This is part of the problem for me.... all of these brands are unknowns to me. Avin, Seicane, Hizpo, Xtrons, Eonon, etc. are all brands I'd never heard of until buying my X5 and realizing I needed to buy a radio.

So, can a generalization be made that, say, Avin and Seicane are a step above Xtrons, Eonon, and Hizpo? Or, for example, does Xtrons belong in the upper tier with the other two?

While I'd like to not spend any more than necessary, I also don't want to spend $300 on something troublesome when I could have spent $400 and gotten a much more reliable unit.

Thanks for any and all advice.

AM.

I can't speak for all but from my own experience AVIN and Xtrons have pretty good build quality. Avin being the top tier. Another brand is Joying they were pretty good as well. But if you get a model without any physical buttons I think you can get away with any.

Here's another question.... why does it seem the cheaper units with less memory/CPU come with the latest Android 8.1, while the more robust units with more memory/CPU come with the older Android 8.0? Seems to be consistent across the brands.

Oh, and is the Avin site the only place one can buy the Avant4? That thing gets pretty pricey by the time you buy the unit, the long cable(s), the IBUS adapter, etc.

AM.

I also have the Seicane unit and it is working fine. The downside I experienced was that tech help from China was non existent and there was a huge language barrier. I would be partial to a good unit from a US distributor with tech support. On the other hand, I think there are enough buyers of the Seicane unit here and similar units that you can get help here if need be.

Only seller for Avant is Avin as far as I know. It's their brand and product.

I didn't buy the extension cable and iBUS from them.

I bought a cable from China for $21 shipped. I already had the iBUS and licence purchased directly from it's sellers. You save about $20 instead of buying it all from Avin.

As far as the 8.1 and 8.0 I noticed that too and no idea.

Could be the lower spec units just have been updated to the latest version to stay current while the newer spec units already came with 8.0? Just a theory.

Do a comparison of features of the 8.0 to 8.1 to know what has been improved. Could be a number of improvements. Since technology changes so fast and if the cost is not a huge difference it is almost always best to go with latest version, the 8.1. I suggest buying everything you need from the source of the unit. That way if there are problems they can't say it is because of the cabling, it's not the unit.

In the end it's an open source, you can get all the roms directly from Google and multiple custom roms on xda forums.

I'm happy with the stock rom for now and will flash it eventually to custom rom.

But.... the more expensive units all come with 8.0 and the cheaper quad-core units with 1 or 2 gigs of ram seem to come with 8.1. Seems counter-intuitive, so I assumed there was something I don't understand.

AM.

Is this cable universal for any brand headunit? Could you point me to where you got it? Sorry for being such a newbie on all this.

Thanks,

AM.

Well made trumps android version.

Processor and memory trumps android version.

Construction quality and reliability trumps android version.

All of that said as long as its at least android version 7.0

Heck I have some running 6.0 and do just fine and have run anything I wanted them to run.

The android version can be updated at any time if you want it bad enough. You just have to find a rom to download that meets the requirements for the radio which normally just means it has enough storage area to hold it and enough ram to run it.