Blaupunkt New York 800

Product Details
Manufacturer: Blaupunkt
Distributor: Autosound
Website: link
Typical Selling price: £799.99
Made for the well over 50% of all cars that have a double DIN aperture (even if they look like they don’t, it is often the case behind the panels) and is the Tour-De-Force of the Blaupunkt headunit line up. It has the full panoply of slots and holes and pluggy bits. First, the slot. This is a DVD mechanism and can read all the DVD recordable formats as well as the CD ones. It does not decode SACD nor DVD-Audio, both of which are really finished as automotive formats. (Sony still offer SACD home decks as do some high end HiFi outfits via ‘˜universal’ disc spinners and I have a single-DIN Sony SACD/DVD player I use for reference.) Next the other holes. These include AV inputs and USB sockets of which there is one of each on both the front and the back of the machine. The front has a panel that pops open to reveal USB and SD(HC) slots as well as the front 3.5mm tip-ring-ring-sleeve A/V jack. The rear one can be used to connect an iPod or iPhone and offer full direct control and as long as you have the J-link lead, you can watch video as well from the ‘Pod. I have a 4th Gen iPod touch and we’ll try it out with that. I also have a Verbatim 8GB weeny-stick so small it looks like a baked bean, that has been stuffed half full of movies and all sorts of files, some of which the previous machine that had it plugged into, didn’t like. This deck is on paper, equipped to read all sorts of files and formats, so we will see what it makes of the digital side.
Also, I will play some stuff from CD and DVD to check out the audio performance and picture quality. The Blaupunkt HMI has always been high quality in the past, it’ll be cool to find out how easy this unit is to use versus the Japanese ones, as Blaupunkt do approach from a different angle. One is about simple intuition and on some machines an ‘˜expert mode’ for fitters only, whereas a Japanese maker will often expect the buyer of the product to engage with it and learn from the manual step-by-step. Us lazy Euro types often hate to RTFM, so we’ll see how easy it is to suss out.
The demo rig will feed the front and rear RCAs out to the recently reviewed 2011 special edition Blaupunkt GTA4 amplifier, reviewed here: link and into two sets of Infinity speakers reviewed here: link and here: link The subwoofer output will also be tested and I’ll hook up my phone, as well, by Bluetooth.
– Double DIN multimedia head unit
– Navigation: European map data
– Will Play: DVD: DVD-ROM, DVD+/-R, DVD+/-RW, DVD-ROM CD: CD-ROM, CD-DA, CD-R/-RW, VCD
– USB-removable storage: USB 2.0
– Memory cards: SDHC, SD, MMC
– Media player reads: MP3, WMA, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, JPEG, DivX, Xvid playback
– Display: 6.2in digital touch screen display 800 x 480 pixels (384,000)
– Bluetooth: Integrated Bluetooth module
– Hands-free phone calls (HFP)
– Phone book access (PBAP)
– Microphone: Integrated plus rear connector; wired remote microphone and two clips also supplied
– USB Inputs: Two one Front & one Rear, mass storage device (MSD) iPod Direct control, iPhone: Direct control
– Memory cards: SDHC, SD, MMC
– Audio/Video: one front A/V and one rear A/V inputs and reversing-up camera video only input
– Three band Semi-parametric Equaliser with presets and customisable ‘˜User’ setting
– On Board power: Max.: 4 x 50 Watts
– RMS power at 14.4V: 4 x 22 Watts
– Signal to Noise Ratio and Dynamic range not quoted
– Outputs: Video x 2 CVBS, Pre-amplifier (channels, voltage): 4-channel (2V) plus mono Subwoofer Out
– IR 44-button remote control included


Editor Review : Blaupunkt New York 800
Bloody hell what an utter beast of a machine! First off, I have to get over the fact that historically as still now, Blaupunkt are the only maker I know to use the full DIN plug-and play wire system on the backs of their headunits. Where other makers will have RCA cords hanging directly out of the back of the machine, the Blaupunkt will have its RCAs and so forth on leads that finish in smaller chunky DIN plugs that fit into sockets on the back of the headunit’s panel. The New York 800 has many of these sockets and all are filled, as there is a panoply of connectivity with AV outputs, reversing camera input and lots of RCAs out to feed to amplification, including a mono LF feed that is subject to an on-board crossover that can be set to 60Hz, 80Hz, 120Hz or a bit more. I have always fretted when I wanted to test the line-out on a Blaupunkt deck and discovered that I didn’t have the right RCA DIN socket-filler. (However, I do now have one for stock that has been in the back of a few Blau decks over the years.) That said, the New York 800 arrives with every DIN plug imaginable. Again, though, while you can play tunes from an iPod by connecting the wire to USB, if you have a flashy one and want to run video, you will need the J-Link cable. This is because the price is keen and if you don’t have a video iPod, you won’t be paying for its specialist connectivity in the keen price of the deck.
All makers do use the big DIN sockets for the power and then the speaker wire connections, although most don’t do what Blaupunkt do, which is to fit them flush in the chassis of the unit, rather again having them hang out of the back. The New York 800 comes not just with the collection of DIN plug-wire looms but also with the mating plugs to fit these power and speaker wire outputs. These are normally only ever a priced accessory at dealers, so good on Blaupunkt for providing those.
I delved deeply into the functions of the machine and found that it has pretty much everything except the mad-end audiophile stuff like complex three-way crossovers, time alignment and fancy DSP or 500-band auto-equalising programmes. What it does have is easy to operate and drill down to find, audio-wise and there are several factory suggested settings as well as the facility to set it up to sound how you like, labelled ‘˜User’. The screen doesn’t read on paper as though it’d look very high resolution but it is crisp enough to display a sort of hard-anodised metallic brushed Ally finish to the GUI’s background and you can change this metallic pattern to red, blue, green. I loved it. It looks lush and crispy-posh.
The places you can plug stuff in are extensive. The iPod J-Link wire connects to the back, on the flying USB+socket wires and yet you can also connect a Mass Storage Drive if you’d rather. There are many of these MSDs from many brands and you need to be aware that while a huge drive with a file like Genghis Kahn in its all-conquering abilities may not read, this aughta work with a wide range of sensibly-sized HDDs. It is a bit suck it and see as to which will happily run. It can be down to no more than the power-greed or lack of it of your particular HDD, let alone its capacity, as to whether it even powers up on the New York’s USB.
ON the front is a small panel that can be prised open with a fingernail to reveal a rubbery hinged door and a couple of slots. One is the front USB and the other is the SD card slot. This can be used with SDHC, so a VAST amount of tunes can be stored. I simply plopped in an SD with snaps taken at the zoo on my Canon when MeJulie fed the Meerkats and the shots duly showed in sequence on the screen.
The Verbatim 8GB USB ‘˜bean-on-a-socketty thing’ drive was popped into the front of the deck and with the 8GB in the USB, only 2GB in the SD (as of course being SDHC it can take lotsor MMC) and with the iPod connected to the rear, I had a vast amount of tunes and still had the DVD/CD slot to play with.
I hooked up my Blackberry to the unit via Bluetooth, although it did take a few tries and then had a mate in the trade call me up to test it. The New York 800 was in the act of spinning up a DVD to read the menu and it just interrupted itself as the call came in to let me press the right spot on the display and answer the call. I swear the supplied wired microphone looks like it came out of the very same factory as the one that I just had from the Caliber people (The mic and clips were identical mouldings!) but I chose to try the on board microphone. Some people will find it just too irksome/costly to mount the remote microphone and so rather use the one under the small hole on the front drop instead. (A very rare feature in fact, most use the dangly one you have to remove an A-Pillar to install.) I found it worked but was not that sensitive and might be difficult in a noisy carhence the supply of a mic you can mount near your mouth, of course. It’s cool to have effective Bluetooth just built-in but probably contributes to the unit needing a built-in cooling fan in the back.
The picture on the touch screen was startlingly good, with the metallic finish to the ‘˜skin’ looking lustrous and well brushed-ally and the images off DVD were crisp too. I have asked for the J-Link lead as it was an oversight (I aughta have realised and asked) and so I will add in the detail as to how crisp an iPod movie looks later. Since I have Star Trek, Toy Story 3, and Paul on the iPod as digital editions from buying the films on triple-play Blu-Ray packs.
There’s a proper knob on the front for volume and a serious 44-button slim remote control to do all sorts of functions, like zooming in on a still or some video. (To see the naughty bits closer-up, usually) and this otherwise slabby remote has some little ridges underneath it to make it ergonomic to hold. A simple little feature but appreciated.
The New York 800 isn’t a face-off design like the DIN-&-A-Bit Caliber RDD401BT I have just tried (seen here: link) so has some security issues if you park in rough places but it has none of the slightly-wobbly feel that the Caliber’s face has as a result of being not-fixed. Also, it is not a lowish Signal-to-Noise ratio product (like some super-cheap but feature rich machines around) but rather a seriously high quality sounding item and yet manages to sell for literally hundreds less than some other brands can manage at this level of complexity and feature-richness.
And I didn’t even take it out driving, to play with the Navigation system. There were some issues with the voice-over pronunciation of some English place names in the Blaupunkt on-screen PND nav I reviewed ages ago, so I’d love to see if the system still has vocal samples that call Birmingham ‘˜Bimmingham’ or say ‘˜Church’ as ‘˜Chuch’ but even if it does, it just gives you a little reminder that you have solid German engineering going on in your dash. Alles Klaar.
I will revisit and report on the iPod video performance and heck, we really aughta do an operational video, so you can see the touch screen’s speed for yourself and get some YouTube-and-My-Camera limited resolution idea of how good the screen looks. We’ll plop it below in due course.
But in the meanwhile, I can report that the unit read a wide selection of the files off the USB and SD devices and where it couldn’t or wouldn’t read a format, it did usually list the file so you could see it was on the dongle. But the point is you will find the file styles you use and which read on the unit and fill your USB sticks accordingly. I gather USB is huge in Germany as a way to swap movies and music about from home to car, to friend’s system as you go home on the autobahn.
The Blaupunkt New York 800 has so much that it can do that I could be here for weeks playing and still come to the same conclusion. Which is that the unit is delicious to look at, well made, über-capable and astonishing value for money as a result. In which case, it scores amply enough to be right at the top of the Best Buy flag zone and only one point off getting a State of the Art flag.
This is without doubt one of the very best and most widely brilliant double-DIN units on the market today. Hugely enjoyed and unreservedly recommended.
Overall 9.4
Sound Quality 9
Appearance/Display 9
Ease Of Use/HMI 10
Features 9
Value For Money 10