Bluepower BLP-900A review for Volvo C70
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04-24-2019, 10:47 AM
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Bluepower BLP-900A review for Volvo C70
This is a long review of the BLP-900A. Therefor I start with a short summary.
If you are thinking to buy the BLP-900A, my advice would strongly be: Don’t. After more than 9 months, I still do not have a fully functioning unit and receive absolutely no support from Bluepower. Even when the unit is working properly, it is mainly a ‘Frankenstein experience’. The unit does look good, but the screen is dim, it is very slow and the integration into the car is hit and miss. There is also a major design flaw. When the display gets unplugged/plugged in, while the battery is connected the touchscreen will stop working. By itself this is just a design flaw, but the quality of the connecter and wires, makes this happen during normal operation. This is why you can find multiple post with ‘touch screen stopped working’.
At this point, I removed the BLP-900A from my car and am back to using the factory system.
Car information
I have a 2011 Volvo C70 T5 with the High Performance audio system.
Delivery of the BLP-900A
The unit arrived in a reasonable timeframe. When opening the box multiple parts where missing:
- Installation manual
- Android Auto module
- Backup camera
- OBD2 Module
The manual was emailed to me within 1 day of my email. The Andoid Auto module and Back up camera arrived after about 1.5 months. As of now (9 months later) I have still not received the OBD2 module. I was supposed to receive a refund for this months ago, but have not seen that on my bank account
The BLP-900A was delivered with a broken touch screen. The touch screen was replaced with a remanufactured one (Not New). This took over 1.5 months to deliver.
Installation manual
There were 2 issues with the installation manual:
- The installation manual was for the wrong car and was therefore missing important installation steps.
- Product changes to the BLP-900A had been made, which were not reflected in the manual.
Otherwise the installation manual was relatively clear and easy to follow.
Product Issues (installation and making the unit work)
The product has the following issues:
- Delivered with a broken touch screen (replaced)
- Bad connector the waterfall dash (green connector on harness D)
- Main connector/wires to the display are not making proper connections. This causes multiple issues
- The design of the display connectors and the lack of mounting space behind the connector, which puts pressure on the connector and wires
- the quality of the connectors
- the quality of the wires
What makes this issue worse is the other design failure, which causes the touchscreen to stop working after you unplug/plug in the display connector with the battery connected. Due to this issue, this can happen during normal operation of the BLP-900A
Operation of the BLP-900A
The display looks nice and does give an OEM look. This is an android unit, so you can use all android apps and launchers, which is really nice. In generally this works well, the only app that has given me trouble has been Waze, but everything else works great. The sound quality of music is good, virtually the same as the factory sound system (You are using the factory amplifier and speakers after all). The google assistant works great. Steering wheel controls and waterfall dash controls work with this unit, which is really nice.
The normal operation has the following issues/annoyances
- The main unit of the BLP-900A is installed in the glove compartment.
- The microphone provide, has a lot of background noise (some kind of strange vibration). I have not researched the cause of this yet and it could be placement.
- The backup camera is pointed to low and is not adjustable. The quality of the camera is also fairly low. I would advise to buy a quality adjustable backup camera (Amazon has multiple)
- The display is dim. When driving in bright sunlight, the screen is not visible at all.
- The BLP-900A is slow. When starting up apps, you can see the screen build-up. My current phone (Which was a lot cheaper) is significantly faster.
- Volume control is clunky. the volume buttons (Both waterfall dash and steering wheel controls) control both the BLP-900A and amplifier volume. The volume steps are therefore large. A better solution would have been to have these controls, just control the amplifier and use the touchscreen volume control for the unit.
- The sound has only front left/right channels, therefore the fader from the BLP-900A does not work.
- You are still using your factory tuner/radio (If you install according to the installation manual). This makes answering phone calls more difficult (need to answer the call and change the amplifier to ‘AUX’ and you will receive no notifications and/or GPS directions while listening to the radio.
- The waterfall dash ‘tuning/sound’ button, controls both the previous/next on the BLP-900A and sound controls of the amplifier, which are needed if you want to use the fader (see the above point).
- No physical button for the Home button and Google assistant. (There is a app to link keys to functions, but I have not been able to make it work.
Support
- Quick response on emailing the manual
- Normal turnaround time for emails is 48hrs. Most commonly only a single question gets answered by email.
- Replacement display took over 1.5 months
- Missing parts took over 1.5 months to deliver, with 1 never delivered
- No phone support. They only provide support over email
- Frequent rude responses to emails.
- Provide wrong information in emails (OBD2 send, but never send, We will provide the requested information, once you return the broken display, once returned, they refuse to give the info, etc)
- Total lack of commitment to make their product BLP-900A work.
As I mentioned in the summary, at this point I have uninstalled the BLP-900A and basically waisted my money and time. At this point I can either return the unit (On my own cost) but will not receive a refund. They claim that they will fix the unit and return it to me, but based on my experiences with their support I hold little hope that this will actual happen. Even if they return the unit back to me, it will still have the design issue with the connector and cable.
I am considering repairing the unit myself properly and then reinstall the unit. Of course, if I go this route I will break the warranty, which would most likely be an improvement.
Based on my experience with the BLP-900A, I cannot advice to buy this product or any other product from this company.
If you are thinking to buy the BLP-900A, my advice would strongly be: Don’t. After more than 9 months, I still do not have a fully functioning unit and receive absolutely no support from Bluepower. Even when the unit is working properly, it is mainly a ‘Frankenstein experience’. The unit does look good, but the screen is dim, it is very slow and the integration into the car is hit and miss. There is also a major design flaw. When the display gets unplugged/plugged in, while the battery is connected the touchscreen will stop working. By itself this is just a design flaw, but the quality of the connecter and wires, makes this happen during normal operation. This is why you can find multiple post with ‘touch screen stopped working’.
At this point, I removed the BLP-900A from my car and am back to using the factory system.
Car information
I have a 2011 Volvo C70 T5 with the High Performance audio system.
Delivery of the BLP-900A
The unit arrived in a reasonable timeframe. When opening the box multiple parts where missing:
- Installation manual
- Android Auto module
- Backup camera
- OBD2 Module
The manual was emailed to me within 1 day of my email. The Andoid Auto module and Back up camera arrived after about 1.5 months. As of now (9 months later) I have still not received the OBD2 module. I was supposed to receive a refund for this months ago, but have not seen that on my bank account
The BLP-900A was delivered with a broken touch screen. The touch screen was replaced with a remanufactured one (Not New). This took over 1.5 months to deliver.
Installation manual
There were 2 issues with the installation manual:
- The installation manual was for the wrong car and was therefore missing important installation steps.
- Product changes to the BLP-900A had been made, which were not reflected in the manual.
Otherwise the installation manual was relatively clear and easy to follow.
Product Issues (installation and making the unit work)
The product has the following issues:
- Delivered with a broken touch screen (replaced)
- Bad connector the waterfall dash (green connector on harness D)
- This caused multiple major issues.
- Screen overlay would stay on
- Warning messages on the dash: ‘urgent SRS airbag service’ and ‘Brake system failure’.
- Total dashboard failure.
- Windows/trunk not operating properly.
- Main connector/wires to the display are not making proper connections. This causes multiple issues
o Overlay stays on screen
o White noise on the screen
o No video input message
o Black screen
o Trunk opening randomly
There are times that the unit functions properly for a short time, but whenever I hit a bump one of the above issues can appear, become worse or disappear.
The last issue has not been resolved yet. This problem is inherent with these units. The main issues are:o White noise on the screen
o No video input message
o Black screen
o Trunk opening randomly
There are times that the unit functions properly for a short time, but whenever I hit a bump one of the above issues can appear, become worse or disappear.
- The design of the display connectors and the lack of mounting space behind the connector, which puts pressure on the connector and wires
- the quality of the connectors
- the quality of the wires
What makes this issue worse is the other design failure, which causes the touchscreen to stop working after you unplug/plug in the display connector with the battery connected. Due to this issue, this can happen during normal operation of the BLP-900A
Operation of the BLP-900A
The display looks nice and does give an OEM look. This is an android unit, so you can use all android apps and launchers, which is really nice. In generally this works well, the only app that has given me trouble has been Waze, but everything else works great. The sound quality of music is good, virtually the same as the factory sound system (You are using the factory amplifier and speakers after all). The google assistant works great. Steering wheel controls and waterfall dash controls work with this unit, which is really nice.
The normal operation has the following issues/annoyances
- The main unit of the BLP-900A is installed in the glove compartment.
- The microphone provide, has a lot of background noise (some kind of strange vibration). I have not researched the cause of this yet and it could be placement.
- The backup camera is pointed to low and is not adjustable. The quality of the camera is also fairly low. I would advise to buy a quality adjustable backup camera (Amazon has multiple)
- The display is dim. When driving in bright sunlight, the screen is not visible at all.
- The BLP-900A is slow. When starting up apps, you can see the screen build-up. My current phone (Which was a lot cheaper) is significantly faster.
- Volume control is clunky. the volume buttons (Both waterfall dash and steering wheel controls) control both the BLP-900A and amplifier volume. The volume steps are therefore large. A better solution would have been to have these controls, just control the amplifier and use the touchscreen volume control for the unit.
- The sound has only front left/right channels, therefore the fader from the BLP-900A does not work.
- You are still using your factory tuner/radio (If you install according to the installation manual). This makes answering phone calls more difficult (need to answer the call and change the amplifier to ‘AUX’ and you will receive no notifications and/or GPS directions while listening to the radio.
- The waterfall dash ‘tuning/sound’ button, controls both the previous/next on the BLP-900A and sound controls of the amplifier, which are needed if you want to use the fader (see the above point).
- No physical button for the Home button and Google assistant. (There is a app to link keys to functions, but I have not been able to make it work.
Support
- Quick response on emailing the manual
- Normal turnaround time for emails is 48hrs. Most commonly only a single question gets answered by email.
- Replacement display took over 1.5 months
- Missing parts took over 1.5 months to deliver, with 1 never delivered
- No phone support. They only provide support over email
- Frequent rude responses to emails.
- Provide wrong information in emails (OBD2 send, but never send, We will provide the requested information, once you return the broken display, once returned, they refuse to give the info, etc)
- Total lack of commitment to make their product BLP-900A work.
As I mentioned in the summary, at this point I have uninstalled the BLP-900A and basically waisted my money and time. At this point I can either return the unit (On my own cost) but will not receive a refund. They claim that they will fix the unit and return it to me, but based on my experiences with their support I hold little hope that this will actual happen. Even if they return the unit back to me, it will still have the design issue with the connector and cable.
I am considering repairing the unit myself properly and then reinstall the unit. Of course, if I go this route I will break the warranty, which would most likely be an improvement.
Based on my experience with the BLP-900A, I cannot advice to buy this product or any other product from this company.
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