The ergonomics are great and I really liked all of the user adjustable internal settings.

CD player skipped big time.

Installed my Blau Alaska (1 degree off level) and IMMEDIATELY it started skipping even when my truck was turned off and standing still. Skipped with every CD used, new or old, scratched or not. Skipping was totally unrelated to outside jolts (could drive over RR tracks and not affect it at all!). Swapped it out for a second unit of the same model. It skipped just as bad!
Blau's Alaska has a phenomenal radio but its CD player reliability is EXTREMELY poor.
Traded it in for a Pioneer DEHP8200R.

Similar Products Used:

None

Looks match current VW's

Sound quality.

I Recently installed a Blaupunkt Alaska II into my car. Despite so many other favorable reviews, I was not happy with the result. I would recommend buying a quality name in the same price range instead, giving up Blaupunkt's many features (of questionable value) for sound quality.

For some very necessary background on my system, please skip to the end of this review.

I replaced a two year old Sony deck with the Blaupunkt. I wanted better radio sound, an easier to see screen, and higher pre-amp output. I was very disapointed with the CD sound quality of the Blaupunkt. It was unclear, the highs sounded fuzzy and the subwoofer was very very lacking. Further the Blaupunkt, which was supposed to have 3 volt output, wouldn't play as loud as my old 1.8 volt Sony. The sub was also muddy, and had no snap.

I'm not saying the music sounded horrible. It was not bad. But in this price range it should have sounded at least as good as the old deck.

There are many tuning features to the Alaska, including two filters (essentially a two band equalizer). So, you can adjust two frequencies up or down in output. This did help, but not enough. I tuned this thing a lot, and no joy.

The radio did play decently, but not any better than the deck I replaced the Blaupunkt with, despite the much lauded Digiceiver. The screen was very easy to see in all conditions.

After I had it, and was unhappy, I spent a lot more time poking around the internet. I was surprised - must people seem to like this deck. But, there were a several people who didn't, all experiencing similar problems. I noticed that most happy people were not using external amps, but where relying on the internal amp. One person even said that the pre-amp section was the problem, and he was happy running his amps on the speaker level outputs. I believe that is a compromised solution. I believe the happy people were mostly first time after market buyers upgrading truly bad factory systems. Of course they are happy, and probably will remain so.

Perhaps the Alaska would be successful for someone with a VW Beetle. The colours match, and even the overall design mimics the standard Beetle radio, with two large round objects left and right on the deck. One assumes the sound quality will be much better than from a factory deck. So that person might not be unhappy. But I still wouldn't do it.

I replaced the Blaupunkt with a Kenwood KDC-X715, and I am very happy with that. It was only about $100 more, but it soulds WAY better in all areas of CD. The radio sounds just as good, and it looks much better. It also has many many more features.

To conclude, I would not recommend the deck considering it's fairly high price. In Toronto, it listed for $500 and I bought it for $400. the cheapest I ever saw it was $350 plus tax and shipping from a Canadian mail order house. For $400, you can get several other decks of decent quality, like an Alpine, an Eclipse, or a Kenwood. I even talked one shop down to $400 on a Sony M650 - the new one with the dot matrix double sided face plate!

Bottom line, if you have external amps and several hundred dollars invested in your system, the Blaupunkt is just too expensive to have even a hint that your sound quality might be compromised. Buy something else.


The necessary background. My car is a 2000 Nissan Altima. It is a very quiet car. I have two Clarion APX amplifiers, a component set in the doors, 2-ways in the package shelf and a 10" subwoofer in the trunk. The APX 200 watt 4 channel amp drives a Clarion Pro Audio 6" component set in the doors, with the tweeter in a custom bracket in front of the mid driver. The door locations are not bad - dirctly at the front and not pointed down. The tweeters are angled up behind the speaker covers in the custom bracket. The 2-ways are Pioneer and mounted in the standard package shelf location. The APX 200 watt 2 channel amp is bridged and drives a Kenwood sub in a sealed, larger enclosure. I have seen favorable reviews of both the amps and the subwoofer in major magazines, and the amps won the Grand Prix award last year, the year they came out. I would say the amps are above mid quality but not absoute top of the line quality. I use 4 gauge supply wire to the dist. block and 8 gauge to the subs and for grounding.

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I've compared it to an older Sony deck and a new Kenwood deck.

Great CD quality... excellent defect tracking... beautiful eq functions... never scoped it but nearly full volume and no clip... clean outputs.

The dial, also the unit feels slightly below par on the "touchy" scale.

The Alaska to make a long story short is a fine unit. I got it when it first came out through the shop I worked at and coupled it to a Linear Power 2.2 hv, a Zapco Z100c, driving a DD audio 3000 series 12 and a set of ADS AL6 seps. No frills just insane sound. No other head had the defect tracking that it had period. Seeing the other reviews I can't recall it skipping much at all. But sonics that match or surpass the other units listed. Much praise to Blau

Similar Products Used:

Alpine 7939, Kenwood PS900, Clarion 9175, Eclipse 414

Colors

Everything else

This head unit is junk (Alaska II). I got it only because it was the only HU whosecolors matched my dash. I have MB Quart speakers, Phoenix Gold XMAX sub, Pioneer and Orion amps. I have had nothing but problems with it since I purchased it. The FM tuner stinks. The CD player skips on CDR's. I called Blaupunkt and they pretty much said that I am on my own with CDR's. They said to try TDK CDR's burned with a Yamaha. I have a Yamaha and I used TDK's. They were better but still skipped.
The unit has a cheap overall quality to it. For some reason my left front channel would quit. To get it back I had to turn the volume all the way up and then back off. The main speakers never sounded very clear and my sub sounded like crap.
I think that Blaupunkt in German means Yorx.
I recently swapped it out with a Kenwood 8011 and I am EXTREMELY satisfied. My whole system sounds soooooo much better.

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Kenwood

Build in equalizer and tonal controls are very smooth, simple face plate despite some fairly long list of bells and whistles.

CD section is lacking detail, lacks power, low voltage RCAs

I have a fairly serious 2 amp system in my '90 Ford Bronco which runs very high end Image Dynamics drivers. The Alaska head unit is the weak link in my system, and it has come time to replace it. The "digi-tuner" appealed to me because I used to listen to a lot of FM. I'd say that it is a decent unit for an audio enthusiast on a budget; someone who will make thoughtful use of the built in eq functionality but who does not desire a real, full-blown eq. Over the years I have developed a more descriminating ear and have started to hear flaws in the CD section. I've seen ads for similar Blau units at Frys for about $200. I would encourage anyone looking at recievers in this price range who is more than half way serious about really listening to the music to also look at the Kenwood excelon 715 or 815 for a little more. I remember that the earlier line of excelon recievers were Car Audio Magazine's product of the year. At xvworld.com I have seen the 815 offered for under $400, and the 715 even less. The excelon gives you a DA converter with 20 bit resolution to the Alaskas 1 and 4v outs compared to the Alaskas 2.8. If you can scrape together a few more bucks you can get yourself a competition rig.

I am giving 3 stars because I think this unit is average. This would probably be a 4 or 5 if anyone else was writing this review. I think the ratings on this sight tend to be very high.

Similar Products Used:

Sony, Image Dynamics, Infinity, eclipse, MTX, Kicker, Orion, PPI, Soundstrem, etc.

I like the way the light matches the display lights in my 2001 jetta glx the sound resolution and detail of the music is very good.

None that I can really tell of.

I received my Alaska RDM 168 already installed in my car as part of a trade for the chevy truck that I had with an Alpine set up in it. After a little tweaking with the equalizer section of the unit I could not believe how much more revealing the sound quality was over the Alpine, (clearer hi's deeper bass extension, just more natural sounding to me. I must be honest though,this head unit is backed up by a 200 watt H-K amp that really make this thing smoke. I also have the vw speaker upgrades as well. I am very happy with my unit and have not experienced the skipping problems that seem to be so common in the other reviews I have read. I guess that beauty IS in the eye of the beholder, but having previously owned an Alpine 852 , I do recognize a very large sonic difference, with my preference being the Blaupunkt. As I said earlier, I did not pay for my Alaska it came with my new car, but I did go to the Blaupunkt dealer here in Anchorage to check out the price, about $325.00 as opposed to the Alpine at $350.00 from Shimek's (also in Anchorage). The 852 has a cool display and loads of power but not very revealing in the details. On the other hand the Alaska has the same power rating, a real equalizer, and super detailed sound, and the display matches the instrument panel of my car so it looks like it belongs there.

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Alpine CDAD 852 (Still have a review there.)

Excellent tuner and c.d. section
Lots of software options (built-in eq., tuning options)
great sound reproduction

2.4 volt line-level outputs
illumination (in bright daylight)
almost too many software options

I've only owned two c.d. receivers. One was a Blaupunkt New York CD01 and the other I just finished reviewing. However, I had the first one for five years. I decided it was time for an upgrade. I don't make snap decisions with my car audio gear and this was no exception. I "test drove" around six different units including Eclipse, Alpine and Denon before I decided on the Alaska.
I must say that my experience with the New York was not a fluke. It didn't skip, neither does the Alaska. It had an excellent tuner as does the Alaska. Add to the New York a true digital tuner, lots of settings, an incredible remote, really stylish looks, and an excellent price ($280 including remote) and you have Germany's latest contribution to car audio. Highly recommended for anyone looking to upgrade their car audio system.

Similar Products Used:

Kenwood MASK series

Well designed, excellent sound.

Head unit volume control is awkward.

I bought the Alaska at Crutchfield in December '99 for $329 and installed it myself in a 1999 VW Eurovan Camper. Installation was easy, although Crutchfield did not have a pre-packaged install kit for the Eurovan. A trip to Radioshack for some connectors was all I needed.

I have experienced none of the CD skipping problems reported by some others. Sound quality through my stock speakers is 100% improved over the cassette receiver that the vehicle came with. The Alaska is engineered and styled well. Radio reception is very good. The volume is controlled on the head unit with a somewhat-hard-to-manipulate ring that surrounds the power button. Crutchfield included a free Thummer remote control($59), which mounts nicely on the steering wheel. 95% of the time I control volume from the Thummer, so I'm not too concerned with the odd head unit volume control. I agree with an earlier reviewer that night illumination is not ideal. However, I have not yet wired the Alaska to the dash-light illumination control. Once I do this, I'll be able to dim the dash lights together with the head unit's illumination, which might improve things.

I am very satisfied with the Alaska and highly recommend the unit to anyone considering it.

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none

Easy to use and set up, great CD sound, good reception, looks good.

Display is a little hard to see in bright daylight.

I replaced the original 1986 Blaupunkt Monterey receiver with the Alaska 2 and I am very happy so far. I did some research before buying because the old Monterey was so poor I was going to buy anything except another Blaupunkt. Well, I ended up with the Alaska 2 based on reviews I read and a friend's recommendation and I love it. The radio reception is very good and the CD performance is excellent. I have not encountered any skipping problems (either on smooth roads or over railroad tracks). The receiver is easy to use with simple controls unlike some other receivers I have seen. I like the night illumination, but on a bright day the LCD is a little hard to see clearly. I also got the optional aux wire for a walkman so I can still listen to tapes. Overall, I think this is a great unit. I got it at www.crutchfield.com for $329.

A couple of months ago I replaced my Alpine cassette player with the Blaupunkt Alaska. I did this base on the review of Car Audio & Electronics magazine. I wanted an excellent sounding unit at an affordable price. I found their article to be correct, in prasing the sound quality and tuner performance of this unit. However, after having installed 3 different Alaska units I finally exchanged it for an Alpine 7840. For some strange reason the Blaupunkt unit kepted skipping in my car on smooth road surfaces. The unit was installed by a Blaupunt dealer, and my dealer and Blaupunkt couldn't solve my problem. According to Blaupunkt, no one else was having a similar problem with one of their units. Now for the review, tuner performance was excellent. The tuner section had great sound quality and did an excellent job filtering FM noises. The CD section was very good, except for the skipping. But without a doubt the Alpine's cd section is superior. As soon as I had the Alpine unit installed, I began to notice small details in the music that the Blaupunkt wasn't reproducing well. But overall a very good cd section for the Blaupunkt. I also liked the styling of the unit, and had no problems with the controls. The only thing I didn't really like was the lighting of the unit. The unit looked great at night with it's blue light. But in the day time, It was impossible to see the display. Overall an excellent unit, but hope yours doesn't skip.. My overall score does not reflect my skipping problem.

The unit was installed in a 98 Honda Prelude, which currently has:
Alpine 7840 cd player
Alpine ERE-G180 eq
Alpine MRV-F405 4 channel amp
Boston Acoustic's pro series 6.5 's (doors)
MB Quart 1269 2-way 6x9's (rear deck)