Aftermarket Headunit
 

This is the closest thing I've seen to our OEM headunit (next to Dynavin and Hualingan) and the price looks very reasonable:

BMW 5SERIES GPS Navigation System E39 E53 Ui 7" Digital Touch Screen DVD Player | eBay

Thoughts?

looks good... i'd like to see the back of it, where the connectors are... seems to be a replacement for the radio in the front, and might not be the same for replacing factory nav system...

looks awesome, but for $300 + $100 shipping, I'm very doubtful its at all quality or plug and play with the systems IN the X5 already, especially with DSP systems.

+1. I'd be careful around this stuff as well.

Sammy do you have DSP?


If you do, you can't get one of the aftermarket Nav units in there without ripping out the DSP amp, replacing with aftermarket and re-wiring the speakers as far as I can tell.


If you don't have DSP, you are lucky. And if you want my opinion (and you know we both think alike) I would get the newest version of the Dynavin unit, it looks the most factory out of any of the aftermarkets at about $950 as far as I can tell. Comparing to the Hualingan unit is not even close, the Dynavin looks the part by a mile.

Now don't get me wrong many here love the Hualingan and say its a faster unit etc, but if you are like me you want the factory look and can sacrifice a bit of performance, I would go with Dynavin.



However, if you have DSP as I do, we are basically out of luck, because by the time you get a new amp, re-wire the speakers, etc, and then hook up a Dynavin, you're probably close to the price of retrofitting an entire OEM Navigation system.


www.bimmernav.com if I recall correctly, they source all the parts for a complete OEM Navigation retrofit with MK4 computer, it costs $2800, so obviously its not cheap, but if you have DSP it's basically the only way to go and keep the DSP unmolested.



I might be missing something here, but from what I know it's not an easy process to get rid of DSP if you have it.

Thanks for all the feedback!

I would be lying if I said there wasn't some level of hesitation on my part in purchasing this unit as opposed to something already proven (Dynavin & Hualingan).

Fortunately, I do not have DSP so I'm not as limited as most.

Part of me also wants to wait and see if someone can come up with a product that incorporates BMW's OBC. This won't completely deter me as I know I can always move the OBC to my glove box as well.

As mentioned above I'm really picky ;)

At the end of the day I'm looking for something that looks as close to OEM as possible and provides modern functionality.

P.S. ~ I had the OEM Navigation in my E39 M5 and it was awful!

Does the Dynavin not incorporate the BC functions? Glad to hear you don't have DSP, my choice if I did not have DSP would be the Dynavin, looks as good as stock and def performs better compared to OEM.