[Raine]

Most of you know that I replaced my previous (and now for sale!) Pioneer deck with an almost new Clarion one. I was a little apprehensive about switching companies, as I've had 2 pioneer decks over the years and loved both. They were incredibly functional, decently customizable, and I'd just gotten used to the Pioneer interface. After 5 days I'm now settling into the Clarion, and here's my review of these two competitiors.

The Basics

Pioneer: 50x4 Max Power
Clarion: 53x4 Max Power

Pioneer: 2 sets of preouts (Front & Rear/Sub)
Clarion: Many sets of preouts :P (Front, Rear, Sub, 2x Aux in, and 5.1 receiver in)

Pioneer: Preout power: 2v
Clarion: Preout power: 4v

Pioneer: 1-bit D/A Converter
Clarion: Dual 24-bit D/A Converters :o
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Rather decidingly, Clarion whoops the Pioneer's ass on this first set of comparisons. But there are many more, very important factors to consider when deciding which deck is the best.

Displays

Pioneer

There are very few people who can claim they don't like Pioneer's Organic EL display. It's bright blue contrasting against black makes the unit notoriously easy to read in both bright sunlight and pitch black night. It comes preloaded with several screensavers and spectrum analysers which make it very entertaining in the car, and it displays CD-Text/song times/etc in a very nice looking manner. I personally love this display... and the cool thing pioneer supplies software so you can make/upload your own movies to your deck! You just burn a cd using their software, pop it in, and it updates the unit. Awesome. Pioneer's OEL display also has brightness settings, so you can adjust it to your taste, but my only complaint is that it is often TOO bright even when turned low. The problem is that every 15 seconds or so, the display colours invert, so that what was originally black suddenly is bright blue, and what was blue is now black. This is of course a very intelligent way to prevent the pixels from burning out, but at the same time is damned annoying when the deck is off an all you have on the display is the clock...



Clarion

Clarion has taken steps with it's 2005 products to finally update their displays, however, I am comparing the 2 headunits that were in my car. Despite it being of Clarion's "ProAudio" series, the display on this headunit is considerably less advanced than the older Pioneer I was using. Although fully capable of displaying text by use of a dot matrix display, this deck is miles behind the Pioneer as far as quality of display is concerned. It's saving grace, however, is what has made clarion the choice for many owners who want their deck to look as stock as possible. The 728 Variable Colour display means this deck can blend in seamlessly to almost any vehicle interior. If one of the 12 presets doesn't fit, the user has the option of setting the colour themselves to match their dash lights, leaving the deck on a set colour completely different from anything in the car, or even setting the unit to continuously scan thru the various colours. This is a wicked feature, but is enhanced 10 fold by the fact that the buttons change colour with the display!! Going hand in hand with the adaptive colours is a very cool setting which allows the clarion unit to dim when your headlights are turned on. We all know that light in the car makes driving at night more difficult, and in response to this, Clarion has incorporated an automatic dimmer setting into it's source units. The user can control the level of the dimming (if they want it to dim at all) so that the deck will still be readable, but not cause a visual distraction. Clarion has also incorporated some terribly boring screensavers, but even so, the display is not where this unit is meant to shine:



Menus

Pioneer

Taking advantage of the adaptability of it's OEL display, Pioneer has made their in-car menus some of the easiest in the world to navigate. Many are tabbed, almost like in windows, and the remainder are graphic, so you can see what it is you're editing. The display doesn't flip colours while you're in the menus, so you can enjoy the fantastic contrast it offers. And just to make life even easier, almost every Pioneer deck comes with an up, down, left, right button so you can navigate thru the menus with complete ease. In the middle of a sub-menu, and don't wanna press buttons for the rest of your life? No problem. Just hit escape, and you're back to your track/station info... awesome.

Clarion

Clarion loses more points for it's menu set up. The display makes it impossible to have graphical menus, and the lack of a directional button means changes have to be made using the volume control knob. This of course means you can't adjust the volume while in the menus, unless you use the remote, unlike in the Pioneer. Menus are not tabbed, so you don't know what's coming next until you've memorized all of them... which you do rather quickly, because to get back to the cd/station info display, you have to go thru all the options in the menu... no escape button included here (that I've found as yet).

Audio

This is what it's all about really, isn't it? How damned good - and loud - your car sounds. The competition heats up a helluva lot here.

Pioneer

We've all heard everything there is to hear about the wonders of mosfet power, and truth be told it's rightly put on the pedestal we hold it on. Pioneers have fantastic, clear sound, right up to the highest highs. Of course, we're talking about sound before amplification here, but many people don't amp their speakers with these high power decks. 50x4 translates into about 22w RMS per channel in Loud:Hi mode. This is pretty good to push stock speakers. Pioneer packs lots of presets into their EEQ menu, all of which can be further tuned by the user to get the best possible sound out of the unit. Tied in with this is the "Loud" setting... when Loud is off, the deck sounds stock... turn it on, and in low setting is sounds like stock turned up high... in mid sounds pretty good... in hi sounds golden. Each setting increases the amount of power thrown at the speakers, and obviously the highest setting is best.

Pioneer gives the user a lot of flexibility in regards to sound. It has a 3-band parametric equalizer. WTF does that mean?? In short, it allows you to adjust the treble, midrange, and bass independently. Obviously a great feature. Also, Pioneer lets the user choose where they'd like to focus the sound stage... for driver, for passenger, or for the whole front. This is an amazing feature... I almost always have Vanessa in the car, so it's cool to be able to optomize the sound for both of us. Subs are controlled in a huge degree of levels... the low pass filter can be set to respond at 50, 80, and 120 hz so you can choose where the sub kicks in, and is adjustable 6 db in either direction (-6 to +6) from 0. Treble is adjusted both in the parametric eq as well as in a seperate menu, where it can be set to respond at 2, 4, 6, and 10k hz, again, adjustable + or - 6 in either direction. All in all, Pioneer's adjustability makes it easy to tune your deck for the music you listen to, and where you want to listen to it. There is a big downfall, however... the deck I was using had a setting which you had to select between either Front + Rear or Front + Sub... in the focus it's not so bad, being such a small car, but in my g/f's car (Intrepid) this is a damned pain... you can either choose to have the front and rear speakers on, and have the sub respond only by it's amp settings, or have just the front speakers on, and get all the sub options in the menu again... this is uber shittay, but falls in line with the 2 preouts on the deck.

Clarion

I can describe this deck in one word: LOUD. s**t... I scared my parents when I cranked it up to only 20... and that's before I amp the damned speakers :P (just haven't hooked them up again yet). This friggin deck screams. What points it loses in it's display it more than makes up for in raw power. Many of the settings are similar to the Pioneer, what with the built in eeq settings and the like. There are considerably less settings for where you want to focus the sound, but that makes no damned difference because the whole car is too busy falling apart when the deck is turned up. It blares thru all 4 speakers and the sub instead of just two, and the highs are clearer than the pioneer by a big bit. For some reason, however, Clarion only integrated a 2 band parametic eq into their deck, so you can only adjust the treble and bass, but they throw in this cool feature called Magnabass EX... kicks the midrange in the ass and boosts the lows nicely... all the other settings are virtually the same, tho they sound better... there is one thing, tho that Clarion has done that just wows the s**t out of me... they call it 2 zone, and what it allows you to do is independently control two attached units in the car... in other words, have people in the back listen to one thing while people in the front listen to another... now there are limitations.. you can't control two sources if both are integrated into the deck (i.e. CD + Radio)... but if you're controlling an aux input... booyah! that's just damned cool...

Oh, and my sub is louder now...


Misc

Now for the little things...

Remote control award goes to Pioneer. Although Clarion has a more featured controller, it's bulky as hell... the Pioneer uses a slim, card remote... Easier to hide away and looks cooler.

Security goes to Clarion. For some reason, even when you detach the face on the pioneer, it doesn't have a flashing security light.. Clarion's does

Although Pioneer obviously wins the display race, the faceplate itself goes to Clarion... to me it looks cleaner... and though the colour of the Pioneer blends PERFECTLY with the bezel in the Focus, the Clarion is built better (metal face compared to Pioneer's plastic), is motorized, and the buttons - many of which have an almost rubberized feel - are easier to press.

I've hit this bump so many times in the road and it always caused the Pioneer to skip... the Clarion didn't miss a beat...
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Conclusion

Although both competitiors are fairly close, for sheer sound quality I'm gonna give Clarion the win today... to me, the deck should be about the music, not the cool little graphics on it's 3/4" x 3" display.. the Clarion is more expandable, more powerful, and looks to be built better. I like it's features a lot and it's a pretty cool HU overall. Pioneer gets a close second, and I wouldn't hesitate to buy one again in the future if the deal was right. I didn't bother to mention things like MP3/WMA playback because the same model pioneer in 2004 had that... Hope this read helps you weigh out your choices a little more clearly if you're in the market for an HU and were debating between these two companies.