Audiovox Sirius SIRPNP2- You have changed my radio listening experience

A couple years ago, my husband and I wandered past an XM Radio display in our local Best Buy.

"This would be so cool to have!" my husband said excitedly.

I saw the $9.99 monthly subscription fee and laughed. $9.99 a month to listen to a radio. Not counting the equipment to install it. I don't think so. Sounded like a dumb idea, as a matter of fact.

Naturally, I would be proven wrong.

My parents are over-the-road truck drivers. When my dad's boss offered to buy him a new big rig to drive, my dad got to pick out all the features. And, one of the things he chose was an XM Radio CD player. He immediately loved it.

So, my husband started his research to convince me that we, too, needed our own satellite radio system. We live in Sioux Falls, SD, so our pick of radio stations isn't that earth shattering. And, there were now ways to have satellite radio in your car that didn't require plunking down $500.

My husband and I looked at our two choices: XM Radio, and Sirius Radio. Although Sirius is $3.00 more a month ($12.99), the programming seemed to be more cutting edge and less commercial than XM. So Sirius it was!

Once we were settled on Sirius, we had to figure out a way to get it in our car. We wanted to go the least expensive route, which would be Plug-N-Play. There are a couple different Plug-n-Play models that are available, and the Audiovox SIRPNP2 seemed to be the most popular (prominently displayed at our local Best Buy).

What Audiovox Claims:
For home or car use, this is your portal to enjoying the 100-plus streams of Sirius Satellite Radio. Set 20 of your favorite artists or songs into the memory, and the unique Fetch-n-Play function will search all of the incoming channels to see if they are playing. Features easy-to-use scroll/tune features including "Look Ahead," which allows you to view incoming channel information without changing the channel. Memory Capture function stores 20 of your favorite songs or artists. Also features listing and search-ahead capabilities by channel name, artist name, song title, category and presets


What I found:
The Audiovox SIRPNP2 is a black and gray box measuring about 3" high, 5" wide, and 1.5" long. It retails for around $100.

Car Kits:
In order to use the tuner, you have to purchase a separate car kit (about $50) and/or a separate home kit (another $50). We purchased the car kit. The car kit comes with a built in FM-modulator, a cradle to hold the tuner, a sticky bottom to mount it in your car, an antennae to mount on the roof of your vehicle, and a cigarette lighter power cord.

Sirius recommends professional installation. However, my husband managed to do it on his own and he has no previous experience (and when I say no previous experience, I mean it. I'm not being humble). He mounted the car kit on the dashboard of my 99' Cavalier. Then he ran the antennae cord through the vent in the back of the dash, down through the carpeting in the car, back up behind the back seat, and left the antennae in the back window. Yes, if you have a back window in your car, you do not need to mount the antennae (mountable by magnet) on the roof of your car. This obviously wouldn't work in a minivan or SUV.

When my husband was done, you could not detect the antennae wire. However, we still had to deal with the lunky power cord that plugs into your cigarette lighter. There really wasn't anything we could do with that, so we just got used to it.

When you plug the tuner into the car kit, you have to set a radio station that is currently empty in your local area. There are a couple ones to choose from. Then, you tune into that radio station on your car radio and you have Sirius!

The car-kit causes the tuner to sit up pretty high. This means that the tuner and car kit combined actually take up a lot of space on the dash.

Tuner:
The tuner is a combination of black, gray, and orange. The screen itself lights up orange. I'm not too crazy about the orange color, and I think the design could be a little more sleek.

However, the tuner is incredibly easy to use. You can program up to 30 of your favorite channels into the buttons lining the bottom of the tuner. The large round dial and two buttons under the dial allow you to seek through the different stations. The buttons lining the top of the tuner allow the user different options such as song-seek (more about that later).

The actual display is excellent- you can choose different fonts and different contrast levels. It's big and very easy to read. The display contains information such as artist, song title, channel title, signal strength, and clock. If all of the information does not fit, it will automatically scroll so you can see everything.

One of the best features of the Audiovox SIRPNP2 is "song-seek"- the ability to "save" up to 20 songs by pressing a button while the song is on. Once the song is stored, the tuner will beep at you when that song is playing. All you need to do is press the round dial in and it will take you to the station playing that song!

Sound:
A lot of people are hesitant about going the Plug-n-Play route because it isn't a direct connection to your car stereo. However, I can personally say that the sound quality from a Plug-n-Play model is excellent. I never once felt like we compromised sound quality. All stations came in crystal clear with great range.

We've also have managed to get excellent satellite reception everywhere we've traveled so far. We've been up in the mountains, down in valleys, and through the plains. The only time we have problems is when driving through a neighborhood where there are a lot of trees towering over the roadways. However, as soon as you're out of the neighborhood, reception returns to normal.

Cons:
I only have one gripe with the Audiovox SIRPNP2 and Sirius Plug-n-Play tuners in general: They are big and clunky. My husband and I recently purchased a brand new car and decided to get a new plug-n-play tuner. Well, all the tuners to choose from have about the same dimensions as the Audiovox SIRPNP2. Unfortunately, none of the tuners will fit in our new car (a Scion xA) due to the layout of the dash. We are now left debating between switching to XM, whose programming (we feel) isn't nearly as good but has much much MUCH better designs (smaller!) for their plug-n-play models, or installing a CD player that is satellite ready. However, this route could potentially be terribly expensive, and you lose a lot of the functionality of the plug-n-play models (display is small and hard to read, can't save songs, etc etc).

The Bottom Line:
If you are considering adding satellite radio to your car, the Audiovox SIRPNP2 is an excellent and inaffordable way to do it. Easy to install and even easier to use. Sound quality and reception is great. And, Sirius programming is the best!

Due to purchasing a new car, we've been without Sirius in our car for close to a week and I've been going mad. I'm used to being able to hear the newest songs months before they come out on the local radio! Once you have Sirius in your car, you'll wonder how you made it without it.

Since purchasing our Audiovox SIRPNP2 tuner about five months ago, two of our friends have gone out and purchased tuners for their own cars. It's that good.