

General comments:

Decent fit, although this model is really made to match the slight curve of the X5 dash. It's a pain to install since the new brackets aren't super-sturdy, and you have to take off the wood panels to get the screw to match up with the hole. LED color matching isn't perfect, but really close, so most of your friends won't notice unless you whine about it. Button look and feel is very BMW-like.

There are many, many quirks, and an equal amount of bad English in menus and alert messages. The attention to detail that you'd get with OEM or Dynavin isn't there. Manual instructions and customer service are minimal to nonexistent. Although via email they're eager to respond, their English is so poor that they mostly haven't understood my questions or can't articulate useful answers beyond the hand-wave instructions in the thin manual. For those of you who don't care, keep reading...

Car data from the CANbus either isn't present or can't be read by the unit, so the CarSet tab won't display anything. I'm pretty sure that the E39 CANbus has movement data, since the original "trip computer" unit could display some data, but ***** claims the head unit won't support it -- strange answer, given that the website claims this tab is specifically for that function.

Installation:

Skim the instructions, then ignore them. They're 90% under-descriptive and 10% wrong. If you've ever worked on your own Bimmer or installed a stereo, you can figure it out.

Pro tip: DO NOT CONNECT THE BLUE ANTENNA WIRE on the antenna harness (on the E39 at least), even though ***** will tell you that you have to do that. It causes massive interference that makes the radio close to unusable. I've also bought a third-party harness that supposedly works better, but haven't tried it yet.

Sadly, the remote mic cord is about 20 cm too short to make it to the upper console where the OEM Bluetooth mic would go. The GPS cable is plenty long to go just about anywhere up front, though. I ran mine through the right dash above the glovebox, around the vent that connect to the passenger door, and up so it sits snugly against the windshield at the base of the A-pillar. Works great.

Hard keys (buttons):

Most are obvious, but some aren't. The list here is to get a feel for what they're like since you can't see a unit in a showroom.
Home = Home menu instantly
Mute = duh; toggle; mute also by pushing the volume button, or the bottom end of the volume bar on-screen
Mode = toggle successively through major function modes (Radio, DVD, AVin, SD, etc. -- if not plugged in, that system is skipped, e.g. AVin)
Navi = navigation toggle -- push once to go to Nav, push again to go back to whatever is running audio
DVD, Radio = go-to mode buttons -- would be nice to have one for SD card
MID = screen brightness toggle (huh??)
LED = LED backlight/button color toggle -- 7 options, plus off
Arrows: Eject, Play/Pause, Prev Track / Next Track (or station presets)
L knob: volume twist, mute push, power push & hold
R knob: twist to tune (or for next track), push for equalizer

Screen menus:

Changing menus/functions is prompt and smooth, but you have to hesitate half a second before tapping an icon on a new screen. (It's Windows...) Most menus/functions are accessible both on-screen and with hard keys, except for the SD card or USB port, which most of us are likely to use a lot -- get there via screen icon or the Mode key a few times. Menu navigation is pretty standard in terms of descent/ascent of hierarchy, for the most part. There are bugs in the menu system of the MP3 player (SD/USB), and some weirdness in ascending to the Main menu from a couple submenus, but nothing to get angry about.

Screen controls like the volume bar and equalizer bars work well and are easy to understand. Many other icons are incomprehensible, so you just have to push-and-learn. For example, the icons to change background colors and screen brightness you'd not even guess are icons, until you just start pushing things to see if they are or not.

Navigation/GPS:

Nav is a program that takes a few seconds to start up when you push Navi, but once running you can toggle between it and anything else pretty seamlessly. With Nav running, the voiceover suppresses music volume even if the nav voice volume is turned to zero, so you have to find the settings menu that turns that off completely. Initial setup is frustrating, since it will claim it can't find the map database -- the trick is to select the "obvious" setup key in Nav mode that has it search the map SD card. The Nav software itself isn't as polished as what you'll get from TomTom or Garmin, but it's about on par with most car manufacturer nav systems It does have quirks for advanced functions, but nothing you can't figure out with a few seconds of random poking.

You have to set the State you want to search in, in a separate menu. Very odd. For a long-distance destination with stops or detours, there may be gimmickery involved, I don't know yet.

Bluetooth:

Bluetooth setup is mostly straightforward, although importing a contacts list can have issues -- possibly phone-dependent. Calls work well, including steering buttons. The rather serious deficiency here is in the microphone quality. The default mic hole on the faceplate seems to work better than the external long-cord mic you plug into the back of the unit and snake through the dash to wherever you'd like it to go. About half my friends claim I'm barely understandable using either mic. It seems to help to turn down the speaker volume -- an indication their noise/feedback-cancelling software is sub-par. But to use it, I basically have to crank up my voice and be very careful with articulation. My Jabra earpiece works much better.

Radio:

Preset menus are 6 stations each, 3 for FM and 2 for AM. Setting and using them works standard.

PTY info available, although I'm unconvinced it's entirely correct. DX/Local toggle behavior is odd or broken. The station scan function remains incomprehensible -- I can get it to scan, but not to stop where it is, it just reverts to the last preset. I suspect a software bug. I have not discovered an auto-station finder & preset programmer, I had to enter all presets manually.

Note the major antenna installation issue above, or suffer the consequences!

DVD:

The DVD player works with some discs, but not others. (Really this is for use with rear-seat remote videoscreens.) If the DVD has a parental warning, the screen will report that, ask you to override it, then freeze and refuse to do anything. The only option is to eject the disc and go back to the home menu (changing modes isn't affected). BUT, even if you put in another disc that should work, you'll need to use another mode for audio to work on the new disc -- yet another software bug.

SD card:

This refers to the 2nd SD card, on which you put all your music files (or videos, it turns out -- there is a handy hard key button to turn off the screen if you want to listen to videos).

SD card mode appears to be a separate program that runs underneath the main OS, as it has to start up like the Nav system, but toggles smoothly with other menus once running.

Music / Photo / Video / File suboptions. Music looks for MP3 tracks for sure, not sure about other file types. Video looks for MP4 tracks for sure, not sure about other file types. Video displays nicely even though the files I've tried are 720p or higher, but the screen is 480. I've not tried photos.

"File" is potentially useful, but badly executed. It shows you the directory structure of the SD card, and you can tap to descend into a subdirectory, but you can't go back up! The only way to do this is to switch back to Music/Video/Photo and re-enter File mode. ***** claims this is a limitation of the head unit, which is balogna. I'd make another crack about Windows, but it's likely they just didn't bother to add an icon to ascend a directory level. Most annoying. Nevertheless, once in a subdirectory, audio play is limited to files therein. So it's a great way to play an album, if you've organized your music that way, because the SD card mode can't form a list by tag info.

Standard icons for shuffle/repeat/track change. Icon for lyrics if the audio file has it. If not, you get yellow pop-text saying "Not found the lyrics!" Seriously? It's like they didn't even ask any native English speakers to give their system a once-over. This is also a mode toggle. The same message will keep reappearing with every new track, until you turn it off.

They don't make great use of space here. The display shows track time in giant numbers, but no track remaining time. It gets the tag data correct (track name, artist, album). The right half of the display is the list of filenames (NOT toggleable to track name, artist or album, sadly), and is scrollable by both the scrollbar (touch to reposition, or push-and-drag) and by pushing and dragging on the list itself. The list appears to be formed strictly by the file time/date stamp, so the newest-added files appear at the bottom. Caveat: if you have subdirectories, they appear at the bottom, time-date stamp order as well.

***** claims the unit can read playlists, but I've not been able to get ANY format of playlist to work (.m3u, .pls,

USB:

If you have anything plugged into the USB cord (I ran mine to the glovebox), it will auto-select USB mode anytime you turn the unit on. Personally I find that super annoying. I would prefer that be treated like the SD card slot.

TV:

There is a TV mode, for which they sell separate tuner units for Europe (and Australia?) only. I've not tried to attach a U.S. ATSC tuner to the AVin; it surely wouldn't talk to the head unit, so you'd have to use a remote control. Would be nice to have this feature, say, to listen to the local news or weather while driving (remember, the screen can be toggled off).

Overall:

Quite pleased, since I had no Nav/BT/MP3/etc. at all before this. I also bought the unit knowing it would have bugs, so expectations were low. I'm hoping that they provide software updates periodically, but not holding my breath.

[greenman7612]

When I turn on my navigation unit I get a message that no software can be found. I put the simm card supplied in the GPS slot. Nothing. I put the same simm card in the SD slot and again nothing.
How did you load the navigation software?
Dennis Callan 2002 530i

[DennisCooper]

Hi greenman7612,

Contact ***** support and see if they'll help. They might do, but I also think they will just want to sell you a new unit.

Cheers, Dennis!