So I'm looking to enrich the quality of the sound in the 02 (stock, no mach 460). I went to best buy and I saw a pretty cool Sony head unit for $129. It was a 52w and had an equalizer. I was set on buying it until the salesman told me it wouldn't be that much of an improvement and I should buy the headunit for $450 that had sattelite radio mp3 bluetooth and all this other crap that I would never used. That headunit was only 52w also. I told him I need to think about it. I don't want to spend over $200 on a headunit. I just want the cheapest headunit possible that will give me the biggest sound quality improvement.

 

You dont need any of that crap, just get an Alpine 1 **** headunit. Theyre around $250, their quality is good, have more tunability features than you will ever need, and the sound quality is good.
-P.

 

Cheap and quality have a hard time going together. You might want to figure out whichone you really want...

 

I'm not sure what to look for. I was looking at the watt output. Even the 400 dollar steroes only have 50w. $250 is too high for me, I want less than $200. But if less than $200 is just about the same as stock,, then I'll stay stock, but I thought that even a $59 headunit is better than stock.

 

I would never purchase anything Sony car audio. 50 (52) watts is a peak performance, most headunits are really putting out about 10-18 watts per channel. Do you really think they could fit a 50x4 amplifier in a casing that small, also all the boards for your display, eq, tuner, cd player etc?

Eclipse CD-3000 would be what I would be looking at if your budget is under $200. And yes it will sound better than your stock unit.

 

i love my pioneer 5800. has many great features and puts out good power. i got it new on ebay for 165.

 

I personally would look into alpine and eclipse for that kind of budget.