I can (hopefully) add a little bit to this discussion: I own a car stereo company in the Seattle area, and have been an installer for 38 years, so I have a little bit of a clue about the difference between factory installed stuff and aftermarket stuff. First off, let me say that Ford "gets it" concerning car audio far more than most other manufacturers do, and they give us some pretty advanced features as a result. However, if you look at how some of it has been received, you immediately recognize that there is a fairly substantial portion of their customer base that DOESN'T WANT advanced electronics in their vehicles! We have seen far too many customers that want to rip SYNC and the factory navi out of their dash...

Where the aftermarket comes in is for the guy (or gal) that wants a fairly basic deck from the factory (and the lower $$$ that comes with it), and wants some options for upgrading once they buy the truck. Unfortunately, as most of you already know, there's some pretty advanced features even in the base model truck, and even worse, the "form factor" of the dash is pretty crazy, forcing you to buy some pretty spendy adaptors and mounting kits even to be able to get a basic aftermarket deck in the dash.

What Advent has done is to make an aftermarket head unit that allows you to pull the factory head unit, and just by plugging in and bolting down the new one, replace it with aftermarket and get a decent set of features that doesn't cripple the truck, AND keeps the factory cosmetics intact to the point that if you gave a quick look inside the vehicle, you'd be hard-pressed to tell that the deck you're looking at isn't factory.

What these aftermarket units do as well is allow upgrading options for amplifiers, subs, satellite tuners and rear entertainment that can be VERY difficult, if not impossible to do on a factory head unit. In fact, if for no other reason, the aftermarket replacement units become viable from a cost standpoint if you pencil out your entire "upgrade path" and compare what adaptors you will be required to buy to get there when you have to interface with the factory head unit.

Now if these aftermarket units were a complete POS, it wouldn't make any sense to even consider them, but since the Advent offers a decent set of features, it now becomes somewhat of a good option if you want a better head unit than the factory 4.2" radio is, and want to maintain factory cosmetics and not make your truck a theft magnet.

Is there a place for the factory navi upgrade at $800? ABSOLUTELY! Are you going to be able to buy a truck with the options you want and ONLY pay $800 for a navi upgrade in it? HIGHLY UNLIKELY! That deck is only available for $795 on the FX2,FX4, Lariat, Platinum and SVT trucks, and then only if you don't include it in other option packages that include other options as well as the navi. Do some of the others option packages make total sense? Of course! But if you don't want all the other stuff that you have to take to be able to get the navi, or just want to buy a fairly low-cost XLT, Ford doesn't have any way for you to buy it by itself!

In the end, the reason there are options is so anyone can buy a truck with JUST the stuff they want to have on it. This deck looks to be a good way to go if/when you are faced with the choice of either buying a truck you really can't afford just to get navi, or want to take your existing truck to a place that Ford won't let you reach from the factory.

And last but not least - is this deck potentially the best thing for everyone? No. I'm certain that in the coming months, there will be kits made that will allow any aftermarket deck to bolt into that truck, and I'm certain Maestro and Kenwood will come up with something cool as well (I'm a Kenwood/Maestro dealer too). However, any aftermarket deck except the Advent (as far as I am currently aware anyway) will look like aftermarket stuff in that dash and will compromise the look of the truck. The Advent won't do that. And in terms of whether the deck is a POS: I have sold almost 1300 of the entire line of Advent navi units, and have had less than 75 returned for problems. When they do have a problem, the factory replaces them (not repairs them, REPLACES them), for three years. I wish ALL of our manufacturers had that type of warranty!

Walt
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