So, XM's not a factory option.

When XM is installed, do you get the information on the Levinson just like other components? Can you program XM stations to pre-sets and see the full title of the station?
Does the full title of each song and artist display?

 

The intergrated XM sucks! After buying and installing the unit in my GS3, I pulled it out and went with a $50 XM Roady. The channels, etc. do show on the car's display, but as you scroll through the channels, the display is very slow to show the channel name (the Roady shows the name INSTANTLY, making it very easy to scroll through the channels VERY fast). With the intergrated XM you can either look at your channel preset buttons on the screen OR the artist name and song, but NOT both! How stupid! The Roady is so small it sits partially down in ashtray hole. I got a tiny remote control for it so you don't even have to actually touch the unit itself.

 

Its not the best XM integration I have seen in a car but it works well enough. It is a bit slow to display the station/ artist/ title information and it only displays the first 9 characters of each. However, all the functions work through the factory system (including the steering wheel buttons) and the sound quality is excellent... much better than using an FM transmitter or modulator.

 

Yeah, Lexus really cocked this one up! The integrated XM unit shows several fewer characters than the cheap Roady (9 vs. 17?). As far as sound, while I still had the buit-in XM receiver in my car, I compared the sound quality with the Roady using the cassette adapter. Other than a very slight high frequency roll-off on the Roady, which could be fixed with a slight bump up on the stereo's treble control, they sounded the same to me.

 

Does anyone know if there is another XM unit that integrates with the ML system?

I have the dealer installed version, but was wondeing if anyone is makeing a better integrated version at this time. I really dislike that we see just 10 characters.

Thanks.

 

Vaistech has the AVIC-100x that I considered for my GS430 before I sold it:

http://www.vaistech.com/home.html

Looks like they're kind of redoing it right now, but I've heard good things. I know it integrated into the nav unit on the 2nd-gen GS. Not sure if the same inputs are available on the 3rd-gen. You might email them. They're pretty responsive.

 

Thanks, I'll talk with them.

 

I'm getting the Vaistech unit installed tomorrow on my 2006 GS430 along with Sirius -- I'll let you know how it goes.

edbern
2006 Silver GS430