Sony is a historic brand with a wide variety of products in consumer technology. They are certainly no slouch in the car audio department and the XAV-AX100 head unit is the latest example of Sony’s technological prowess.
XAV-AX100 Connectivity
A head unit to a car sound system is akin to the engine in your car. It is the foundation for everything as it maintains control over your car speakers, amplifier and even subwoofer.
However, head units nowadays share control responsibility with smartphones as they have increasingly become the center of our lives in and out of the home.
Therefore, it’s essential that head units have connectivity and compatibility with Apple Carplay and Android Auto. Thankfully, the Sony double din XAV-AX100 does.
It allows you to control your phone hands free: you can call, text, and control your music of course.
It also features built-in bluetooth allowing you to stream high quality audio from your Spotify or Apple playlists.
XAV-AX100 Design
Good tech design and UX makes powerful technology easy to control. Why do you think the iPhone became the best selling smartphone of all the time? It’s the Ax-100’s simplicity that shines. The design is straightforward, intuitive, and classic yet modern.
For example, there’s a bright and colorful 6.4″ touchscreen along with buttons to control playback and volume for those who would prefer a more traditional tactile feel.
There is a 10 band equalizer that allows you to customize the individual settings for your subwoofer and speakers.
XAV-100 Features
It features a built-in 55-watt amplifier that is sufficient to power most any car setup. Sure, you can buy a dedicated amplifier if you’re powering big 12″ subs but otherwise, you’ll have more than enough power. To be specific, the XAV-100 has a 4 RMS 20 watt power rating.
There are not a lot of bells and whistles such as AUX input and HDMI connectivity. This may be a turn off for some but honestly, we didn’t miss it as we had all the connectivity we needed via bluetooth and integration with Apple and Android.
Bottom line: This is an excellent and relatively affordable powerful head unit that is equipped with all the design, functionality, and power one would need in a modern stereo system.
Last update on 2023-03-21 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API