Pioneer Premier DEH-800/880PRS Reviews

[bassahaulic]

Back Story:

I have had MANY different radio's in my vehicles, from Alpine to Kenwood, to Pioneers. Even had other Premiers. All have sounded about the same. I always had the Second to highest unit the companies offered, except with Kenwood as their prices are very good. And always wanted one of the high end units like the Alpine 9887, Eclipse MKII, or Pioneer 800/880PRS. But never had the money to get them. The 880 was produced from 2006-2007 I believe with the 800 being produced from 2008-2010.

I finally got my chance when a local friend of mine, dvalue on here, wanted to sell his 800PRS for a Alpine 9887. Gave me a really good price so I scooped it up.

Review of the 800PRS in my van:

When I first got the head unit I instantly noticed the all copper chassis and brushed black aluminum face plate. All the plugs were very secure and very good quality wire. I took it home and looked over the whole thing noticing it was very different then any other Pioneer I had owned in looks and quality of parts. Also that came with it was the iPod Adapter box/cable, which felt like a normal Pioneer add on accessory.

Installation was pretty painless, hardest part was finding a home for the iPod control box and making sure all the little switches on the top of the radio were set correctly to run "Net Work" mode which is 3-way active. The operating system in the radio was about as standard Pioneer as you can get with just a few more features added. When I took out the Kenwood X794 and db Drive E7EQ7 that was in my dash I was doing a 150.4db and had almost no bass reproduction below 40Hz. Once the 800 was installed it went to a 151.4 and I could then reproduce bass down to 28Hz. Only thing I can think of that would cause this is the cleaner higher voltage coming from the 800.

The Sound Quality difference between the Kenwood and EQ to the 800PRS was night and day. I am running 6 RD Alpha components active. With the Kenwood and EQ, all cross overs were on the amps. Which I won't get into to much as it is kind of embarrassing. Once I had it all set up and ready to go I set the amps crossovers to "full" and turned on the Pioneer. The sound gained a lot of warmth to it, and became much clearer even with ZERO tuning and just turning it on. After setting up the cross over points on the radio and running the Auto T/A, which got it VERY close to where I wanted it, I adjusted the 16 band L/R EQ and fell in love. The sound is VERY well staged, bearing in mind the fact I have 3 mids/3 tweeters per door and everything sounds as it should with little peakiness I can discern in the frequency range.

Review of the 880PRS in my Girl Friend's Mustang:

We got her radio on an AMAZING deal from Bruce Johnroe, WrenchGuy off MWCS.net. Took a few days to ship which didn't matter to her or me as I know he works crazy hours. When we got it it had all the parts, even the microphone which everyone looses.

The differences between the 800 and 880 that I have noticed are as follows; All copper chassis on the 800, with standard chassis on the 880, the 800 has a black finish on the face plate while the 880 has a silver finish, and finally the 880's speaker wires are thicker then the 800's indicating that Pioneer figured out that you had in mind you will use mids/highs amps with these units instead of the on board amplifier. The user interfaces are EXACTLY the same, only differences are caused by one being in "Net Work" mode and the other in "Standard" mode. The buttons on the Faceplate are the exact same, as well are the little switches on the side for "Net Work" and "Standard".

In her car she has the Mach 460 Sound System that comes stock with the car, it has sounded good up until now off a Kenwood X794 like the one I had. I took that one out and replaced it with the 880PRS in "normal" mode for now until she gets her 4-channel and new component set. I CANNOT express enough how much I LOVE the sound the 800/880 produce, it is simply astounding. The radio sends the signal from the speaker wires to the stock amps out to the stock components. The staging I was able to achieve was not that spectacular as she still has the rear speakers playing and the head unit only changes the front/rear and side/side not the individual tweeters/mids as it does in "Net Work" mode. But even still, it is decently staged with again a much warmer sound coming out the speakers.

In conclusion I must say that these may be some of the most well built Pioneer Radio's of all time, and defiantly some of the best sounding. I cannot foresee my self NOT running a PRS for a long time. Maybe even getting their newest the "99PRS".