jao227

I am looking into upgrading my 2012 F150 FX4 head unit to a touch screen. My question is two fold.

The first question is how difficult is it to do? I currently do not have a touch screen, but do have climate control and a multi disk cd player.

My second question is what is good quality unit to purchase at a reasonable price (under 400 dollars)

Thanks!

nineball

it is not difficult to do at all, but you will need more than just the new headunit. you will have to get some form of a patch cable/adapter and if you have steering wheel controls and/or sync and you want to save them you will need something to do that as well. i have a '13 that had the 4" screen and i used the maestro kit (wiring adapter for the headunit and sync/steering wheel controls) and their new center panel needed as well. worked flawlessly!

head over to www.crutchfield.com and look at their list of double din units (see below for a link). you can check the features you want on the left and see what may fall into your price range on the right. i have tried at least one unit from every major manufacturer, most of them multiple models, and i am personally a huge fan of pioneer models. easy to use, tons of features an great tech support.

if you do not have sync nor the sony system here is a link to all the in-dash gps headunits that would potentially work for you:

https://www.crutchfield.com/g_182350...avigation.html

i would suggest looking over that, finding the one you want and then calling them to find out what else you may need. no one, and i mean no one, can touch crutchfield for customer service. they are not the lowest prices available online but while you may save $50 going with someone else they will not give you the treatment that crutchfield does, nor the aforementioned support, and that retailer may or may not be authorized to sell you the equipment. lots of places sell things they are not authoriaed dealers for, and all is fine until you have a problem and are left out to dry.

-edit-

forgot to mention they have a rewards program too!

jao227

wow! thank you so much for the comprehensive response! in your experience are head units like everything else? you get what you pay for? in other words would i regret buying a 350 unit because it will break and/ or is not user friendly?

nineball

if you stick to the major name brands (pioneer, alpine, kenwood, sony, jvc, etc) and avoid the garbage (boss, jensen, no-named android versions, etc) you should be ok. i think the best way is to use the link and start clicking the options you want and see what happens with regard to pricing. are you willing to spend $X over your budget for that extra feature?

i have an upper end pioneer model and i am quite happy with it, but it has some things i don't care about. for instance i can have a display of gauges and choose what they are. sounds cool, but aside from seeing it when i first installed i haven't used it since. to me, nav, carplay, bt, backup cam, multiple usb ports and the biggest display i could find were priorities. i found all that, at the time, in the pioneer 8200NEX.

HushCarAudio

PM me the models you might be interested in.