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.
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:
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:
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:
Both of these are a clear step lower than the DUDU7:
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:
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.
------------
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/
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:
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:
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:
Both of these are a clear step lower than the DUDU7:
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:
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.
------------
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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