1. Menu and settings navigation is pretty horrible and non-intuitive.
2. Display doesn't have really have enough characters for ID3 tags.
3. Directory navigation is a bit primitive, and not even supported on the remote.
Beyond that it's a good stereo, and it's great being able to plug in a USB drive (I've tried flash drives, portable hard drives, as well as USB-Storage compliant MP3 players). Ipod interface/control works well also. FM tuner sensitivity is good.
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It is so nice not to have to fumble around with CDs and it is so much faster to put MP 3s on a flash drive. I'm hoping that they will come out with a USB port that can be added to my home stereo.The radio is perfect. One of the great purchases that I have made from Amazon. The only bad thing that I can think of is that it still has a slot for a CD.
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The Clarion CS309 has a ton of features: USB, Aux jack, bluetooth ready, DVD ready, satellite ready, etc. Unfortunately the interface and ergonomics are among the worst i have ever used on any electronic product.Simply adjusting the settings requires careful reading of the manual. Would you like to adjust the bass or treble? That only requires 4 to 6 different buttons pushed in sequence. That would be mostly different buttons, scatterred all over the unit. By the time you remember the sequence the song is over. Where other units use a modal volume control (i.e. pressing a tone button will allow the volume control to adjust bass, treble, etc) on the Clarion the volume knob is for volume and volume only, sir. And a crappy, overly small volume knob it is.
On the subject of audio quality, I replaced my stock 2005 Subaru WRX unit, no superstar in sound quality. The Clarion takes a step backward in that dept as well. Clarity is not the hallmark of this Clarion.
As far as the USB port goes, due to the complete absence of any navigation of a drive, it is rendered almost useless for playing a drive loaded w/ various ODs. Although Clarion boasts that the unit will read up to 8 directories deep it will not NAVIGATE the directories it simply will find the lowest level folder and cycle through each one, in the order it was written to the drive. Thus having more than 1o or so CDs on the drive becomes very unwieldy and adds yet another way for this thing to become a serious traffic hazard.
Ironically I picked this unit due to its relative lack of video game like displays. You can turn off the rather muted (but still irritating) "screen saver" and I'm certainly happy about that. It's probably the only reason this thing gets 2 stars and not one. Avoid this train wreck.
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