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Joying Car Stereo Receiver/Head Unit Review

Rate this head unit:

  • 1. Poor (headless panther)

    Votes: 35 59.3%
  • 2. Not terrible (postman panther)

    Votes: 23 39.0%
  • 3. Fine (happy panther)

    Votes: 1 1.7%
  • 4. Great (golfing panther)

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    59

amirm

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This is a review and detailed measurements of Joying Double DIN 11.6 inch Rotating 1080p Display car stereo Android 12 Car Operating System. I purchased it on Amazon for US $609.
JOYING Double Din Car Stereo Auto-Rotated Car Radio RCA Analog Android Auto Apple Carplay review.jpg

The display is impressively bright (indoor anyway) and high contrast. As noted, with a touch of the panel it will rotate nicely to portrait mode:
JOYING Double Din Car Stereo Auto-Rotated Car Radio RCA Analog Android Auto Apple Carplay Stoc...jpg


The mechanism is smooth as silk and gives a sexy feeling to the unit. As noted, the advertised version of Android is 12 but I was hoping that it would ship with 13 as this is the norm for high-end of the market (8 gigabyte/128 Gig storage). Alas, it not only came with version 12, it has no OTA upgrade capability. I checked on the company site and there is a patch update but no version 13. I applied the 3 gigabyte using flash drive which went smoothly but didn't solve the issues I had with the unit (see measurement section below).

Compared with the MekedeTech DUDU7 I reviewed recently, the interface seems stale. While that unit came with a high resolution and modern looking stock home page, this one seems to use a low res default from Google. The same feeling was imparted browsing the rest of the system. That said, you can download and use the latest versions of Google Maps, Youtube, etc. and enjoy level of functionality that simply doesn't exist in proprietary head units. The large display (1080p resolution) and high performance graphics are a joy to interact with compared to those.

That said, subjectively, the touchscreen seemed a bit slow at times registering my touch. This made it very hard to type in passwords and such. There is calibration function so maybe it needs that. I played some 4K youtube videos which looked gorgeous with no frame drops so it is not raw performance.

The main reason I got this unit is that it is one of the few with Toslink optical S/PDIF output. This is the way I am interfacing with my Audison DSP car amplifier for avoidance of ground loops and better SNR and of course, single cable connection.

While not as customized as DUDU7, there are audio settings spread everywhere in the OS, including some in the password protected "Factory Settings." Descriptions are often cryptic with many not doing what you think they will do. Without an audio analyzer, you would be in the dark as to what these settings do other than obvious ones such as DTS upmixer.

The unit came with a power cable terminating in "ISO" connector for cars that have that. This was better than DUDU7 that came with nothing, it still made it a bit of a pain to wire up. So I focused on just testing the pre-amp out. There are speaker outs if you want to use the product as is.

Joying Android Car Receiver Head Unit Measurements
As usual, I start with the 1 kHz tone generated by the Roon player installed in the Joying unit. I am using 48 kHz sampling as 44.1 kHz causes sampling errors with issues of its own. Here is the RCA analog out:
JOYING Double Din Car Stereo Auto-Rotated Car Radio RCA Analog Measurements.png

I would have wanted to see performance in the 80s but we don't quite get there at 2 volts. I had high hopes that digital output would enable that but that was dashed with this outcome:

JOYING Double Din Car Stereo Auto-Rotated Car Radio Toslink Android Measurements.png

Both of these are a clear step lower than the DUDU7:
Best Car Audio Head Unit Receiver Android 2025 Review.png


Let's remember that the digital output should clock at 144 dB! Between the OS and whatever customizations done here, we have lost nearly 60 dB of performance! :(

I could not even get better dynamic range out of digital:
JOYING Double Din Car Stereo Auto-Rotated Car Radio Toslink Android RCA Dynamic Range Measurem...png


At this point, I spent 2+ hours going through every menu and every option in there to get better performance but got nothing. Got depressed and stopped the testing.

Conclusions
As I lamented, I can't believe Google is making an audio OS but not paying a single attention on actual performance. When I arrived at Microsoft, I saw the same issue in Windows and chartered our best engineers to completely revamp the stack which resulted in far, far higher performance. That was some 15 years ago! And here is Google and its OEMs and they can't even come close to providing CD transparency with digital output!

As to this Joying unit, other than its rotating display, there was no joy to be had in its stale and bland UI/launcher and lack of update facility to bring the OS up to date. Shame as the capability is there to be an excellent device that would make your friends jealous. I contacted the company on the OS version and to their credit, they responded the next day. Alas, they said there is no Android 13 upgrade available. And didn't address my question about having a technical person contact me on the performance issues.

I can't recommend the Joying Android Head Unit. Looking to my next review for something better.
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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
 
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I am indeed. Sure, I will shoot some pictures. They are going in a van and I am not aiming for anything fancy. But can't put in bad audio either. :)
 
As I lamented, I can't believe Google is making an audio OS but not paying a single attention on actual performance.

Does it have the Play Store? If it doesn’t, my understanding is that you don’t need to license anything to just use Android. It’s only Android with Google Services that Google gets involved with.

The Eversolo streamers use Android with great performance so it doesn’t seem to be an OS limitation.
 
As noted, the advertised version of Android is 12 but I was hoping that it would ship with 13 as this is the norm for high-end of the market (8 gigabyte/128 Gig storage). Alas, it not only came with version 12, it has no OTA upgrade capability. I checked on the company site and there is a patch update but no version 13.
My six-year-old Pixel 3a has Android 12. So yeah, this newer gadget should have a newer OS.
 
The current version of Android is Android 15. No ota capability and 3 major revisions behind is a non starter. The app store at some point in the future will no longer support this device and apps will stop working one day with no warning.
 
Does it have the Play Store?
Yes, the standard Google Play Store. That is what makes it wonderful, being able to install apps. I have installed Roon and Tidal for example.
 
The current version of Android is Android 15.
That's not yet available for Android Audio. Latest version which I just looked up is 14.3.

But yes, these guys are behind. Many run Android 10 and I have heard some fake the version number! I installed an app that tests for this and fortunately the Joying is genuine 12.
 
The main reason I got this unit is that it is one of the few with Toslink optical S/PDIF output

A lot of problems can be fixed if these things came with USB......
 
A lot of problems can be fixed if these things came with USB......
All have USB. The last one was supposed to be in "beta" as far as working with external DAC. I think this one may have a setting as well for host side USB but I am not sure.
 
I am indeed. Sure, I will shoot some pictures. They are going in a van and I am not aiming for anything fancy. But can't put in bad audio either. :)
I have seen that some manufacturers are offering cars with Dirac DSP tuning from the factory. Would love to hear what they can do with car audio someday. Far outside my budget lol.
 
Quite disappointing...

However, while I do understand that eq is mandatory in cars, this is an environment where I would have a hard time differentiating average from good or very good SNR.
At least the corrupted digital output shows no distortion.

Actually I even wonder what the SNR would look like with the engine running or even just the air conditioning on...
0 dB is when the ambiant noise equals the music, right ?

Still, these investigations are fun !
 
Got depressed and stopped the testing.
Showing things in their true unaltered state of shite is actually really important and useful, for consumers and potentially the industry in general.

And didn't address my question about having a technical person contact me on the performance issues.
A great opportunity to bust out the ol " don't you know who I am " ... unfortunately maybe they do , the AP guys must of done you dirty and warned them about you , maybe shown them ' that ' video clip ... ..

Super useful review mate , thanks!
 
However, while I do understand that eq is mandatory in cars, this is an environment where I would have a hard time differentiating average from good or very good SNR.
I was thinking the same thing. Between the engine, road noise, and the A/C that runs here 10 months out of the year, I'm not sure I'd be able to tell 13 bits from 20. In fact, I know I wouldn't.

But, this is ASR, and it feels better when we have competently designed equipment, even in the car. :p
 
There once was a time in my life where I was into car audio because I drove a lot and listened to music a lot in my vehicle. Now I live downtown in a major metro so I drive only when running errands or getting out of the city. Hence my only vehicle is an old Jeep Wrangler TJ built for serious trails on 35" mud terrains and with a soft top, so even hearing the radio clearly doing 65+ on the highway is a challenge.

That said, I find a lot of the newer android head units have lost the plot a bit when it comes to the UX, at least in my opinion. The pros are 1) Navigation which is a must, 2) easy music control and 3) ability to run your own apps. I like running GAIA when off the grid in public lands where I can upload my own trail maps. I use this a lot, especially when guiding trail runs in areas with lots of crisscrossing trails. For music control, I mostly use Spotify but I like the ability to play my own music from a thumb-drive or sim card, especially when signal is absent. Not of lot of head units do this well anymore.

I had an ATOTO S8 Premium. I found the usability of this unnecessarily complicated for a car radio. Really unintuitive layout and default setup. It was powerful in what you could do though. If you were willing to spend a lot of time you could set it up the way you wanted, and install powerful apps. However, it seemed to draw too much current when the car was off and I park my Jeep for long periods. That and no physical buttons or knobs for volume was a deal killer.

I got an Alpine iLX-407 for a lot more and while it isn't perfect, Alpine didn't forget the UX. There are physical buttons (still prefer knob) for volume, which is a must when trying to keep your eyes on road, especially off-road. I still can run my GAIA for trail maps. The default though is to run Android Auto when phone is plugged in. It can play my music on a mini thumb-drive as well.

Anyway, this is probably more broadly related to recent modernization of car "stereos" than specific to the Joying and maybe worth its own thread, but when I look at the unit in test, I lean more to the usability than the technical performance in my decision.
 
As I lamented, I can't believe Google is making an audio OS but not paying a single attention on actual performance. When I arrived at Microsoft, I saw the same issue in Windows and chartered our best engineers to completely revamp the stack which resulted in far, far higher performance. That was some 15 years ago! And here is Google and its OEMs and they can't even come close to providing CD transparency with digital output!
There's a very real chance that Android "12" on this device is actually Android API level 29, aka Android 10. Best tool to detect fakes is probably Fake Device Test, but some vendors have customized their Android implementation to detect this app and fake it out. Alternatives include AIDA64, CPU-Z, DevCheck, or Device Info HW. Posting screenshots from these tools would be good in future reviews. Android 14 gained lossless USB audio, but I think there were big updates for 11? At least Mekede seems honest about things.
 
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I find a lot of the newer android head units have lost the plot a bit when it comes to the UX, at least in my opinion.
Makede's Dudu OS is only (?) Chinese head unit vendor that's actively developing a polished Android launcher, near as I can tell. Pioneer's 2024+ models (more demos) also seem to be heading the same split screen UI/UX workflow that Dudu OS is taking.

Dudu OS has been progressing rapidly:
 
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P.S. I have the ATOTO S8 premium and an Alpine single din (nice unit, just old skool) laying around. I can send them to you for testing if you have any interest in adding to the test lot.
 
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