# iLX-W650



## sebberry (May 1, 2008)

I noticed that Alpine released a few new head units at CES this year. The one that caught my eye is the iLX-W650 - it's a 2-DIN shallow (2.4" deep) unit. It'd be almost perfect for my car with some custom fabrication of the bezel. 

Feature wise, it seems to check the right boxes for me. It should be in the $500 ballpark. 

Anyone have any thoughts on this based on similar recent models from Alpine? It's all guesswork at this point how well it'll work, but I thought I'd throw this out there.

Cheers


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## CREATIVE_AUTOSOUND (Jun 30, 2017)

It’s a nice unit. Capcitive touchbscreen, Hand swipe features ( not with Apple CarPlay or Android Auto), and shallow mount. It’s cool feature lies within the size. The KTA-450 can be mounted in the chassis, making it the most powerful double din out there. It will be a hot product for 2019 for sure. As for price it will be lower than $500. Visit your local Alpine Authoried Dealer for more info ?

Ps. I have used it first hand and the new user Interface is something new from Alpine.


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## sebberry (May 1, 2008)

I received my W650 the other day.

I still need to custom fabricate the bezel where it's going to go in the car so I'm just bench testing it right now. It is $499 CAD.

First impressions:


Impressively compact unit. Perfect for where it's going in my car. If I wanted a full 2DIN system in my car, I'd have to buy an expensive HVAC relocation kit as Subaru went and merged the HVAC and OEM radio controls into the same PCB. This will be going higher up on the dash where a storage cubby is.

Anyway:

UI: A bit disappointing. While I don't expect the same quality of graphics as their $1,000 units, surely they could have done a little better. It's a bit cheap looking. No ability to change the wallpaper if anyone is interested. Takes about 12 seconds of showing the bright blue and white Alpine splash screen to boot up.

SiriusXM: An early version of the manual online implied that album art would be displayed. This has later been revised to cover the fact that it doesn't. Channel/station art isn't available either. In fact, most advanced Sirius features are absent. The optional SXV300 tuner does support the advanced Sirius features such as rewind, song reminders, etc... but you won't find any of it on the W650. Whatever, it's only $500.

I'm having a problem with the 'Categories' and 'Search' functionality in the SiriusXM player. Touching either of those buttons brings up their respective screens, but it jumps right back to the SiriusXM player screen very quickly. I emailed Alpine support and they suggested that it must be the SXV300. I'm doubtful, but I ordered a replacement to try. SiriusXM sound quality sounds good, better than my previous Sirius only radio that was like listening to something somewhere between AM and FM radio. The Alpine Media Expander works on SXM

Apple CarPlay: Eh, it's Carplay. I primarily bought the unit for two features - SXM and CarPlay. I found the sound quality from CarPlay to be a bit disappointing, and I've got it connected to some pretty good speakers. The Alpine 'Media Expander' audio feature doesn't work with CarPlay. The CarPlay interface seems responsive. 

USB support - it wouldn't read media files off my Sandisk Cruzer 16GB, but it seems to handle the 32GB Samsung drive OK. FLAC and MP3 played back just fine. The FLAC file sounded great through the 4 ohm bookshelf speakers I've got connected to the unit.

It's nice that there's a parametric EQ.

I'm having trouble updating the firmware - there's an available update, but the PowerPoint (Yes, PPT) file that comprises the directions says nothing about how the firmware should be saved to the USB file. I've tried the Zip file on the root of the drive, extracting the contents to the root and extracting the contents to folder of the same name as the zip to the root. The firmware update utility fails to see the firmware on the USB drive.


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## mattkim1337 (Jan 31, 2018)

Your Sandisk may need to be formatted to FAT32 (might be in NTSC currently) for the radio to read it.


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## sebberry (May 1, 2008)

mattkim1337 said:


> Your Sandisk may need to be formatted to FAT32 (might be in NTSC currently) for the radio to read it.


Did that  Even tried exFAT for good measure.


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## sebberry (May 1, 2008)

As I suspected the replacement SXM receiver doesn't resolve the problem of the Categories and Search screens vanishing right after calling them up.


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## sebberry (May 1, 2008)

Update - 

Second head unit was set to me. Still having the same problem with the SXM Category and Search screens disappearing after calling them up. 

I've sent another email to Alpine support for some more help. 

2x head units
2x SXM SXV300 vehicle tuner kits

Something is odd.


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## rynofish (Jul 19, 2019)

Just got my iLX-W650 installed yesterday. Does anyone get album artwork through CarPlay? Instruction Manual shows that it would do this.

Cheers..


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## nstaln (Feb 11, 2009)

rynofish said:


> Just got my iLX-W650 installed yesterday. Does anyone get album artwork through CarPlay? Instruction Manual shows that it would do this.
> 
> Cheers..


No...you only get artwork through i-pod mode...which makes NO sense at all.


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## rynofish (Jul 19, 2019)

nstaln said:


> No...you only get artwork through i-pod mode...which makes NO sense at all.


Really? Grrrr. Thanks, saves me a bit of time trying to find that setting to enable


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## sebberry (May 1, 2008)

Had my W650 in for a while now. Overall it's a decent unit with a couple of annoying quirks.

I use CarPlay almost every trip I make. I cringe at the number of times I connect the cord to my phone and think about the Lightning port wearing out prematurely. Wireless CarPlay would have been nice, but this unit is at a price point most aren't. 

SXM - The first version of the user manual indicated album art would be displayed on the player screen, but this was later changed to only show the SXM logo. Guess which version I saw when I ordered the W650? Hint: There's no SXM artwork. Or pause, rewind, song alerts or any of those 'advanced' features that I got with my very first Sirius receiver many years ago. Again, price point... 

My experience with Sirius through Sirius proprietary receivers and aux-in cables has been that Sirius typically has horrible compression noise and artifacts, generally far worse than local FM radio, more on par with AM. Surprisingly SXM on this unit is pretty good for what it is. The Alpine MX audio enhancement feature can be applied to the SXM source and seems to restore much of what's lost in compression. Of course it's nowhere near close to listening to FLAC files on a properly calibrated system, but it's certainly passable. 

By contrast, it's the CarPlay source that always sounds flat and dull. The EQ is being applied, but the Alpine MX feature doesn't work with CarPlay. My old BlackBerry 10 phone had a much clearer output from the headphone jack than my iPhone X delivers via CarPlay. I typically prefer listening to SXM. 

Finally, the biggest annoyance is the dimmer - it uses an ambient light sensor at the bottom right corner of the bezel. It's either too dim at day, and far too bright at night, and the manual dimmer menu is buried in the settings, hidden when the double parking brake sensor hasn't been engaged (or fooled with a bypass switch). Really, this should be one button on the home screen to cycle through dimmer levels, or just wired into the car's dimmer circuit. 

My primary reason for buying this unit is the shallow mounting depth. I can't get anything deeper in the space I have for this. I'd have paid a hundred more to have the above features improved.


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## cutienoua (Jul 21, 2018)

thanks for remainder ,now I know why I like the sound better via BT instead of carplay.
I had to buy this unit after the ilx107 went nuts with volume up and down by itself.
I will get another wifi carplay radio but I really don't know which one to trust.
after wasting $700 for less than 2 years of use of ilx107!
the manual is vague about carplay:
"Media Xpander (MX) makes vocals or instruments sound distinct regardless of the music source. The SiriusXM, USB Flash drive and iPhone, will be able to reproduce the music clearly even in cars with a lot of road noise."
they did not say anything specific to carplay!


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## Ashunte (Sep 23, 2011)

Any more info on these, reasons not to get, seems hands down the best option at the price. I'm thinking of grabbing one to do a budget build in the wife's minivan.


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## cutienoua (Jul 21, 2018)

Ashunte said:


> Any more info on these, reasons not to get, seems hands down the best option at the price. I'm thinking of grabbing one to do a budget build in the wife's minivan.


The only thing that is annoying when reversing the screen come up but after 2-3 seconds it blanks for another 2-3 seconds right when I am moving the car.
I did not have this issue on Ilx107,and I used the same camera for 4-5 radios on this car.


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## rynofish (Jul 19, 2019)

First road trip with the new install. When using Spotify I wanted to search for an artist and had two issues.
1) No search option? Not even with a voice prompt?
2) Scrolling artists, I could only scroll to about 'F' in my artist library.

Am I missing something, or does everyone else have these issues?

Firmware Ver 1.09

Cheers...
Ryan


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## Cookies1 (Mar 3, 2020)

sebberry said:


> I noticed that Alpine released a few new head units at CES this year. The one that caught my eye is the iLX-W650 - it's a 2-DIN shallow (2.4" deep) unit. It'd be almost perfect for my car with some custom fabrication of the bezel.
> 
> Feature wise, it seems to check the right boxes for me. It should be in the $500 ballpark.
> 
> ...


What u reccomend on how to set the graphing band equalizer


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## F150Man (Apr 14, 2017)

Cookies1 said:


> What u reccomend on how to set the graphing band equalizer


Find the max clean volume, set TA, run RTA.


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## Stephen C (May 17, 2020)

hello. does anyone here could help me with this issue? almost every options in main menu are 'locked' (gray).... impossible to press anything on touchscreen. Carplay works fine tho. bluetooth unavailable, canot set clock, etc. Thanks!.


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## Shadow_419 (Aug 1, 2018)

Stephen C said:


> hello. does anyone here could help me with this issue? almost every options in main menu are 'locked' (gray).... impossible to press anything on touchscreen. Carplay works fine tho. bluetooth unavailable, canot set clock, etc. Thanks!.


Parking brake wire likely. Don't know if simply grounding it or if you need to wire in a bypass to get it working


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## Stephen C (May 17, 2020)

Shadow_419 said:


> Parking brake wire likely. Don't know if simply grounding it or if you need to wire in a bypass to get it working


So should I put emergency brake ON in order to unlock features? I tried that, doesnt change anything.
OR
bypass wire?
Thanks for answer sir. 
Stephen C


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## Shadow_419 (Aug 1, 2018)

YouTube alpine microbypass or conversely wire parking brake wire from radio to the parking brake. The bypass is a better option imo


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## WackyD (Jun 9, 2020)

Stephen C said:


> hello. does anyone here could help me with this issue? almost every options in main menu are 'locked' (gray).... impossible to press anything on touchscreen. Carplay works fine tho. bluetooth unavailable, canot set clock, etc. Thanks!.


I found that even if you just ground the parking brake wire it still does this after the initial grounding. i installed a small discrete toggle switch to bypass this issue. works great and i can watch video while driving if i wanted. took me a few hours to figure out what i was doing wrong.


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## WackyD (Jun 9, 2020)

WackyD said:


> I found that even if you just ground the parking brake wire it still does this after the initial grounding. i installed a small discrete toggle switch to bypass this issue. works great and i can watch video while driving if i wanted. took me a few hours to figure out what i was doing wrong.


one end of the toggle switch to the wire from the stereo for the parking brake and the other end of the toggle switch to a good ground behind the stereo. preferably a bolt or screw separate from other grounds.


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