Yikes...I just bought one (BT90) and I'm waiting for my double din kit. I'll post a review once I get it hooked up.

 

I cant speak for the other Avic F units but I can speak for the 500BT and boot up time is not a problem for me because of the battery it has attached in the back. This battery keeps the unit's screen right where you left off when you last turned your car off. So no rebooting like the other units. The button responses slightly slow but its fine to me. Also, Ive hacked into it and fixed all the bugs that came with it, not to mention the bypass!

As far as voice recognition, it works. However, you have to say, "Play the artist (.........) so it can play your artist. Voice recognition only works by album title, artist title and genre I think. It doesnt work by song title.

 

Yeah, let me know how it goes. If you're looking for lots of info on it, go to avic411.com

They have message boards filled with people talking about these units. Like anything on the internet, you have some people loving them, and others hating. Definitely keep us posted though, I'm especially curious on the ipod integration and the voice commands.

 

Yeah I peeked around on their forums and like you said it's kind of love/hate. My wife's old car had a AVIC-D3 in it, so I decided to test out the BT90. The unit is sitting on my desk at home, I'm still waiting to see if I can snag a double din from Japan.

 

hows the avic-d3? they are getting harder and harder to find now that they are discontinued and im wondering if i should jump on one...

 

D3s are pretty solid. if I didn't have the factory nav I'd probably have picked one up.
The entire F series has been a bit of a let down for me. the voice commands are great but it really is slow even on the demo board. As an installer, there's nothing that's going to make me want to purchase one, my next DD is probably going to be a Alpine 505 mainly for the sound quality.

 

It was pretty dang sweet. Started up pretty quick, the map software was good and it worked well with an Ipod. She had it in the car for maybe a year or two and it never had any problems. I honestly liked it more than the BMW Idrive in the new car

 

+1, there is a poll on there which indicates that most of the people that went with F series wouldn't have done it again .... ended up purchasing DNX8120